MORPHOLOGY
Morphology
The study of internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed
Morphology: the word of language
Important part of our linguistic knowledge
Word
“A unit of expression which has universal intuitive recognition by native speaker, in both spoken and written language”
(Crystal)“The smallest of linguistic unit which can
occur on its own in speech or writing”
(Richard & Schmidt)
Conti….
“A unit of meaning”
(Finch)“A minimal free form”
(Bloomfield)
Content words
Noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbsDenote concept such as objects, action,
attributes and ideasOpen class words
Function words
Grammatical functionConjunctions, preposition, articles,
pronouns, Articles indicate definite or indefinite nounPreposition indicate relationship or
possessionClosed-class
Morpheme
“the minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”.
The minimal grammatical linguistic unit- is thus an arbitrary union of a sound and meaning that cannot be further analysed.
Every word in every language is composed of one or more morphemes.
boy (one syllable)
desire, lady,
boy + ish
desire + able
boy + ish + ness
desire + able + ity
gentle + man + li +ness
un + desire + able +ity un + gentle + man + li+ness anti +dis + establish +ment+ari + an + ism
lexical (child, teach)
free functional (and, the)
Morphemes
bound inflectional (re,ness)
derivational (‘s, -ed)
Bound Morphemes
Cannot normally stand alone or typically attached to another form
All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English
Prefix
Bound morphemes which occur only before other morphemes. Examples: un- (uncover, undo) dis- (displeased, disconnect), pre- (predetermine, prejudge)
Suffixes
Bound morphemes which occur following other morphemes. Examples: -er (singer, performer) -ist (typist, pianist) -ly (manly, friendly)
Infixes
Bound morphemes which are inserted into other morphemes. Example: fikas "strong" fumikas "to be strong" (Bontoc Language)
Free Morphemes
Can stand by themselves as a single word Example: girl, system, desire, hope, act, phone, happy..
Set of separate English word form such as basic noun, adjectives, verbs, etc.
Rules of word formation
Knowledge of individual morphemes, their pronunciation and their meaning and the knowledge of the rules for combining morphemes into complex words.
V+ify→verbV+ify→+ify+ication→noun
The form that result from addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word
Derivational MorphologyDerivational morphemes derive a new word
by being attached to root morphemes or stems
They can be both suffixes and prefixes in English. Examples: beautiful, exactly, unhappy, impossible, recover
Change of Meaning Examples: un+do (the opposite meaning of ‘do’) sing+er ( deriving a new word with the meaning of a person who sings).
The Hierarchical Structure of Words
A word is not a simple sequence of morphemes. It has an internal structure.
Hierarchical structure is an essential property of human language.
Word Coinage
Invention of totally new termsWords are used usually without capital
letters e.g,Kleenex, Xerox, etc
Compound
Joining of two words together to form third
Involves two nouns (frequently)
Book+case=bookcase
Wall+paper=wallpaper
Lambs+wool=lambswool
Acronyms
Words derived from the initial s of several words
Random Access Memory
Video Cassette Recorder
Some Commonly Used Acronyms
CDRadarLaser
ATMPINGB
Compact Disk
Radio Detecting and Ranging
Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
Automatic teller machine
Personal identification number
Giga Byte
Back-formation
Specified reduction processWord of one type is reduced to form a
word of another type (usually N → V)
Continued…….
Television ………TeleviseDonation………...DonateEmotion………… EmoteEditor …………... Edit
Clipping
Abbreviation of longer words may become lexicalised
Blends
Smog
Motel
Broast
Brunch
Grammatical Morphemes
Have not any clear lexical meaning
have only clear sense in a sentence , e.g. to , it and etc
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on. They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes
They are only found in suffixes in English. Examples: boys, Mary’s , walked
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information such as number (plural), tense, possession and so on. They are thus often called bound grammatical morphemes
They are only found in suffixes in English. Examples: boys, Mary’s , walked
Conti….
No change of Meaning Examples: walk vs. walks toy vs. toys
Never change the syntactic category of the words or morpheme to they which they are attached.
They are always attached to completed words Examples: walk vs. walked or walks (V--> V)
Conti….
In English, inflectional morphemes typically follow derivational morphemes
Examples:unlikelihood, unlikelihoods (not *unlikeslihood)
English Inflectional Morphemes
-s third person singular present
She waits at home. -ed past tense
She waited at home. -ing progressive
She is eating the donut.-en past participle
Mary has eaten the donuts.
-s plural
She ate the donuts.-’s possessive
Disa's hair is short.-er comparative
Disa has shorter hair than Karin.-est superlative
Disa has the shortest hair.
Morph
Phonological realization of a morpheme Allomorphs and variantsThe appearance of one morph over
another
Morphological analysis
Speaker of a language have the knowledge to perceive the component morphemes and morphological rules for their combination
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