Morphology

Morphology and wordsThe internal structure of words

Morphemes and allomorphs

Principles of LinguisticsMorphology

Simona Herdan

September 29, 2005/ PoL

Simona Herdan P of L



Outline

1 Morphology and words

2 The internal structure of words

3 Morphemes and allomorphs




Words in the mind

permanently stored up in a speaker’s mental lexicon

fundamental building blocks of communication

basic words - whose meaning cannot be predicted

Example

sing, read, book, Fido

derived words - obtained by the application of general rulesto basic words

Example

fax→ faxed, faxable




Morphology

the part of the grammar that deals with words and wordformation




Defining words

First pass

the unit between two white spaces on the paper

Problemhyphenated phrases

compounds




Defining words

A linguist’s definition

the smallest free form found in language

free form = an element that does not have to occur in a fixedposition with respect to neighboring elements; it can evenappear in isolation in many cases

Example

dinosaur+s=dinosaurs

dinosaur = free form→ word

s = not a free form→ not a word

dinosaurs = free form; not smallest though→ derived word




Outline







Morphemes

morpheme = smallest unit of language that carries informationabout meaning or function

Example

-ed - contains the information "past tense"I - contains the information "speaker"

cat - contains the information " "




Words and morphemes

simple words = words made up of only one morpheme

Example

and, boy, cat, child

complex words = words which contain two or moremorphemes

Example

boy-s, work-er, re-organ-ize




Words and morphemes

free morpheme = a morpheme that can be a word by itself

Example

all simple words are also free morphemes: fun, computer,linguistics, run

bound morpheme = a morpheme that must be attached toanother element

Example

-s, -ize, re-




Outline








allomorphs = variant forms of a morpheme; cf. allophones

allomorphs never appear in the same environment

the allomorph with the widest distribution is the underlyingform/morpheme




Distribution of allomorphs

allomorphic distribution is rule-governed (like allophony)

Example

the indefinite article a/an: an appears before a word that beginswith vowel ([-consonantal, +syllabic]), a appears elsewhere

Exercise on allomorphy




Types of morphemes

roots - belong to a lexical category (N, V, A, P)

affixes - do not belong to a lexical category and are alwaysbound morphemes

base - the form to which an affix is added; in many casesthe base = the root




Types of affixes

prefix: an affix that is attached to the front of the base

suffix: an affix that is attached to the end of the base

infix: an affix that occurs inside another morpheme




Problematic cases

most English roots are free morphemes: word-basedmorphology

some bound roots

Example

un-kempt - kempt cannot be used by itselfre-ceive, con-ceive - ceive is a bound morpheme as well


Practice with allomorphy

Outline

4 Practice with allomorphy


Practice with allomorphy

Plural allomorphy in English

[s]catsroofcapsracks

[z]bedsevescabskegsmamashalos

[@z]judgeswatchesbusesbuzzesbushesrouges


Morphology

Documents

Transcript of Morphology