Naseem Akhtar
Knowledge of WordsTo know a word means to know aspects of a word: sound, meaning, spelling, grammatical properties, collocations, connotations, context, etymology, etc.
But what is crucial is to segment from a string of sounds a basic unit of meaning, like Isleptfortenhoursyesterday.
☞To know a word thus means the ability to map a string of sounds with a particular meaning and specific grammatical properties.
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Simple forms: Words that are unable to be analyzed further into smaller, meaningful segments. e.g. an, the, that, boy, happy, take, dog,
but, etc.
Complex forms: Words that have more than one morpheme. e.g.Unhappy, replacement, readability, etc.
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Two forms of Words
Open-Class Words
lexical categories
Major parts of speech > content words, e.g. nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs
They are changeable from one part of speech to another
The open classes are open to affixations
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Closed-Class Words
They belong to grammatical or functional classes > function words
They are not derivable.
They are closed to affixations. e.g. auxiliaries, conjunctions, pronouns,
determiners, prepositions, and interjections.
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What is Morphology?
The study of the internal structure and form of words in language.Morphology is the study of systematic formation of meaningful words.Morphology is the study of the combination of morphemes to yield words.The study of words and the rules for word formation in (a) language.
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Morph-ology
Inflection Word formation
Derivation Compounding
Affixation Other 1or2 free roots
prefix suffix infixredup. conversion
+/- class-changing
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Morph+eme
Smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function. e.g. build; build-er; house; houses.
The smallest meaningful constituent of words that can be identified. e.g.break-ing hope-less re-write, ear-plug-s,
Morpheme
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A meaningful linguistic unit, minimal, unable to be further divided or broken into smaller meaningful parts. e.g.
readable = read+able > 2 morphemes
unplayful = un+play+ful > 3 morphemes
The smallest part of a word with independent meaning.
Morpheme
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Productivity
one morpheme: taste
two morphemes: taste+ful
three morphemes:dis+taste+ful
four morphemes: dis+taste+ful+ly
Morpheme
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Types of Morphemes
A) Free morphemes: Morphemes that can occur as an independent words. e.g.
careless, lesser, lessonprobable,
They are of two types:1. Lexical Morpheme: Content words or
Open class words.2. Function Morpheme: Function words
or closed class words.
Types of Morphemes
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B) Bound morphemes: Morphemes that cannot stand alone. They are dependent and must be attached to other morphemes. They can be further classified according to:
1). where they attach, Prefixation: occur at the beginning of a word Un-, pre-, dis-
in+ability dis+ability un+able
Suffixation: occur at the end of a word -ly, -er, -s, -es
judg+ment brief+ly clock+wise
Infix: occurs in the middle of a word
Circumfix: occurs both initially and finally, Special – especially
Types of Morphemes
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Types of Morphemes☞Prefixes change the semantic content But
Suffixes change the grammatical category of the word.
2). what function they perform,Derivational (change the part of speech and attach to a root) Inflectional (modify the grammatical form and attach to a stem)
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Root and Stem
Root, Stem, or base: The free morpheme to which an affix is attached.
Stem (Base):A stem or base is the root or roots of a word,
together with any of derivational affixes, to which inflectional affixes are added.
tie and untie both are stem
Inflectional –s may be added to the stem to form ties and unties
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Root and Stem
Root:Non-affix lexical content morpheme that can not be analyzed into smaller parts
Common to set of derived or inflected forms, when all affixes are removed
Cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. e.g.
system, clean, boy, Chomsky
Carries the principle portion of meaning. e.g.
Disestablish , Establishment, Establishments
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Branches of Morphology
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Morphology
Inflectional Derivational
Inflectional MorphologyInflectional morphology is the combination of a word stem with a grammatical morpheme, usually resulting in a word in the same class.
Adds: Tense, number, person, mood, aspectWord class doesn’t changeWord serves new grammatical roleFive verb forms in EnglishOther languages have (lots more)
Concerns with the changes in the form and meaning of words.It does change the form and meaning but does not change the word class.
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Derivational MorphologyDerivational morphology is the combination of a word stem with a grammatical morpheme, usually resulting in a word of different class.
Nominalization: computerization, appointee, killer, fuzzinessFormation of adjectives: computational, clueless, embraceable
Concerns with the derivation of new words from older ones and essentially changes the word class.Deals with the relationship between morphologically simple forms -- roots -- and more complex forms which are distinct lexemes.
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English word-formation
1. Affixation
2. Conversion
3. Compounding
4. Reduplication
5. Clipping
6. Acronyms
7. Blending.
8. Inventions
9. Borrowing
10.Onomatopoeia/ Echoism
11.Backformation
12.Eponymy
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English word-formation1) Affixation
a: Use of Prefixes
Negative: im+possible impossible
Number: bi+lingual bilingual
Time /order: re+examine re-examine
Location: inter+class interclass
Degree/size: mini+bus minibus
Attitude: anti+social antisocial
Class Changing en+able enable
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English word-formationb: Use of Suffixes
a) Class maintaining boy-hood
boyhoodb) Class changing
Noun to Adjective: india-ian indianAdjective to Noun: brave-ry braveryNoun to Verb: length-en lengthenVerb to Noun: drive-er driverVerb to Adverb: sleep-ily sleepilyAdjective to Adverb: nice-ly nicely
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2) Conversion:a) Change of function (without Affixes)
Noun: Switch on the light. Verb: Light the lamp.
b) Change of accentNoun: 'presentVerb: pre'sent
c) Final voiced consonantNoun: Advice / house /s/verb: Advise / house /z/
English word-formation
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3) Compounding:Open : paper knife
Hyphenated : paper-knife
Solid : paperknife
a) Noun+Noun: gold+fish goldfish
b) Noun+Adjective: duty+free dutyfree
c) Adjective+Noun: red+light redlight
d) Compounds with Verbs/adverbials/verbal Nouns
sight-seeing, easy-going, brain-washing
English word-formation
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4) Reduplication: Words formed by identical or slightly different elements. e.g.
criss-cross, pooh-pooh, tip-top, see-saw
5) Clipping: Words shortened by subtracting one or more syllables at the beginning or at the end. e.g.
photograph photo
influenza flu
mathematics maths
English word-formation
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6) Acronyms: Words formed by joining together the initial letter(s) of each of the successive parts or major parts of compound terms and are pronounced as words. e.g.
radar radio detecting and ranging
Laser light amplification (by) stimulated emission of radiation
RAM Random Access Memory
English word-formation
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7) Blending: Two words are clipped and the clippings are joined. e.g.
brunch = breakfast + lunch
nor = not + or
smog = smoke + fog
8) Inventions/ Coinage: New words have to be given to new inventions. They are arbitrary but, come to stay as apart of the language with time course. e.g. astronaut, x-ray, aspirin, nylon, modem.
English word-formation
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9) Borrowing: Two words are clipped and the clippings are joined. e.g.
Samosa from Urdu
Admiral from Arabic
Dame from French
10) Onomatopoeia/ Echoism: Words formed by mimic, imitative, or suggestive sounds. e.g. meow, bow-wow, bang, splash, crash.
English word-formation
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11) Backformation: A process where pseudosuffixes such as –or, -er, and –ar are dropped to arrive at new words. e.g.
beggar > to beg
pedlar > to peddle
12) Eponymy / Proper Names: Names and brand names that are used to refer to as generic terms of other things that belong to the same kind. e.g. Kleenex, Walkman
English word-formation
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ReferencesJindal, D.V. (2007) An Introduction to Linguistics (Prentice Hall of India) New Dehli.
Radford, Andrew. (1999) Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press)
Yule, George. (1985) The Study of Language (2nd ed.). (Cambridge University Press)
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