Introduction to Morphology

• Morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.
• It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words like stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
• It also looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can affect a word's pronunciation and meaning.
• Morphology is a branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of words.
• The term "morphology" is Greek and is a combination of morph- meaning 'shape, form', and -ology which means 'the study of something'.

Morphemes

• A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning.
• Morphemes are the minimal meaningful units of language.
• Words are composed of one or more morphemes.
• For example, the word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", "break", and "-able".
• The word "talk" has only one morpheme.

Types of Morphemes

Free Morphemes

• Free morphemes can stand alone as words.
• They can occur independently.
• Examples of free morphemes: "cat," "run," "tree," "happy."

Bound Morphemes

• Bound morphemes cannot stand alone as words
• They must be attached to another morpheme.
• Prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.
• Examples of bound morphemes: "un-," "-ing," "-ed," "-s."

Derivational Morphemes

• Derivational morphemes are used to create new words from existing words.
• They can change the part of speech or the meaning of a word.
• Adding "-ness" to "happy" creates "happiness," changing an adjective into a noun.
• Adding "un-" to "happy" creates "unhappy," changing the meaning of the word.
• "un-", "-ness", "-ly", "-er", and "re-" are common derivational morphemes in English.

Inflectional Morphemes

• Inflectional morphemes modify a word's form to indicate grammatical information.
• They do not change the core meaning or part of speech of the word.
• English has eight inflectional morphemes:
  • "-s" (plural, as in "cats")
  • "-'s" (possessive, as in "cat's")
  • "-s" (third person singular present, as in "he walks")
  • "-ing" (present participle, as in "walking")
  • "-ed" (past tense, as in "walked")
  • "-en" (past participle, as in "driven")
  • "-er" (comparative, as in "faster")
  • "-est" (superlative, as in "fastest")

Morphological Processes

• Morphological processes are the methods by which words are formed or modified.

Affixation

• Affixation is the process of adding affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes) to a root or stem.
• Prefixes are added to the beginning of a word (e.g., "un-" in "unhappy").
• Suffixes are added to the end of a word (e.g., "-ing" in "walking").
• Infixes are inserted within a word (not common in English).
• Circumfixes surround a word (not common in English).

Compounding

• Compounding is the process of combining two or more free morphemes to create a new word.
• Examples: "sun + flower" = "sunflower," "black + board" = "blackboard."

Reduplication

• Reduplication is the process of repeating all or part of a word to create a new word or modify the meaning.
• It is not common in English.
• An example from another language is Indonesian "rumah" (house) becoming "rumah-rumah" (houses).
• Complete reduplication involves repeating the entire word.
• Partial reduplication involves repeating only part of the word.

Alternation

• Alternation involves changing the internal sounds of a word to indicate a grammatical contrast.
• Examples: "sing" becomes "sang," "foot" becomes "feet."
• Ablaut is a type of alternation that involves vowel changes to mark grammatical distinctions.

Suppletion

• Suppletion occurs when one word is completely replaced by another to indicate a grammatical contrast.
• Examples: "go" becomes "went," "good" becomes "better."
• There is no phonetic similarity between the related forms.

Allomorphs

• Allomorphs are variant forms of a morpheme.
• The choice of which allomorph to use is often determined by the phonetic environment.
• For example, the plural morpheme in English can be realized as "-s," "-es," or "-en," depending on the word it is attached to.
• The plural morpheme -s has several allomorphs depending on the final sound of the noun.
  • /s/ after voiceless consonants (e.g., "cats")
  • /z/ after voiced consonants and vowels (e.g., "dogs," "bees")
  • /ɪz/ after sibilant sounds (e.g., "buses")

Morphological Analysis

• Morphological analysis involves breaking down words into their constituent morphemes to understand their structure and meaning.
• It helps in identifying the different types of morphemes present in a word and how they contribute to its overall meaning.
• Understanding morphological analysis is crucial for lexicography, language learning, and natural language processing.

Zero Morphology

• Zero morphology is a type of word formation in which a word changes its category (part of speech) without any change in form.
• This is also known as conversion.
• For example, the noun "email" can also be used as a verb "to email."
• The verb "run" can also be used as a noun "a run."
• Also called "functional shift".