WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?WORD STRUCTURE

Lec. 1

Linguistic levels

Semantic level meaning Syntactic level sentence-structure Morphological level word-structure Phonology sound system

What is morphology?

The study of the internal structure of words / the study of word formation.

In the 19th century, morphology & the reconstruction of Indo-European (Latin-Sanskrit-Persian- Germanic)

Sound system & word-formation patterns

What is a word?

native speakers have intuitive knowledge of how to form new words:

E.g. ‘splinch’ = to step on broken glassE.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v)/

Vietnamize (v) E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode?

redie?

What is a word?

A person a word is stretch of

letters that occurs between blank spaces.

a word is something small that means something.

A linguist a morpheme is the

smallest unit of language that has its own meaning.

E.g. giraffe, red, re-, -ize, etc.

1 .What is a word?

A word is one or two morphemes that can stand alone in a language.

Simple words & Complex words

Simple words

giraffesit

pistachioMichael

oops just

Complex words

oppositionprewashedblackboardinseparableorphanage

Exercise

While reading, an English book, you come across the word ‘pockled’? What would you do?

‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ?Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles, وردة

وردتان – - – – – وردتين تورد أورد وردات ورود

1.1 .The Lexeme

We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of the abstract vocabulary item using the term lexeme. The forms eats, eating & eater are all different realisations/ representations/ manifestations of the lexeme EAT.

1.1 .The Lexeme

Lexemes share a core meaning although they are being spelled & pronounced differently.

predictable / prediction / predictability

Lexemes are the words listed in the dictionary

e.g. Predict

Exercise

Group words that belong to the same lexeme:

sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes – seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy – boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman – sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller – catching – jumping – sees - women

1.2 .The word-form

We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a particular physical realisation of a specific lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a particular word-form.

1.2 .Word-form

The physical word-form

see – sees- seeing – saw – seen

sleep, sleeping, sleeper, slept, sleeps

catch, catches, catching, caught,

The realisation of the lexeme

SEE

SLEEP

CATCH

1.3 .The grammatical word

The word is a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morphosyntactic properties (morphological + syntactic), such as noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

Exercise

Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words represented by the word cut:

Usually I cut the bread on the tableYesterday, I cut the bread in the sink

* Jane has a cut on her finger

Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning.

E.g.unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under

Morphemes

The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function from which words are made up.

A morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller meaningful units, or units that mark a grammatical function.

Exercise

-er player / caller / pretender -nessKindness / cleanliness / goodnessex-ex-wife / ex-ministerpre-Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school

Morphemes & meaning

It is possible to combine several morphemes together to form more complex words.

E.g.uncleanlinessunfaithfulnessreincarnation

Morphemes & meaning

Meaning & morphemes: speakers may have different mental lexicons, based on their personal experience

helicopter – pteropus - diptera (pter=wings)Bible – bibliography – bibliophile (bibl=book)

Identification of morphemes

What is true of science in general is also true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957)

It is not possible to establish mechanical techniques for the identification of morphemes

But, there are a number of reasonably reliable & widely accepted techniques proposed by linguists working in morphology

2.1 .the principle of Contrast

We contrast forms (words) that differ in : 1. phonological shape /e/ vs. /i/ ten & tin / six & sex

2. meaning (meaning & grammatical) The girl plays vs. the boy playsThe girl plays vs. the girl played

2.2 morphemes & morphs

Morphemes are the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.

2.1 .morphemes & morphs

The analysis of morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs.

A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).

morphemes & morphs

morpheme By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find that

they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person singular), work + ed (a marker for past tense), work + er (a

marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work + house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these morphemes is called morphology.

morph Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker,

workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, -ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of an element, a segment, which is not yet classified.

Source: http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/Newwords.pdf

Exercise Identify the morphs:

I parked the car We parked the carI parked the carHe parks the carShe parked the carShe parks the carWe park the carHe parked the car

The morphs are :

Exercise

Identify the morphs which represent the past tense morpheme in English:

1. /d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/clean, weigh, enjoy, burb…

2. /t/ the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/ park, miss, watch, …

3. /id/ the verb ends with /t/ or /d/mend, paint, hand, wait, …

Allomorphs

If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs

Sometimes the difference in form is not associated with a difference in meaning

/d/, /t/, & /id//s/, /z/, & /iz/

Morpheme‘past tense’

morph /id/

morph/d/

morph/t/

morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs

Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English

Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English

Morphemes ‘plural’

morph /s/

morph/z/

morph/iz/

Identification of morphemes

The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the notion of distribution; the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs.

Classification of morphs

We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in complementary distribution:

If morphs: 1. represent the same meaning or serve the

same grammatical function, and 2. are never found in identical contexts

Morpheme‘past tense’

morph /id/

morph/d/

morph/t/

The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English are in complementary distribution

Exercise

Identify the allomorphs of the negative morpheme

1. impossible, impatient, immovable

2. intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive, inelegance

3. incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude

Notes

If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorphs used in a given context is phonologically conditioned (assimilation).

Spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in many languages (e. g. English)