Morphology

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.

2

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.

3

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

4

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.

5

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.

6

Morph-ology

Inflection Word formation

Derivation Compounding

Affixation Other 1or2 free roots

prefix suffix infixredup. conversion

+/- class-changing

7

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

8

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

9

Productivity

one morpheme: taste

two morphemes: taste+ful

three morphemes:dis+taste+ful

four morphemes: dis+taste+ful+ly

Morpheme

10

11

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

12

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

13

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)

14

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

15

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

16

Branches of Morphology

17

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.

18

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.

19

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

20

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

21

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

22

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

23

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

24

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

25

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

26

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

27

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

28

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

29

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)

30

31

32