Chapter 7: MorphologySummer 2012

Learning ObjectivesOur learning objectives for this session are to:

Discuss how morphemes aid CLD students in their comprehension and spelling of academic English at the elementary and secondary levels.

Analyze the notion of words, how words contribute to language, how words are formed, and what it means to know a word.

Explore the morphology of effective teaching for second language acquisition.

What are morphemes? A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical

function.

boys girls

A morpheme can be a root word, prefix, or suffix.

like unlike likely

Most words are more than one morpheme long, but a morpheme is not the same as a syllable.

likable ( 3 syllables, 2 morphemes)

How many morphemes are there in the word “unbelievable”?

Free and Bound MorphemesSoruce: What’s Diferent About Teaching Reading to Students Learning English?

Free morphemes are meaning-carrying units that can stand alone. “play”

Bound morphemes are meaning-carrying units that CANNOT stand alone. “-s” as in “plays” and “-ed” as in “played’

-s un- -th opals untie sixth

Prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes, and some stems are also bound morphemes.

introspective= three bound morphemesprefix intro- stem -spect suffix -ive

Free and Bound Morphemes Morphemes are considered to be either “free” when they can

occur as separate words or “bound” when they must be attached to other words.

For example, the word “dogs” consist of two morphemes: free morpheme “dog” and the bound morpheme “s” that acts as a marker of plurality.

Morphological Rule: Words fit together in certain ways/words are built out of smaller bits by another set or rules – “People must have a mental rule for generating new words from old ones” (Pinker, 2007)

The English noun comes in 2 forms (dog and dogs)The English verb in 4 (bark, barks, barked, and barking)

Derivational Affixes (prefixes & suffixes) Sometimes altering a free morpheme by adding or removing a

bound morpheme results in a change in the meaning of a word/part of speech.

Ex. Adding the bound morpheme “-er” to the verb “teach” results in a noun. These morphemes are considered derivational because the new word is derived from a stem word.

teach (verb) teacher (noun)

happy (adjective) happiness (noun)

elect (verb) election (noun)

Inflectional Affixes (all suffixes) Inflectional morphemes: when added to

words, no change occurs to the part of speech or to the meaning of the base word.

Ex: marker markers (plural)

Cindy Cindy’s (possessive)

walk walked (past tense)

Common Derivational Affixes (all suffixes)

-able -ate -ify -ize

-age -ed -ion -ly

-al -en -ish -ment

-an -er -ism -ness

-ant -ful -ist -ory

-ance -hood -ity -ous

-ary -ic -ive -y

A Useful Way to Remember Different Types of Morphemes (Yule, 2010)

Morphemes

Bound

Free

Functional”and”

Derivational (re-, -ness) “happiness”

Inflectional (s, -er)“older”

Lexical “teach”

Morpheme Activity One Task 1: List the bound morphemes in these

words: fearlessly, misleads, previewer, shortened, un- happier

Task 2: What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?

(a) Have you eaten yet?

(b) Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?

(c) She is younger than me and always dresses in the latest style.

(d) We looked through my grandmother’s old photo albums.

Morpheme Activity One Task 3: Work with a partner to create a new

list of words using both sets of bound morphemes (derivational & inflectional). The team with the most words wins!

Knowledge of Morphology Morphology refers to the study of the forms of

words, including the structure of words themselves.

Allows us to understand how words are formed in a particular language.

Other Languages Analytic languages—morphemes are not

bound to one another, word order carries a lot of importance. Almost every word is composed of only one morpheme (e.g., Chinese)

Other Languages Synthetic languages: add many inflections to

words (e.g., “port” and “portas” in Latin)—word order in a sentence is not as fixed as it is in English (F&F., p. 169)

Agglutinative languages: combine many morphemes to make a chain of words (Korean, Japanese)—morphemes not changed like in English (-s or –es for plural)

Other Languages Polysynthetic languages: each word can be

translated as a whole sentence. Navajo dictionaries list morphemes, not words because every word is made up of many morphemes and represents a whole sentence. Bantu languages (native African languages) are also polysynthetic (Freeman & Freeman, p. 170 )

Session Seven: Did you know?

In some languages (Japanese for example), individual morpheme carries more case information (i.e., S, IO, and DO) than the word order as in English. One can switch around the order of the words several different ways and still retain the same meaning of the sentence (e.g., 6 different ways to express “X gives Y to Z”, F&F, p. 171).

(c) 2006 CIMA (Center for Intercultural & Multilingual Advocacy)

17

Why Do We Have to Study Morphology or Syntax?

Native speakers already have an instinctive sense of how words/sentences are formed, but not non-native speakers. Morphological/syntactic rules of our students’ L1 allow us to predict their interlanguage errors.

Allison plays the piano. Piano plays Allison the* Allison the piano plays*

English as a Hybrid Language Many words with Latin roots, even though

English is a Germanic language.

Grammar rules such as: Do not end a sentence with a preposition.

English words were made to fit into Latin categories (e.g., Adjectives are defined by what they do – modify a noun; Conjunctions connect parts of sentences, etc.)

Chapter 8: Implications from Morphology for Teaching Reading & L2Summer 2012

In this session, we’ll discuss Coining, compounding, clipping/creating

acronyms, blending, & back forming BICS, CALP, & CUP Cognates Content & general academic vocabulary

A Common Vocabulary Without terms like noun and verb, it would be

impossible to talk about the words in our language.

A foreign language can be acquired more efficiently by studying the grammar of one's own native language.

All languages and all dialects follow grammatical patterns.

All languages evolve and adopt new words.

How Do We Get New Words?Think/pair/share about English words derived

from the following processes (pp. 180-182):

Coining Compounding Clipping/Creating acronyms Blending Back-formation

Word Formation Processes Coining (blog) Compounding (put-down) Clipping/Creating acronyms (ESL) Blending (smoke + fog = smog) Back-formation (burglar burgle)

Word Formation Rules Derivational affixes make up most of our new

words. These can be prefixes or suffixes.

Can you think of some examples of these words? (think technology)

Word Formation with Derivational Affixes

Ambimopustrous: can use a mouse w/ either hand

Depediate: if the printer cuts off the bottom of a paper

(Pinker, 1994 in F&F, 2004, p. 181)

Morpheme Activity Two Work with a partner to create an invented word using

known word parts. Make sure to come up with the definition for your invented word. Example: prehydrophobic: before one became afraid of water.

The class will try to guess what your word means!

The team that “stumps” the class with their made up word also wins!

Content and Function Words Content words (N, V, Adj, & Adv) are

referred to as “open-class” words. They carry the main meaning of the sentence. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Borrowed words fit into this category.

Function words are considered “closed class” words. They include determiners, quantifiers, pronouns, auxiliaries, etc. (see p. 177 in for examples).

Language Processing in the Brain Do our brains process content and function

words differently? Let’s view how Alan Alda experiences which

areas of the brain are activated when he sees content and function words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ty1_T3IB-A

What Does It Mean to “Know” a Word?

Knowing a word includes being able to break them down into meaningful units.

unbelievable It also includes understanding its related

forms and how to use them in varied sentences.

inform – information - informant

Development of SLA: Morphological Aspects

Krashen’s Natural Order Hypothesis Based on the study of morphemes by Dulay &

Burt (1974): certain morphemes are acquired before others

plural –s > third person singular –s (F&F p. 36) Development of Academic vocabulary

A richer understanding of morphology leads to a more capable educator in helping CLD students develop academic vocabulary.

CIMA © 2008

Academic Vocabulary{Source 7d}

Content-Specific Technical: cell,

nucleus, mitochondria

Acquired rapidly Less recurrent in

texts More Salient

Topic connected Bolded/

enhanced Recurrently

tested

General Cross disciplines:

regulate, feature, illustrate, strategy

Acquired more slowly Less frequent in texts Less Salient

Not conceptually related

Not often enhanced Seldom tested

Cognates: Words that tend to be comprehensible across languages.

English-Spanish Examples English

absorb author balance civilization colonial geography history

• Spanish– absorber– autor– balancia– civilizacion– colonial– geografia– historia

Cognitive Underlying Proficiency (CUP) Why do cognates work? For a CLD student whose first language is not English,

concepts, skills, and linguistic knowledge learned in the first language (L1) transfers to language acquisition AND content learning in the second language (L2). According to what Cummins (2000) refers to as common

underlying proficiency (CUP).

Teaching Academic Vocabulary: RECAP A general academic vocabulary is key to CLD/other students.

Cross-disciplinary Yet, this vocabulary is not often an emphasis of texts/teaching.

Poorly understood by students. Cognates serve as one way to teach general academic vocabulary to

a CLD student whose first language is not English. Words that are comprehensible across languages. Words that prompt linguistic and concept transfer

across languages through common underlying proficiency [CUP].

Morpheme Instruction When coming upon new terms in text, explicitly show

students how to use the context clues and the morphological clues to find meaning. Teach older struggling readers to decode difficult words by modeling these steps: Look for prefixes or suffixes in the word. Look for a base or root word that you know. Read to the end of the sentence. Think of a word with those affixes,

bases or roots that makes sense in the sentence. If you still cannot figure out the word, skip it, ask someone for help,

or use the dictionary.

Having Fun With Words Give the class an invented word using known word parts.

Students come up with a definition. Example: prehydrophobic: before one became afraid of water.

Create games like Bingo or Jeopardy. Focus on roots or affixes and their meanings, or vocabulary words and their structure and meaning.

Have students sort word cards into categories: similar spelling patterns, meaning patterns, same suffix, same prefix, same root, language of origin, etc.

Other Teaching Tips Using Morphemes Give half the class flashcards with a morpheme.

Give the other half cards with the corresponding meaning. Students must find their match.

Have the class create root trees: Write the Greek combining form or Latin root at the base. Write related derivatives on the branches.

Have students make posters showing a key word with each morpheme written in a different color. Each morpheme is labeled and identified on the poster. The word is used in a sentence and a corresponding illustration is added.