Morphology, Part 2

Morphology, Part 2

September 26, 2012

Quick Write Thoughts• Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary inside his head?

Quick Write Thoughts

Quick Write Thoughts

Quick Write Thoughts

In Our Last Episode• Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”)

• Free and bound morphemes

• Simple and complex words

• Affixes and roots

• Word-formation rules

• Affixes attach to a root (or base) of a particular lexical category…

• and create a new word.

Layers of Words• Words that are formed through the addition of multiple affixes have a layered, or hierarchical structure.

• One (ugly) way to represent this structure is through bracket notation:

• [root] [construct]

• [[affix] + [root]] [[re-] + [construct]] (=base)

• [[base] + [affix]] [[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]]

• WORD reconstruction

Tree Structures• In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to represent word structure.

• (because they look better and are easier to read)

re construct ion un desire able

• Tree terminology: branches

• nodes: where two branches meet

• nodes represent constituents of the word

Building the Perfect Beasts• To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation…

• tree structures should represent the lexical categories of all constituents at each node in the tree.

Noun Adj

Verb Adj

Aff Verb Aff Aff Verb Aff

[re-] [construct] [-ion] [un-] [desire] [-able]

Test Case• What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like?

Noun

Verb

Aff Verb Aff

[re-] [assign] [-ment]

3. reassignment

2. reassign

1. assign

Another Test Case• How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”?

Noun

Verb

Verb

Aff Noun Aff Aff

[mis-] [category] [-ize] [-ation]

4. miscategorization

3. miscategorize

2. categorize

*miscategory

1. category

Ambiguity• Some complex words can have more than one interpretation

• Different derivations can result in different interpretations

• Example: “unlockable”

Note: [un-] can attach to both adjectives and verbs

[-able] attaches to verbs and creatives adjectives

Unlockable, part 1 Adj

Adj

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = not able to be locked

Unlockable, part 2 Adj

Verb

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = able to be unlocked

Inflections vs. Derivations• Linguists draw another distinction among affixes:1. Inflectional affixes:• mark grammatical properties

• (person, number, gender, tense, aspect)• don’t change other aspects of meaning• are required by rules of sentence structure• create a new “word form”

2. Derivational affixes:• change meaning• create a new word • (typically) have clear semantic content• may change the lexical category of the word

Inflectional Affixes• There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English:

• -s 3rd person wait --> waits• -ing progressive wait --> waiting• -ed past tense wait --> waited• -en past participle eat --> eaten• -s plural card --> cards• -’s possessive dad --> dad’s• -er comparative tall --> taller• -est superlative weak --> weakest

1. All of these are suffixes.

Inflectional Affixes• Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes.

• Examples from French: parler “to speak”

• 1st person, plural: parlons “We speak”

• 2nd person, plural: parlez “You guys speak”

• Past tense:

• 1st person, singular: parlais “I spoke”

• 1st person, plural: parlions “We spoke”

• 2nd person, plural: parliez “You guys spoke”

• Plus many, many more.

• Note: Volapük. (http://www.visi.com/~dean/volverb.html)

Derivational Affixes• In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes:

• Create new words when they’re attached to roots

• Examples:

• re- cycle --> recycle

• de- code --> decode

• -y fish --> fishy

• -ize vandal --> vandalize

• Also: English has far more derivational affixes than inflectional affixes.

• For fairness’ sake: http://www.visi.com/~dean/volword.html

Picky, Picky (last time)• Inflectional affixes are always going to attach to a root with a particular part of speech.

• Plural noun = singular noun + “s”

• birds = bird + s dogs = dog + s

• Past tense verb = present tense verb + “ed”

• waited = wait + ed talked = talk + ed

• Comparative adjective = adjective + “er”

• taller = tall + er shorter = short + er

• Q: if both a derivational and an inflectional affix attach to a root, which will attach first?

The Relationship• A: Derivational affixes will always attach before inflectional affixes do.

• Remember: derivational affixes create new words;

• Inflectional affixes just create new word forms.

• Examples: blackened, governments, *neighborshood

Verb Noun

Verb Noun

Adj DAff. IAff. Verb DAff. IAff.

black -en -ed govern -ment -s

A Note on Word Forms• Morphologists use the term lexeme to refer to a group of related word forms.

• wait, waits, waited, waiting, etc.

• The canonical form of the lexeme is called the lemma.

• = the “headword” in a dictionary.

• Inflectional affixes relate a lexeme to its various forms.

• Derivational affixes relate one lexeme to another lexeme.

lemma

word forms

different lexeme