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Introduction to linguistics
Lecture 4: Morphology
Sources
• Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia
of language, pp. 90-91.
• Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, Nina
Hyams. 2003. An introduction to language.
– Chapter 3: The words of language.
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Morphology
• Studies the structure of words.
• Words typically can be divided into smaller
units, e.g.:
– un-happi-ness
– dom-ek
• Each unit has some kind of independent
meaning:
– un-
has a negative meaning,
-ness
means a state,
– -ek
in Polish indicates something small.
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Morphology
• The word
yes
cannot be divided.
• We can split it into [j], [e] and [s], but these units have no
meaning in isolation.
• The smallest meaningful units into which
words can be divided are called
MORPHEMES
.
• Morphology studies the way morphemes
operate in language.
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Types of morphemes
• Happy
is a
lexical (free) morpheme
:
– it can function as an independent word.
• Un-
(a prefix) and
-ly
(a suffix) are
bound
morphemes
:
– they must always be attached to at least one other
morpheme.
• Prefixes and suffixes are types of
affixes
.
• Happy
in the word
unhappily
is also called the
stem
:
– the base form to which inflectional affixes are
attached.
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Types of morphemes
• Inflectional (grammatical) morphemes
– carry
grammatical function: E
dog-s, jump-ed
.
• Derivational (word-formation) morphemes
–
added to free morphemes to form new
words: E
quick-ly, profit-able
.
• Inflectional and derivational m. are
bound
:
– they never exist on their own.
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Types of stems
• Stems can also be free or bound:
• Free stems
belong to free morphemes, e.g.
care-
less-ness
,
un-
believe
-able.
– Black
berry,
blue
berry: both
black
and
blue
can
exist as free forms, so they are free stems.
• Bound stems
are bound morphemes, e.g. re-
ceive
, re-
duce
, re
-peat
.
– Cran
berry,
huckle
berry: there are no words like
cran
and
huckle
, so they are bound stems.
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Root vs. stem
• A root should be distinguished from the stem:
• ROOT
– the morpheme which appears in all the
different forms of a single word.
– In Polish, the root of the verb
napisał
is
-pis-
:
• na-pis-a-ł
.
– This root appears in all other forms of this verb:
• piszę, zapisać, pisywał
, etc.
• STEM
is the root plus some additional material.
– In English the difference between the stem and the
root is rarely significant.
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Morphology: inflection
• Inflectional morphology
– studies the way in
which words vary (inflect) to express
grammatical contrasts in sentences, e.g.:
– Singular vs. plural contrast;
– Past vs. present tense contrast.
• Head
and
heads
, or
foot
and
feet
are two
forms
of the same word.
– The choice between them (singular or plural) is a
matter of grammar: inflectional morphology.
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Morphology: word formation
• Derivational morphology
– studies the way in
which new words are created.
– Derivation = word formation.
• Word formation usually changes the syntactic
class of a word, e.g.:
– dark
(Adj.) →
to darken
(Verb),
– faith
(N) →
faithful
(Adj.),.
• Exception:
Boston
(Noun) →
Bostonian
(Noun).
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Morphology: word formation
• In English, there are 4 common word
formation processes:
• Affixation
:
– Prefixation – a prefix is placed before the stem,
e.g.
dis-obey
.
– Suffixation – a suffix is placed after the stem, e.g.
cat-s
.
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Morphology: word formation
• Conversion
: a word changes its class without
any change of form, e.g.:
– Green
(Adj)
the green
(N).
• Compounding
: two base forms are added
together, e.g.
blackbird
.
Less usual processes include, for example:
• Reduplication
: both elements are the same or
only slightly different, e.g.:
tip-top
.
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Morphology: word formation
• Clipping
: an informal shortening of a word,
often to a single syllable, e.g.
ad, flu
.
• Acronyms
: words formed from the initial
letters of the words that make up a name, e.g.
NATO, WWF
.
• Blending
: two words merge into each other,
e.g.
brunch
(
breakfast + lunch
)
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Inflectional vs. Derivational m.
• Inflectional morphemes
never
change
the syntactic class or
core meaning of the word.
• IM usually occur
outside
derivational morphemes
:
– Boston-ian-
s
– not*
Boston-
s
-ian
.
• IM are usually bound
morphemes.
• Derivational morphemes
can
change
the syntactic class of
the word,
• DM create new lexical items
and are more numerous.
• Derivational morphemes are
closer
to the stem:
– Boston-
ian
-s
,
– Except some compounds:
attorney-
s
-general,
mother-
s
-in-law
.
• They are usually bound
morphemes.
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Words
• Words are at the boundary between morphology
and syntax.
• They are classified into
word classes
(earlier
called: parts of speech).
– Open classes (content words)
: nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs; numerous, can be extended, e.g.
borrowings.
– Closed classes (function / grammatical words):
pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, articles,
prepositions, etc.
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