2014-04-03

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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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