Introduction English Morphology

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INTRODUCTION

ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY

ENGLISH literature Departement

DZAKI JABBAR MAHDI (16211144004)

It’s a scientific study of language.

Linguistics is a comparatively new science, or

new, at least, in the form it has taken in recent

years.

Describe the varieties of languages and explain the unconscious knowledge all

speakers have of their language

Introduction

Linguistics level MeaningPragmatic SemanticSyntactic

Morphological Phonology

Dealing with language in useDealing with meaningDealing with sentence -structureDealing with word-structureDealing with sound systems

Contents

Definition of morphology

Morphemes : free vs bound, lexical vs functional, inflectional vs derivational

Morphs and allomorphs

Word formations

WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?

It is the study of the structue of words, the

study of morphemes as the different forms,

and word formation

MORPHEMES

Morphemes are the minimal unit of worldbuilding in a language; they cannot bebroken down any further intorecognizable or meaningful parts.

Morpheme Definitions

It is the linguistic terms for the most elemental unit ofgrammatical form (2003 : 76), it means that morphemes arethe minimal units of linguistic form and meaning and howthey make up word.

• Ingo Plag (2003) says, “Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit.”

• Hanafi (2003) states that morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of an utterance.

• Morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in a word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure. (Katamba: 1993)

Bound Morphemes – cannot occur

unattached.

Free Morphemes – can stand on its

own. (root words and function

words)

Ex. glasses

glass – free morpheme

-es – bound morpheme

A morpheme may display allomorphy that have more thanone form, each of the forms of a particular morpheme iscalled an allomorph. For example :

/z/ dogs, sods, slabs. /s/ bits, tips, tacks. /&z/ sneezes, bosses, fishes.

FREE MORPHEMESLexical Category (content words)

Noun (Boy & girl)

Adverb (quickly)

Adjectives (beautiful)

Verb (walk) Grammatical Category

(function) Pronoun (I, you, we, they, them, my, who, etc)

Conjunction (and, but, however, yet)

Preposition (to, buy, from)

Article (a, an, the)

BOUND MORPHEMES

A bound morpheme is

a morpheme (or word element)

that cannot stand alone as a

word. Bound morphemes are also referred to as affixes. Affixes

(prefixes, suffixes, infixes,

circumfixes).

There are two main types of bound morphemes :

Derivational

to make new words or to

make words of a

different grammatical

category from the stem.

Ex : Impossible

Im- deriv.

Possible – root word

the verb teach become

teacher if we add the

derivational morpheme –

er.

VS

Inflectional

to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.

Ex : StoppedStop- root word -

ed – inflectional (past tense)

An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word.

old and older are adjectives

BOUND MORPHEMES

Affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes,

circumfixes)

-derivational

-inflectional

DERIVATIONAL

Ex. Impossible

Im- deriv. Possible – root word

The part of Bound Morphemes

Prefix is that part of bond morphemes and the type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach, and it can’t occur as independent words. They’re rare than suffixes, prefixes work in very much the same way, for example :

Un is a prefix in Unfinished

Re is a prefix in Rearranged

Dis is a prefix in Discharge

Pre is a prefix in Preschool

Morphs & Allomorphs

Morph is the phonetic realization of a morpheme which study the unit of form, sounds and phonetic symbol.

a. Lexical morph is the morph that denote directly objects actions, qualities and other pieces of real word (ex : table, dog, walk, etc.)

b. Grammatical morph is the morph that has been modifiying the meaning of the lexical morphs by adding a certain element to them. (ex : un-, -able, re-, -d, in-, -ent, -ly, -al, -ize, -a-, -tion, anti-, dis-, -ment, -ari-, -an, -ism)

Example :

The word/morpheme disbelieve has a phonetic symbol /dIsbI’li:v/

morphs

Dis /dIs/

Believe /bI’li:v/

So, every phonetic symbol of morpheme is called morph

A morpheme may display allomorphy that have more thanone form, each of the forms of a particular morpheme iscalled an allomorph. For example :

/z/ dogs, sods, slabs. /s/ bits, tips, tacks. /&z/ sneezes, bosses, fishes.

Allomorph is variant form of morpheme about the sounds and phonetic symbols but it doesn’t change the meaning.

Phonologically conditioned allomorph

The choice of allomorph is predictable on the basis of the pronounciation

Allomorph of the indefinite article : an (before vowels, ex : an elephant) and a (before consonant, ex : a dog) both of them have meaning one,single. Allomorphs of the regular past tense morpheme

/id/ after d,t : hated

/t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked

/d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged

/im/ before bilabial sounds : impossible

/il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal

/in/ elsewhere : independent

Morphologically conditioned allomorphThe choice of allomorph is determined by particular morphemes, not just by their pronounciation, ex : the morpheme –sume in changes to –sumpt- in (consume = consumption).

Lexically conditioned allomorphThe choice of allomorph is unpredictable, thus memorized on a word by word basis, : ox –plural- oxen, sheep-plural- sheep.

Example :

Three different allomorphs

Cats /s/

Dogs/z/

Boxes/iz/

One allomoprh

Disagreement /dis/

Discount /dis/

Disbelieve /dis/

Two different allomorphs

Loved /d/

Voiced /d/

Walked /t/

Stopped /t/

Kicked /t/

Note : allomorph occur at every morpheme, ex : agree (one morpheme, one allomorph)

So, allomorph is variant form of a morpheme about the sounds and phonetic symbol but it doesn’t change the meaning. Allomorph has different in pronounciation and spelling according to their condition. It means that allomorph will have different sound, pronounciation or spelling in different condition.