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ING507 Linguistics The Nature of Language LECTURE 7: MORPHOLOGY

2Morphology

Bambification

The mental conversion of flesh and blood living creatures into cartoon characters possessing bourgeois Judeo-Christian attitudes and morals.

(Coupland, 1991)

What is a word anyway?

Is it easy to define the concept word? Is the word easily identifiable?

3Morphology (cont’d)

What is Morphology?

Morph (form) + ology (science of): the science of word forms

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.

Morphology is a field of linguistics that is concerned with the forms and formation of words in a language.

4Morphology (cont’d)

In many languages, what appear to be single forms actually turn out to contain a large number of “word-like” elements. nitakupenda (Swahili, spoken throughout East Africa)

‘I will love you.’

Is the Swahili form a single word? If it is a “word”, then it seems to have a number of elements which are separate “words” in English. ni-ta-ku-penda

I-will-you-love

This Swahili “word” is rather different from what we think of as an English “word”. A better way of looking at linguistic forms in different languages would be to use the notion of “elements”, not words!

5Morphemes

What we described as “elements” in the form of a linguistic message are technically known as morphemes.

What is a morpheme?

A morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. The police reopened the investigation.

How many morphemes does the word reopened have?

It has three morphemes. One unit of meaning is open, the other one is re- (meaning “again”) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense).

How many morphemes does the word tourists have?

6Morphemes (cont’d)

There is one minimal unit of meaning tour, another minimal unit of meaning -ist (marking “person who does something”), and a minimal unit of grammatical function -s (indicating plural).

Free and Bound Morphemes

Morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words are called free morphemes. tour, open, stay, cat, mouse, if, I… (they can stand alone)

What are some examples of free morphemes in English? Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

table, money, go, swim, old, smart, fast, often, yesterday

7Morphemes (cont’d)

Bound Morphemes cannot stand alone. They are typically attached to another form. Affixes are bound morphemes. re- , un-, -ist , -ed , -s… (they can’t stand by themselves)

When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes, the basic word form involved is technically known as the stem. un-dress-ed

un dress ed

prefix (bound) stem (free) suffix (bound)

care-less-ness

care less ed

stem (free) suffix (bound) suffix ( bound )

8Lexical and Functional Morphemes

Free morphemes fall into two categories:

Lexical morphemes are nouns, adjectives and verbs which carry the content of message we convey. They are called open class of words, since we can add new lexical morphemes to the language. sad, follow, tiger, break, long, look, man lexical morphemes

Functional morphemes are the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. They are called closed class of words, since we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language. and, in, the, but, on, near, above functional morphemes

9Derivetional and Inflectional Morphemes

Bound Morphemes can also be divided into two types:

Derivational morphemes are used to derive new words in the language and are often used to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem. good (adjective) good + ness (noun)

care (noun) care + less (adjective)

create (verb) creat + ive (adjective)

quiet (adjctive) quiet + ly (adverb)

happy (adjective) un + happy (adjective)

do (verb) re + do (verb)

10Derivetional and Inflectional Morphemes (cont’d)

Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words in English, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.

Plural, possessive, tense, comparative/superlative markers are Inf. M. -s third person singular present She wait-s at home.

-ed past tense She wait-ed at home.

-ing progresive She is eat-ing the donut.

-en past participle She has eat-en the donut.

-s plural She ate the donut-s.

-’s possessive Sarah’s hair is short.

-er comparative Sarah has short-er hair than Sue.

-est superlative Sarah has the short-est hair.

11Derivetional and Inflectional Morphemes (cont’d)

Q1: Do inflectional morphemes changes the grammatical category of a word?

A1:

Q2: Do derivational morphemes change the grammatical category of a word?

A2:

Q3: Are the bound morphemes -er in the words teacher and younger identical? teach + er / young + er

12Morphological Description

Whenever there is a derivational suffix and inflectional suffix attached to the same word, they always appear in the order below. teach + er + s stem + derivational + inflectional

Boston + ian + s

Can you find the free morphemes (i.e. lexical and functional) and bound morphemes (derivational and inflectional) in the sentence below? The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.

13Morphological Description (cont’d)

The (functional), girl (lexical), ‘s (inflectional), wild (lexical), ness

(derivational), shock (lexical), -ed (inflectional), the (functional),

teach (lexical), -er (derivational), -s (inflectional).

A useful way to remember all these different types of morphemes:

14Problems in Morphological Description

Unidentifiable or inseperable elements:

The inflectional morpheme -s is added to cat and we get the plural cats. What is the inflectional morpheme in the words such as: a sheep sheep

a man men, a woman women

go went

Legal Is it he same morpheme as in national?

Solution : A full description of English morphology will have to take into account both historical influences and the effect of borrowed elements. Legal borrowed from the Latin form of legalis (of the law)

Law borrowed into old English from old Norse

15Morphemes and Allomorphs

Just like phonemes (e.g. /p/) have allophones (e.g. [pʰ] and [p]), morphemes have variants called allomorphs.

Past Tense in English / past tense morpheme / /? Verbs that end in a voiced sound – /d/: agree-d, drag-ged, play-ed

Verbs that end in a voiceless sound - /t/: work-ed, miss-ed, tape-d

Verbs that end in an alveolar stop - /əd/: load-ed, estimate-ed, visit-ed

What is the plural formation rule in English?

16Morphemes and Allomorphs (cont’d)

Plural Form (inflection): plural morpheme /z/ allomorphs {z, s, əz} Nouns that end in a voiced sound /z/: flag-s, game-s, car-s

Nouns that end in a voiceless sound /s/: map-s, bank-s, shirt-s

Nouns that end in a sibilant sound /əz/: glass-es, watch-es

The English sibilants are /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/. Sibilants are sounds that are produced by bringing the tip, or blade, of the tongue near the roof of the mouth and air is pushed past the tongue to make a hissing sound.