What is morphology?

•The study of internal structure of words

•The rules for combining morphemes into words

What do you know when you know a word?

“bagonize”“to wait anxiously for your bag at the airport

carousel”• Pairing sounds with meaning• Information in our mental dictionary (lexicon) for

each word:• Pronunciation—[bægәnayz]• Meaning

• Grammatical category (noun, verb, adjective , adverb, preposition etc.)– He bagonized for a long time.– *The bagonize is gone

What is a morpheme?

• The smallest meaningful unit of language

• It cannot be further analyzed into smaller meaningful parts

• It has a relatively stable meaning

Examples:TalkTalks = talk + sTalked = talk + edTalking = talk + ing

TeachTeachers = teach + er + sTeaches = teach + esTeaching = teach + ing

Different types of morphemes

Types of morphemes: Free morphemes: Mouse car book man girl 

  

 

 

Bound morphemes:

 

re- in remove

-ive in active

-ous in famous

pre- in premature

Root/stem: the basic or the core form in a word with more than one morpheme

 

demoralize

 

de + moral + ize

 

Moral is a root/stem

Affixes: bound morphemes that are not a root/stem

Prefixes: affixes that precede a root de- in demoralize in- in incurable   

Isthmus Zapotec, a language spoken in Mexico:zigi “chin” kazigi “chins”

zike “shoulder” kazike“shoulder”

diaga “ear” kadiaga “ears”ka + zigi

ka- (a prefix)

Suffixes: affixes that follow a root

 

-ize in demoralize

 

-ed in walked

 

Turkish:

dur “to stop” durak “stopping place”

bat “to sink” batak “sinking place” (swamp)

dur + ak

-ak (a suffix)

Infixes: affixes inserted inside the root

 Tagalog, one of the languages spoken in the Phillipines:– basa “to read” bumasa “Read!”– tawag “to call” tumawag “Call!”– sulat “to write” sumulat “Write!”

Circumfixes (discontinuous) : affixes placed around the root

Inflectional: affixes that mark general grammatical meanings (plural, tense, gender, comparison)

 

Derivational: affixes that often change category (part of speech)

Content and function morphemes

Content morphemes:

• express informational content

• Independent of the grammatical system of a language

• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Cups, red, jump, slowly

•  

• Open-class morphemes– New morphemes can be easily added to this

class

Nuke, dork, jerk,

Function morphemes

• express syntactic relationships between elements in a sentence

 

 

Prepositions: on, in, at, with, fromPronouns: he, she, her, him, myArticles: the, a, anConjunctions: and, but, because, unless

Jumped off a wallJohn and MaryThey love their catsJohn likes a womanJohn like a womanJohn likes woman

  

• Closed-class morphemes—essentially closed to new members

 

Lewis carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Inflectional morphology: Creates the forms of the same wordGenerally productiveGenerally regularProvides grammatical information (person, number,

gender, case, tense) 

Talk remove blog

Talks removes blogs

Talked removed blogged

Talking removing blogging  

 

Talk eat go am

Talks eats goes is

Talked ate went was

Talked eaten gone been

Talking eating going being

Derivational affixes: Creates new words but retain the syntactic category-hood added to a noun creates a noun child, childhoodwoman, womanhoodpriest, priesthood 

-ster added to a noun creates a noun

gang, gangster

prank, prankster

Derivational affixes change lexical (syntactic) category change:

 solid solidify adjective verbgovern government verb nounsublime sublimity adjective nounfame famous noun adjective

Some derivational affixes in English: -ive added to a verb to give an adjective  act active

sedate sedativere- added to a verb to give a verb

move removedo redo

 

-al added to a noun to give an adjectiveuniverse universalinstitution institutional

 -en added to an adjective to make a verb

red reddenlight lightendark darken

 

de- added to a verb to make verb

moralize demoralize

toxify detoxify

Irregular: ate and gone are irregular forms—some relation to the basic sounds of the root.

Suppletion: a special kind of irregularity—no relation between the root and the irregular form

Went and am, is, was

Good, better, best

Bad worse

Person: Present tense: Person Singular Plural1 ‘I eat’ ‘We eat’2 ‘you (sg.) eat’ ‘you

(pl.) eat’3 ‘he, she eats’ ‘they

eat’

 

Number:

Nepali:

manche ‘man’ mancheharu ‘men’

keta ‘boy’ ketaharu‘boys’

Gender:Spanish:un amigo americano ‘An American friend

(male)’una amiga americana ‘an American friend

(female)” 

Nepali:

ramro keta

beautiful boy

“a beautiful boy”

ramri keti

beautiful girl

“a beautiful girl”

Case:Indicates noun’s relation to verbs (subject, direct

object, indirect object)John gave Mary his sister’s old bicycle. jonle merilai uskodidiko purano saikal diyo 

ramle harilai kitab diyo

 

ram-sub hari-obj book gave

 

Ram gave a book to Hari.

guma ‘man’

singular plural

subject guma guman

possessive guman gumena

indirect object guman gumum

direct object guman guman

Tense: usle bhat khanchaHe-subj rice eat-third person present tense‘He eats rice.’ usle bhat khayo

eat-third person past tense‘He ate rice.’

 

usle bhat khanecha

eat-third person future tense

‘He will eat rice.’

Hierarchy of morphemes in the formation of words:•  Words are constructed hierarchically• One affix is attached to the root first• Derivational morphemes attach before inflectional

ones• *highesness• highnesses

 

unusable

unlockable

uncontrollably

recyclable

multigenerationally

How do we identify the lexical categories of words?

Three criteria:

• Morphological

• Syntactic

• Meaning

Morphological criterion:

What inflectional affixes can a word take?

Noun?

boy boy + s -s ‘plural’

diamond + s

disappears + s -s ‘third person singular’

*beautifuls

Syntactic criterion:

the boy

a boy

my boy

My beautiful boy

*my beautiful

*my quickly

Meaning criterion:

Person, place or thing

Verbs?

Morphological criterion:

jump + ing

jump + s

*desking

Syntactic criterion:

will jump

may jump

Jump!

*may desk *Desk!

Meaning criterion:

Names an action

Adjectives?

Morphological criterion?

tall + er

tall + est

*jumpest *deskest *desker

Syntactic criterion:

very tall

more/most beautiful

*very desk *very jump

Meaning criterion:

Describes a noun

Adverbs?

garbage category?

Morphological criterion:

fast + er fast + est

Syntactic criterion:Movement

He thought about the project carefully.Carefully he thought about the project.He carefully thought about the project.

Types of morphological systems

• Isolating morphology:– Words are single morphemes

– No derivational and inflectional morphology

– Chinese and Vietnamese are good examples

 

 

• Agglutinating morphologyWords have bound morphemes Words can be easily broken into distinct morphemes

•  Inflectional morphology

• Words consist of several morphemes

• Words cannot be segmented easily into distinct morphemes

• Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek

Word-formation processes

Compounding

Olive oil  

credit card

 French history teacher

Government document shredder

Compounds:Newar :jaki-curice dustrice flour kala-bhatawife husband‘couple’ 

Reduplication:

 dhecula dhedhecula

‘to lean’ ‘to stagger’

 

ko‘crow’koki ‘crow and similar other things’

la ‘water’ lali ‘water and similar other things’

ho ‘hole’ hohi