LIN 1310

TOPIC 3

MORPHOLOGY

MORPHOLOGY

• Morphology is the study of the structure of words

• Many words can be divided into meaningful subparts

• These subparts are not necessarily words by themselves

MORPHOLOGY

• For example, ‘friend’ can become:

‘friendly’ ‘unfriendly’ ‘friendliness’

‘friendship’ ‘friendless’ ‘friendlessness’

‘befriend’ ‘befriended’ ‘user-friendly’

‘friends’

MORPHOLOGY

• The sequences in blue added to the root ‘friend’ occur in lots of other words, where they have a similar meaning and/or function

• For example:

‘likely’ ‘unlikely’ ‘loneliness’ ‘comradeship’

‘luckless’ ‘lucklessness’ ‘bewitch’

‘bewitched’

MORPHOLOGY• Another example of a recurring sequence with

more or less the same meaning are the following ‘phon’ words

• phone phonologist allophone phonetic phonological telephone phonetician phonic telephonic phonetics phoneme euphonious phonology phonemic

• ‘Phon’ seems to refer in some manner to speech

• Other parts of ‘phon’ words are found in other words

telephone - telegraph - phonetics – cybernetics

Note also

-ing in going, seeing, eating

mem- in memory, memorize, memorial, remember

un- in unfamiliar, unclear, unrepentant, undue

-s in dogs, cats, chairs, telephones, pens, shoes

• Notice that un- occurs at the beginning of the words and -ing occurs at the end

• English does not permit such forms as *ingeat *nesshappy *happyun *groupre *orizemem *sdog

• Thus, there appear to be rules governing the formation of words

• These rules make up the morphology of the language

• The subparts of words are called morphemes

FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES

1. Morphemes are minimal units of meaning or grammatical form in a language

2. Morphemes are not necessarily words on their own

• Some words do consist of a single morpheme• These are monomorphemic or simple words

(e.g. ‘dog’, ‘banana’)• Some words consist of more than one morpheme• These are polymorphemic words or complex• (e.g. ‘dogs’ = 2 morphemes, • ‘unhappiness’ = 3 morphemes)

FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES

3. Morphemes are not equivalent to syllables

There are: one syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘dog’, ‘play’, ‘eat’) two syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘onion’, ‘table’) several syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘banana’)

A morpheme may even consist of: a single sound segment e.g. plural ‘s’ in ‘hats’, ‘coats’, ‘cats’ and past tense ‘d’ in ‘played’, ‘dyed’, ‘dried’

FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES

4. A morpheme is a recurring sequence of segments with a constant meaning and/or function

• Identify which of the following words contain the morpheme ‘un’ that reverses the meaning of many adjectives and verbs such as ‘undesirable’ or ‘undo’

• ‘blunder’• ‘run’• ‘under’• ‘unhappy’• ‘unsure’

FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES

5. A morpheme may have more than one pronunciation.

allomorphs: alternative pronunciations of a morpheme

EXAMPLES: The plural morpheme ‘s’ in English has three alternative pronunciations or allomorphs:

[s] [z] [z]The definite article is pronounced either ‘a’ or ‘an’.

Allomorphs

• Allomorphs are alternative pronunciations of a morpheme.

• Spelling is irrelevant.

Allomorphs can share the same spelling, but still be pronounced differently.

The three allomorphs of the English plural [ s ] [ z ] [əz ] are all written using an ‘s’, yet two of them are pronounced with ‘z’.

Spelling Variants

A morpheme can have two or more spellings in English.

If the pronunciation remains the same, these are not considered allomorphs of one another.

They are simply spelling variants of the same one morpheme.

For example: hide and hid from ‘hiding’ are spelling variants of the same morpheme.

CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES

• Distributionally, morphemes are of two general types: Free or Bound Morphemes

Free morphemes• free morphemes can stand alone as simple words

Example: ‘dog’, ‘house’, ‘run’, ‘banana’, ‘table’, ‘it’, ‘on’

• English has many free morphemes• some languages have very few free morphemes

CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMESBound morphemes• bound morphemes cannot stand alone as words• they must be attached to at least one other

morpheme before they can occur in an actual utterance

• Examples: -English plural ‘s’ and -past tense ‘ed’

• Languages differ from one another in what concepts they encode as free or bound.

Bound or Free?

• English marks the past tense of regular verbs with the bound morpheme ‘ed’ as in ‘they wait’ (present) ‘they waited’ (past)

• Thai marks the past tense with a free morpheme ‘lЄЄw’ :

• Boon thaan khaaw lЄЄw• Boon eat rice past• ‘Boon ate rice’

CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES

Affixes and Roots• as parts of words, morphemes can be affixes or

roots • Roots serve as the core of words • Roots provide the primary meaning of words• Affixes are added to roots (or bases) and

modify the meaning and/or function of a root

Roots and Bases

• The terms root and base are sometimes used interchangeably

• However, their meanings are somewhat different.• Base refers to a form that an affix is added to.• Of course affixes can be added to roots. In such cases

the root and the base are the same.• Affixes can also be added to a unit larger than a root.• Thus a base may also consist of a root plus another affix

or affixes.

Roots and Bases

• In the word ‘lawful’, ‘law’ is both the root of the word and the base to which the affix ‘ful’ is attached.

• We can diagram the structure of this word using a tree structure as follows:

‘law’ as base and root for ‘lawful’

A

•

• N Af

•

•

• law ful

Roots and Bases

• When we create the word ‘unlawful’ from ‘lawful’, the root is still ‘law’

• ‘law’ is still the base that we added ‘ful’ to

• ‘lawful’ now serves as the base to which we add ‘un’

• This is depicted in the following tree diagram

‘lawful’ as base for ‘unlawful’

• A •• A•

•• Af N Af• •• un law ful

Labeling word trees

• Note that we label the nodes in tree diagrams according to the parts of speech of the root and the new words created by adding affixes to the root.

• Thus ‘law’ is N for noun

• ‘lawful’ is A for adjective

• ‘unlawful’ is A for adjective

unlawful• In the word ‘unlawful’, the root law

provides the core meaning of the word.

• ‘ful’ is an affix that changes ‘law’ from a noun to an adjective

• ‘un’ is an affix which reverses the meaning of ‘lawful’

• This gives us a hint as to the function of some types of affixes.

Consider the following when drawing a tree diagramming

‘blackened’:• What is the root?• What part of speech is the root?• What affix is added to the root?• What word does this yield?• What is its part of speech?• Does it serve as the base for another affix?• What is the part of speech of the word resulting

from the addition of this other affix?

blackened

• The adjective ‘black’ is the root (and base) to which we add the suffix ‘en’

• ‘black + en’ is a verb.

• The verb ‘blacken’ is the base to which we add the suffix ‘ed’.

• ‘blackened’ is still a verb, as the suffix ‘ed’ does not change the part of speech of the base.

Roots, bases and affixes

• V

•

• V•

• A Af Af•

• black -en -ed

AFFIXES

• Positionally, there are four types of affixes: 1. Prefixes

2. Suffixes 3. Infixes (and Trilateral Roots) 4. Circumfixes

1. Prefixes are added before the root, as in ‘redo’

2. Suffixes are added after the root, as in ‘reader’

Load on the affixes

• In many languages, a word can have more than one prefix or suffix.

• English example: ‘helplessness’

• Noun (N) base/root ‘help’ + suffix ‘less’ to yield the adjective ‘helpless’

• ‘helpless’ serves as the base for the suffix ‘ness’ to yield the noun (N) ‘helplessness’

3. Infixes

• Infixes are inserted into the body of the root• English does not have infixes• Below are some examples of infixes in Bontoc, a

language spoken in the Philippines

Infixes – Trilateral Roots

• Trilateral roots consist of three consonants to which other elements, mostly vowels, are added or infixed

• Trilateral roots are found in several Semitic languages, including Arabic

• Example: Arabic root /k t b/ [ jiktib ] ‘he writes’ [ katab ] ‘he wrote’

Tiers

• The word structure of languages with trilateral roots are sometimes depicted in terms of tiers, rather than with tree diagrams.

Tiers

Af

k a t a b

root (‘write’)

4. Circumfixes

• Circumfixes or discontinuous morphemes are added both before and after the root

• Below are some examples of circumfixes in Chickasaw, a Muskogean language

CIRCUMFIXES

German also has circumfixes or discontinuous morphemes

lieb ‘love’ verb root

geliebt ‘loved’ or ‘be loved’

CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES

• All affixes are, by definition, bound

• That is, they always occur attached to another morpheme

• In many languages, most of the roots are bound as well

• That is, the grammar requires attaching some type of affix to them before they can be uttered as grammatical words

• In English, most roots are also free morphemes or stand-alone words

• English has a word-based morphology

BOUND ROOTS IN ENGLISH• There are a few so-called bound roots in

EnglishThey include: ‘ceive’ as in ‘deceive’, ‘receive’, ‘conceive’,

‘perceive’‘tract’ as in ‘retract’, ‘detract’, ‘contract’‘cest’ as in ‘incest’‘pris’ as in ‘reprisal’, ‘enterprise’‘gust’ as in ‘disgust’, ‘gustatory’ ‘gusto’

BOUND ROOTS IN ENGLISH or MONOMORPHEMIC WORDS?

• In every case, these so-called bound roots are attached to recognizable English affixes

• This leads SOME to the conclusion that they are indeed roots

• Other linguists consider words such as ‘receive’ to be monomorphemic.

Oddball roots or monomorphemic words?

• Consider that the meanings of all of the ‘bound’ roots in English are somewhat opaque or unclear to us today

• Some of these words were borrowed ‘whole’ from Latin or Greek

• Some roots, such as ‘kempt’ which forms the base in ‘unkempt’, have simply been lost.

Oddball roots or monomorphemic words?

• But the ‘ceive’ words are special.

• For example, they have unique ‘cept’ allomorphs as in:

• ‘receive’ ‘reception’

• ‘deceive’ ‘deception’

• So the jury is still out on this issue.

BOUND ROOTS CAN REBOUND

• Note the ambiguous status of the English bound root ‘cran’

• This first morpheme in the compound word ‘cranberry’ has recently been used to form a number of new words including ‘cranapple’ and ‘cranraspberry’

• So, is ‘cran’ bound or free?

• (A compound word is made up of two or more roots.)

FUNCTIONS OF AFFIXES

• Affixes fulfill two main functions in virtually all languages

• They are either derivational or inflectional

Derivational - Inflectional• Derivational affixes form words that differ from

the base in meaning and/or function. • Example: ‘un’ reverses the meaning of ‘happy’

• Inflectional affixes function to indicate syntactic or semantic relations between words in sentences

• Example: they may indicate agreements

between subject and verb : he eats

or noun and adjective : la chica es pequeña

‘the girl is small’

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES

• Each language has obligatory grammatical occasions that must be marked by an appropriate inflection

• The following English and French examples are ungrammatical because they are missing inflections

* The girl wait at the station yesterday.

The girl waited at the station yesterday.

* The girl wait at the station every day.

The girl waits at the station every day.

* Nous mange du chocolat.

Nous mangeons du chocolat.

* My dog is big than your dog.

My dog is bigger than your dog.

Languages may inflect for:• gender: male, female or neuter• noun class or numeral classifiers• number: one, more than one

or one, two (or dual), more than two

• person• case• tense• animacy• truth versus hearsay• definiteness versus indefiniteness• habitualness• comparative etc…

INFLECTION

• Old English had a dual inflection for two of something

• Below are some examples of Old English pronouns

CASE• Case indicates the role of the noun (subject, direct

object, etc.) in a sentence• Below are some examples of Latin noun case inflections

CASE• Below are some examples of Old English noun

case inflections• In Modern English, the only marked inflectional

case for nouns is genitive ‘The boy’s truck’

Modern English Case

• Modern English pronouns retain some case marking.

• For example:

• I saw her (object case).

• She (subject case) is very tall.

• I was impressed by her (genitive case) height.

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES

Modern French inflects verbs for:

• number

• person

• tense, such as: present (‘je mange’) future (‘je mangerai’) imperfect (‘je mangeais’) conditional (‘je mangerais’)

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES

• Some of the person inflections on French verbs have disappeared in the spoken language

• Example: ‘je mange’ and ‘tu manges’

• These two inflections sound identical phonetically [mž ] ‘mange’ [mž ] ‘manges’

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES• Languages with relatively few inflections fulfill the

functions expressed by inflections in other waysExample: • They use function words such as prepositions

(‘of’, ‘by’) and articles (‘the’, ‘a’)

• They use strict word order in sentences

• The canonical or most typical word order in English: subject - verb - direct object and indirect object

The defenseman passed the puck to the forward.

• This order is quite strictly adhered to in active declarative sentences, because English has so few inflections

The inflectional affixes of English

Who-Whom

• Some linguists consider the ‘m’ on whom to be an inflectional affix.

• Others treat the who-whom alternation to be part of the pronoun case system (in dialects where it still exists).

The inflectional affixes of English

• All of the inflections of English happen to be suffixes

• Inflections can occur in other languages as prefixes, infixes and circumfixes

• A number of English inflections have alternative pronunciations or ‘allomorphs’

• These will be discussed in LIN 1320 under the heading of morphophonology

Stems

• Some linguists use the term stem instead of base in referring to the form that an inflectional affix is added to.

• ‘reboot’ + ‘s’

• ‘reboot’ is either the base or the stem to which the plural inflection ‘s’ is added.

Other ways of marking inflection

• Instead of simply adding an affix, some languages employ other devices to inflect roots. These are:

• Internal change

• Suppletion

• Reduplication

• Tone Placement

Internal change

• ‘sing’ (present) ‘sang’ (past)

• ‘sink’ (present) ‘sank’ (past)

• ‘drive’ (present) ‘drove’ (past)

• ‘foot’ (singular) ‘feet’ (plural)

• ‘goose’ (singular) ‘geese’ (plural)

Internal Change versus Infixing

• With internal change, the remaining parts of the morpheme do not recur elsewhere in the language.

• *‘s-ng’ remains when ‘i’ is replaced by ‘a’ in ‘sing’-‘sang’ in English.

• *‘s-ng’ is not a morpheme in English• In Bontoc, ‘fikas’ ‘strong’ occurs independently in

the language, even though it can be ‘invaded’ by the ‘um’ infix to produce ‘fumikas’

Internal Change versus Infixing

• With internal change, the inserted sounds do not carry specific grammatical meaning elsewhere in the language.

• However, the infixed ‘a’ vowels that are added to the root ‘k-t-b’ ‘write’ in Arabic are added to many verb stems to form the past.

• Constant meaning/function• [ jiktib ] ‘he writes’ [ katab ] ‘he wrote’

Internal Change versus Infixing

• In contrast, the ‘a’ that replaces the ‘i’ in internally changed English ‘sing’-‘sang’ does not function in this manner except in a very few cases.

• ‘sing’-‘sang’ ‘ring’ – ‘rang’

• ?’bring’-’brang’

Lining them up

• The linear arrangement of morphemes is referred to as concatenative morphology

• Infixing and internal change are examples of nonconcatenative morphology.

Suppletion

• Inflect by entirely replacing the root morpheme with another.

• English:• ‘go’ (present) ‘went’ (past) • ‘be’ ‘am’ ‘are’ (present) • ‘be’ ‘was’ ‘were’ (past)• French:• ‘avoir’ ‘to have’ ‘eu’ ‘had’ (past)

Decisions!

• Is it internal change or suppletion?

• For example ‘think’-‘thought’.

• Some linguists use the term partial suppletion to deal with these cases.

Storage of ‘Irregular Forms’

Morphological rules do not predict:

• Suppletive forms

• Forms produced through internal change

Thus, these forms must be stored as separate items in the speaker’s mental lexicon.

Reduplication

• Reduplication involves copying or repeating a

• specified syllable of the root

=partial reduplication

• or the

• entire root

=full reduplication

Partial Reduplication in Ilocano

• piђgan ‘dish’ piђpiђgan ‘dishes’

• talon‘field’ taltalon ‘fields’

• biag ‘life’ bibiag ‘lives’

• ulo ‘head’ ululo ‘heads’

Tone Placement

• In some tone languages, tone changes on the syllable can be used to mark grammatical (i.e. inflectional) contrasts such as tense.

Mono-Bili• dá ‘spanked’ dà ‘will spank’• zí ‘ate’ zÌ ‘will eat’

ˊ denotes high tone ˋdenotes low tone

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXESKey Point 1

Inflections never change the fundamental meaning or part of speech of a word

Example: ‘dog’ and ‘dogs’ are both nouns

‘strong’, ‘stronger’ and ‘strongest’ are all adjectives

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES Key point 2 - Productivity

• Despite some irregular forms (such as ‘go-went’), one inflection (with possible allomorphs ) will usually fulfill a designated grammatical function in the language.

• Think about how few exceptions there are to adding some form of the plural affix ‘s’ to nouns.

• New words in English generally receive the regular inflection.

INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES Key Point 3

• Inflections usually occur at the outer margins of words, after the derivational affixes have been added

• This is because obligatory grammatical occasions are often dictated by sentence structure, after a word has been retrieved with its derivational affixes

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• Derivational affixes permit the derivation of new words from existing roots

• Derivational affixes may alter the meaning and/or the part of the speech of the original root

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

‘judge’part of speech: verb meaning: to decide questions of law, to estimate

verb root judge + derivational suffix -ment

derivation: ‘judgement’

part of speech: noun

new meaning: an opinion or fact-based decision

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXESverb root act + derivational suffix -erDerivation: ‘actor’

part of speech: noun

meaning: performer in a theatrical sense

• NB: ‘or’ and ‘er’ are alternate spellings of the same morpheme

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES‘act’part of speech: verbmeaning: perform, produce an effect

verb root act + derivational suffix -iveDerivation: ‘active’part of speech: adjective meaning: energetic, busy

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

Deriv. prefix in- + adjective base active

Derivation: ‘inactive’

part of speech: adjective

meaning: inert, not active, lazy

(reverse of active)

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

adjective base active + derivational suffix -ateDerivation: ‘activate’ part of speech: verb meaning: put into service or motion

derivational prefix de- + verb base activateDerivation: ‘deactivate’ part of speech: verb meaning: put out of service, render inactive

(reverse of ‘activate’)

Derivational Affixes

verb base deactivate + deriv. suffix -ion

Derivation: ‘deactivation’

part of speech: noun

meaning: the act of putting out of service or motion

Tree for derivation of‘deactivation’

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES• English has a very rich derivational morphology, with

many derivational prefixes and suffixes

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• There can be more than one derivational affix in a word

• Words may seem to be derived in layers

• The placement and ordering of derivational affixes is dictated by the rules of morphology

• Thus, ‘usefulness’ but not ‘*usenessful’

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• A processing model accounts for why inflectional affixes appear on the outside boundaries of the word, after all derivational affixes are in place

Processing model• First derive words before placing them into

an utterance• Utterance provides obligatory grammatical

occasions for inflections

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

Overlapping derivational affixes

• A language may have several derivational affixes that perform the same function

• This is especially true of English

• It reflects the extensive borrowing of words from French, Latin and Greek onto the Germanic base of English

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES• Normally, derivational affixes with overlapping functions

are restricted to particular subsets of English roots

Example: ‘hood’ ‘neighbour’ ‘neighbourhood’ ‘brother’ → ‘brotherhood’ ‘sister’ ‘sisterhood’

‘ship’ ‘friend’ → ‘friendship’ ‘kin’ ‘kinship’

• Note that ‘*brothership’ and ‘*friendhood’ are not possible forms in English

DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• Derivational affixes with the same function in English may be limited to particular types of roots

Example: the derivational prefix ‘un’ that reverses the meaning of adjectives is more productive with adjectives which themselves are derived from verbs

‘unbelievable’ ‘unacceptable’ ‘unspeakable’ ‘*unsad’ (‘sad’ is an adjective)

RESISTANT ROOTS• Some roots seem resistant to derivation with affixes

Note the following derivations:

noun ‘hospital’ → verb ‘hospitalize’

noun ‘seat’ → verb ‘to seat’ and verb ‘to unseat’

noun ‘chair’ → verb ‘to chair’ (meaning ‘to preside’)

But there is no verb *‘chairize’ (meaning to put in a chair).

This derivation may be blocked by the existence of the verb ‘to seat’.

The verbs ‘to seat’ and ‘to chair’ are examples of zero derivation (or derivation without any affix), which we will discuss later.

PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• Derivational affixes vary in their degree of productivity

• This is the freedom with which speakers use them to create new words

Particularly productive affixes are: ‘able’ that turns verbs into adjectives: ‘acceptable’ and ‘adaptable’ ‘er’ that turns verbs into nouns: ‘reader’ and ‘hunter’

PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

Less productive affixes are: ‘en’ of ‘thicken’ and ‘darken’ ‘th’ of ‘warmth’ but not ‘*thinnen’ and ‘*coolth’

• However, ‘coolness’ can be derived with the productive suffix ‘ness’

• The derivational prefix ‘de’ is currently quite productive ‘deplane’ ‘defuse’ ‘demystify’ ‘deintensify’ ‘debug’ ‘dethrone’ ‘debunk’

PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

Note the varying degrees of productivity of the following derivational affixes:

-ism idealism, realism, sadism but not *nastism

-ity sanity, vanity, practicality, scarcity, nicety but not *nastity

-ness meanness, goodness, usefulness, nastiness

‘-ness’ is more productive

‘-ity’ is no longer productive

‘-ism’ tends to change the meaning of the root in unexpected ways as in ‘belief systems’

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

Models for retrieval

• Model 1: Individual morphemes that occur in the language are stored as separate entries

• Retrieve each morpheme in a word and use rules of morphology to assemble each word as you need it

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• Model 2: Polymorphemic (complex) words such as ‘unhappiness’ are stored as ready-made wholes in our mental dictionaries

• However, individual morphemes, such as ‘un-’, are also stored as separate entries, making them available to create new words such as ‘unbirthday’

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• Both model 1 and model 2 agree that the individual morphemes are stored separately and are available to create new words

• This is the crux of morphological theory

• The models differ on the issue of the storage of whole polymorphemic (complex) words which are ready to use right ‘off the shelf’

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• There is strong evidence for the independent storage of individual morphemes such as ‘ness’ and for the rules that allow them to be combined with other morphemes

• Turn adjective ‘sprog’ into a noun

• ‘sprogness’

• Pluralize the noun ‘wug’

• ‘wugs’

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• Sprogness and wugs could not have been stored in your mental dictionaries

• They must be the product of the application of rules combining the existing morphemes ‘ness’ and ‘s’ with the new roots

• Of course, this does not preclude the existence of ready-made words such as ‘friendly’

• Psycholinguists conduct many experiments to address this issue

PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES

• Here are some cases where a prefix does not give a very predictable meaning when combined with a particular root

• These examples provide strong support for the theory that derived words would have to be stored in our lexicons

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• Recall the ‘phon’ words from slide 5:

• phone phonologist allophone phonetic phonological telephone phonetician phonic telephonic phonetics phoneme euphonious phonology phonemic

• ‘Phon’ seems to refer in some manner to speech

THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES

• Are related words such as the ‘phon’ words connected in the mental dictionary?

• If so, how and when does this occur?• Is it the same for all speakers?• Is ‘holi’ the root of ‘holiday’ connected to

the free morpheme ‘holy’ for all speakers?• This is another area of study in

psycholinguistics

OPEN AND CLOSED CLASS ITEMS IN THE LEXICON

Open class items include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

• They carry the main semantic content of utterances and are sometimes called content words or content morphemes

Closed class items include pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions and other grammatical or function morphemes

• Inflectional and derivational affixes are also considered closed class morphemes

OPEN AND CLOSED CLASS ITEMS IN THE LEXICON

• Open class items far outweigh the number of closed class items

• Some aphasics (people with language problems due to brain damage) show differential impairment of closed and open class lexical items

• This supports the view that the two classes are processed differently in the brain

(Closed Class)

• Note that derivational and inflectional affixes are also considered to be part of the closed class of morphemes in a language.

EXPANDING THE LEXICON

• We expand the lexicon by using the derivational affixes to create new words

• We can also use other means to expand the lexicon

• Only the open class of lexical items is regularly expanded

• The closed class remains relatively stable over time

• Changes to the closed class can and do occur over the history of a language

EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Compounding – combining two or more free, usually open class, morphemes to create a new word

• The meaning of a compound may not be directly discernible from the meanings of the individual morphemes

Examples: • ‘redcoat’• ‘hotdog’• ‘flatfoot’• ‘mother-in-law’

Compounding

• Some compounds consist of or include closed class morphemes

‘into’

‘onto’

‘unto’

‘upon’

‘mother-in-law’

Compounding

• English has special stress rules for compounds

• adjective noun: hot dóg

• compound noun: hót dog

Compounding

• In English compounds, the rightmost morpheme or head determines the part of speech of the compound

• There are many possible combinations of compounds in English

• For example (heads are in blue):

• adjective + noun = ‘hotdog’ (noun)

• noun + verb = steamroll (verb)

Longer Compounds

Identifying Compounds• Stress test• Adjective plus noun: hot dóg• compound noun: hót dog• Inflection test• Inflections are normally added at the end of

entire compound• He dropkicked the ball

not: *He droppedkick the ball.

Some exceptions relate to semantic issues:

mothers-in-law *mother-in-laws

Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds

• Endocentric: the compound denotes a subtype of the concept denoted by the head

• ‘fireman’ = type of man

• Exocentric: the meaning of the compound is not easy to figure out from its parts

• ‘redneck’ is not a type of neck

Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds

• English endocentric compounds whose heads have irregular plurals also pluralize irregularly

• tooth- teeth • wisdom tooth – wisdom teeth• English exocentric compounds whose heads

have irregular plurals use regular plurals• leaf – leaves • Maple Leafs

Cliticization• Clitics: Free morphemes sometimes reduce to

forms that are no longer syllables and therefore cannot stand alone

• But the full free morpheme still exists as well.• Clitics bind to a host word• Proclitics come before the host.• Enclitics come after the host.• They are going - They’re going (enclitic)• *Je te aime – Je t’aime (proclitic)

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Borrowing from other languages

• ‘propaganda’ and ‘sputnik’ from Russian• ‘junta’ from Spanish• ‘coup’ from French

Invention

• transistor • television

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Acronyms

• Laser = light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation

• NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization

• Scuba = self-contained underwater breathing apparatus

• Snafu = situation normal, all f……ed up

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Clipping Abbreviation telly TV OJ VD

math TNT DDT bike U.S. ID

• ‘piano’ from ‘pianoforte’ ‘fan’ from ‘fanatic’ ‘bus’ from ‘omnibus’ ‘a.m.’ from ‘ante mere diem’ ‘p.m.’ from ‘post mere diem’

Acronym versus Abbreviation

• An abbreviation is pronounced as a series of letters

OJ (for orange juice)

• An acronym is pronounced as a word

NATO (for North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

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Back formation – subtracting what is mistakenly thought to be an affix to create a new word

‘pea’ from ‘pease’‘fuse’ from ‘fusion’‘to hawk’ from ‘hawker’‘to swindle’ from ‘swindler’‘to laze’ from ‘lazy’‘monokini’ from ‘bikini’‘flammable’ from ‘inflammable’

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Blending – combining parts of two or more words to form a new word

Examples:

• ‘brunch’ from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’

• ‘motel’ from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’

• ‘smog’ from ‘smoke’ and ‘fog’

• ‘chortle’ from ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’

Zero Derivation

• Words formed without any obvious derivation or sound change. For example:

• Conversion• Semantic extension• Semantic narrowing• Semantic reversal• Words from brand names• Words from proper names• Proper names from occupations

Conversion

• An existing word is assigned a new part of speech

• ‘run’ (verb) converts to ‘run’ (noun)

• ‘dirty’ (adjective) converts ‘dirty’ (verb)

• The two forms co-exist in the language.

Semantic Extension

• Broadening the meaning of a word

Examples:• ‘ship’ to ‘spacecraft’• ‘dogge’ from a specific breed to a generic

term• ‘bread’ to refer to money• ‘cool’ to mean someone or something

praiseworthy• ‘straight’ to refer to a heterosexual person

Semantic Narrowing

Narrowing the meaning of a word

Examples:

• ‘hund’ from a generic term for dog to a specific breed (‘hound’)

• ‘meat’ from a term referring to the edible parts of many items such as nuts, as in ‘nutmeats’ and ‘mincemeat pie’ to a term referring only to animal flesh

Semantic reversal

Meaning of a word can change its connotation over time

Examples:

• ‘square’ as in ‘square deal’ or ‘square meal’ in the 1930’s

to a dull conventional person or thing in the 1950’s and 60’s

• ‘straight' an honest person before the 1960’s to someone who was dull and

conventional in the 1960’s

Words from brand names kleenex fridgidaire xerox

Words from proper names sandwich jumbo denim cesarean

Proper names from occupations Miller

Taylor

Smith

Place names from common words Portsmouth

Landsend

Onomatopoeia

• words formed as imitations of environmental sounds

• influenced by the sound system of each language

• English: ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’

• Japanese: ‘kokekokko’

• French: ‘cocorico’

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Idiom – a fixed phrase whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of the individual words

Idioms cannot be syntactically manipulated into questions or passives and still retain their idiomatic meanings

Example: the idiom ‘to buy the farm’ does not retain the meaning ‘to die’ in the passive phrase ‘the farm was bought by him’

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The following idioms all mean ‘to die’

• ‘to kick the bucket’

• ‘to cash in one’s chips’

• ‘to bite the dust’

• ‘to buy the farm’

• ‘to pass away’

• ‘to meet one’s maker’

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Other idioms include• ‘sell down the river’ meaning ‘to betray’

• ‘to let one’s hair down’ meaning ‘to relax’

• ‘to put one’s foot in one’s mouth’ meaning ‘to commit a social gaff’

• ‘to throw one’s weight around’ meaning ‘to be pushy or bossy’

• ‘to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve’ meaning ‘to reveal one’s (romantic) feelings