Morphology

Overview

We all have an internal mental dictionary called a lexicon

Morphology is the study of words (the study of our lexicon)

To look at morphology, we must consider both form and meaning

Affixes

Affixes are parts of words that “affixed” to other parts of words

We have prefixes, suffixes, and infixes Prefix goes at the beginning (pre-) Suffix goes at the end (-ing) Infix goes in the middle (-en-)

Derivation vs. Inflection Inflection is the creation of different grammatical

forms of all words. cat -> cats In English, inflectional affixes are always suffixes P. 151 gives a chart of inflectional affixes

Derivation is the process of creating words out of other words. cat -> catty Cat is the root on which catty is built. The form of the root is the stem. The added pieces are affixes.

Morphemes The parts that words are made of are called

morphemes. A stem may contain more than one morpheme

“Cattiness” Root= cat Stem = catty (contains two morphemes= root and

one affix) Second affix = “ness”

Free morpheme-- can be used as words by themselves Bound morpheme-- morphemes that cannot stand

alone (such as affixes) Bound root-- root word that cannot stand alone

(transfer, infer, confer, defer, prefer, etc.) Content morpheme-- morpheme with identifiable

meaning or something that indicates a change in meaning

Function morpheme-- serve a “function” in the sentence but not necessarily with an identifiable meaning

Practice

P. 176 #2

Recap: Derivational vs. Inflectional

Morphological Processes (Ways to Make Words) Affixation (making new words by adding affixes

to stems) Compounding (making new words from two or

more independent words) Reduplication (making new words by doubling

an entire free morpheme or part of it) Alternations (making new words by morpheme-

internal modifications) Suppletion (making new words that are

phonetically unrelated to the shape of the root)

Affixation making new words by adding affixes

(prefix, suffix, infix) to stems

Tagalog example of an infixVerb stem Infinitivesulat ‘write’ sumulat ‘to write’bili ‘buy’ bumili ‘to buy’ kuha ‘take’ kumuha ‘to take’

Compounding

making new words from two or more independent words

English: girlfriend, blackboard, air-conditioner, life-insurance salesman

German: Wunderkind ‘child prodigy’, muttersprache ‘native language’

Reduplication making new words by doubling an entire free

morpheme or part of it English: Do you like him as a friend or do you

like-like him? Indonesian: rumah ‘house’ vs.

rumahrumah ‘houses’ Tagalog: bili ‘buy’ vs.

bibili ‘will buy’

Alternation

• making new words by morpheme-internal modifications

English: ring, rang, rung, man vs. men strife vs. strive

Suppletion

• Making new words that are phonetically unrelated to the shape of the root

• We often think of these as being irregular

English: • is vs. was• go vs. went

Morphological Types of Languages

Analytic Made up of

sequences of free morphemes

Each word consists of a single morpheme with no affixation

Example: Mandarin Chinese (p. 163)

Synthetic Made up of bound

morphemes attached to other morphemes

Involves affixation Example: Hungarian (p.

164) Three types of synthetic

languages: agglutinating, fusional, and polysynthetic

Agglutinating Languages

Fusional Languages

Polysynthetic Languages