English morphology–lecture1

English Morphology – Lecture 1

David Brett

Antonio PinnaUniversity of Sassari 2007

A definition of morphology

• The area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words involving the morphemes that compose them

What is a word?

• An orthographic definition

• A phonological definition

• A semantic definition

• A syntactic definition

An orthographic definition

• Words as units in the writing system: words are uninterrupted strings of letters

• For ex. writing is a word because there are blank spaces surrounding it

Problems with this definition:

• Can you make a list of punctuation marks?

• Can you think of instances of words characterized by different spellings?

• What about compound nouns?

How many words are there in the following sentences?

• a. John’s girl friend lives in a high-rise apartment building.

• b. Mary’s a policewoman in the United States.

• - Is John’s in a. above one or two words?

• - Is Mary’s in b. above one or two words?

• - Is high-rise in a. above one or two words?

The orthographic word may not coincide with our intuitions:

• Compound nouns: apartment building, parking ticket, ground floor, United States.

• Phrasal verbs: get up, look after, put up with.

A phonological definition

• Words as phonological units: spoken in isolation each word can only have one main stress

• E.g. Words as elements of the system The underlined characters indicate the main stress

Problems with this definition:

• Function words (i.e. words such as as, of, the) do not seem to have a main stress;

• Clitics (i.e. ‘s in the example below) do not seem to have a main stress-

• Ex. Jane’s in the garden: ‘s, in, the are not stressed.

A semantic definition

• Words as meaningful units:

• a. Words express unified concepts

• b. Words are the minimum meaningful units of a language

Problems with these definitions:

• Concepts can be expressed by noun groups or larger units; for ex. the man who lives next door or that beautiful summer morning of 1985 when we drove to the beach on an old CV2

• Function words may not have an easily identifiable meaning (for ex. can you specify the meaning of the?)

4. A syntactic definition #1

• Words as syntactic units: words are the smallest syntactic elements in a sentence:

• a. They belong to certain word classes (and follow the rules of these syntactic categories)

• Words can be grouped into 2 main categories:• 1. Open-class words: classes of words which can

contain an infinite number of words • (i.e. nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs)• 2. Closed-class words: classes of words which

contain a limited number of words• (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and

modal verbs, conjunctions, determiners)

4. A syntactic definition #2

• b. Only words (and groups of words) can be moved to a different position in a sentence

• 1. She can ride the bike • 2. Can she ride the bike?

• 1. She brought the can opener.• 2a. The can was brought by her opener. ✘• 2b. The can opener was brought by her. ✓

The relationship between words and meanings

Words with unpredictable meanings:dog, door, desk, book, pen, …Words with predictable meaningsComplex words: unhappy, helpful, madly, …

E.g. The relationship between the sequence of letters cat and its meaning [domestic feline] in English is the result of a convention. Whenever this association form-meaning is the result of a convention, the meaning of a word is unpredictable on the basis of its form.

Exception: onomatopoeic words splash resembles the sound of a liquid hitting something; beep resembles a short high sound, like the sound of a car horn.

Non-words and meanings

• entities that are larger than a word with unpredictable meanings– Idioms: pull someone’s leg; kick the bucket; …– Collocations: hard work, white coffee, white-

collar worker …

– Proverbs: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, birds of a feather flock together, a bad workman blames his tools, …

The difference between words and lexical items

Words are the smallest syntactic units in a sentence (i.e. words are grammatical entities)

• Lexical items are semantic units whose meanings are unpredictable; they may be larger than words, but often they can coincide with them (i.e. lexical items are semantic entities)

Taking words apart

• Why is the meaning of the following words predictable to a certain extent?

• unbelievable, capitalistic, mismatched, disproportional, misunderstanding, irregularity.

• lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.

Complex words: affixation• Words can be composed of identifiable smaller parts, morphemes,

put together in a systematic fashion, so that the meaning of the whole can reliably be determined on the basis of the meaning of the smaller parts.

• un-believe-able, anti-capital-ist-ic, de-colony-al-ize-ation, dis-proportion-al, mis-under-stand-ing, ir-regul-ar-ity.

• This group contains words which are divisible into:• a component that carries most of the meaning (e.g. believe, capital,

colony, proportion, etc.) • other elements that are associated with it to add some other aspects

of meaning (e.g. –able in believable = something or someone is capable of being believed; un- in unbelievable = something or someone is not capable of being believed).

• The process through which these words are formed is called affixation.

Word compounding

• B. lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.

• Group B contains words which are divisible into two other words.

• These component words can be found independently in an English dictionary, but when they associate they form a compound word

• The meaning of the union is not necessarily a function of the meaning of the two combining words. For ex. a lighthouse is neither a light nor a house. This process is called word compounding.

Word compounding: exercise

• How many compund words can you create with the following words?

bag

car

box

case

Hand-, body-, air-, sick-, punch-, sleeping

bag

Sports, estate, company, courtesy,

car

Mail-, post-, letter-, telephone, gear-

box

Book-, suit-, brief-, display, lower

case

A morpheme must

– be identifiable from one word to another

– However, consider:

Attack

Stack

Tackle

Taxi (/tæksi/)

A morpheme must

– Also contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word

Believ-ableEat-able

Read-ableWork-able

N.b. this extra meaning is not necessarily equal in all cases, e.g. readable, does not mean ‘can be read’ in a literal sense, but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.

How can I recognise a morpheme?

Morphemes must be identifiable from one word to another: identifying affixes:– un- : uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear, …– -able: variable, changeable, solvable, …– de- : deselect, dethrone, detoxify, …– -al: cultural, federal, liberal, modal, …– -ize: computerize, realize, …

Identifying the core element:

• Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly;

• Change: change-able, chang-ing, un-chang-ed;

• Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly;

• Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber-ty;

• Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al

Distinguishing between morphemes:

• Bound and free morphemes: • Free morphemes can occur on their own:

– happy, change, select, green, house, …• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to

other morphemes:– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)– liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …

• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy, materi-al

Bound morphemes as core elements: words derived from LatinCircul- Circular Liber- Liberty

Circulation Liberation

Circulator Liberalize

Circulatory Libertine

Problem case: Verbs of Latin origin

receive deceive conceive perceive

revert convert pervert

relate collate translate

reduce deduce conduce

Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme? Or prefix + bound morpheme?

General tendency

• The core vocabulary of English is generally composed of words of Anglo-Saxon origin

• There is a general tendency for core elements to be free morphemes

• E.g. Hand

• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,

What is the difference between these two sets of complex words

Fair-lyFast-erSing-ingOpen-edCar-sWrite-sBig-gest

Treat-mentRude-nessUn-kindFam-ousUse-lessHelp-fulIr-regularRed-dish

Fast-er, Sing-ing, Open-ed, Car-s, Write-s, Big-gest

• These affixes do not change the word class, but rather contribute to meeting grammatical constraints. These are called:

Inflectional morphemes

Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dishFam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular

These affixes do not necessarily change the class of the word, but this is normally the case, e.g. fame (n.)> famous (adj.)

• Furthermore, the semantic element is notably higher. These morphemes are called:

Derivational morphemes

-ful/less Only -ful Only -less

Age, Bag, Care, Cease, Cheer, Child, Colour, Cup, Defence, Delight, Effort, End, Fate, Friend, Help, Hope, Penny, Play, Spoon, Tact , Taste , Use,

Derivation with –ful and –less

• Which words can be derived by adding the following suffixes

-ful/less Only -ful Only -less

CareUseCheerColourHelpTaste HopeTact

FateSpoonDelightBagPlayCup

FriendAgeCeaseChildDefenceEndEffortPenny