Morphology: The Words of Language PDF

# Morphology: The Words of Language - By words the mind is winged. - ARISTOPHANES (450 BCE-388 BCE) - A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words... the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt. - MARK TWAIN...

# Morphology: The Words of Language - By words the mind is winged. - ARISTOPHANES (450 BCE-388 BCE) - A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words... the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt. - MARK TWAIN ## The Number of Words in a Language - Every speaker of every language knows tens of thousands of words. - Unabridged dictionaries of English contain nearly 500,000 entries, but most speakers don't know all of these words. - It has been estimated that a child of six knows as many as 13,000 words and the average high school graduate about 60,000. - A college graduate presumably knows many more than that, but whatever our level of education, we learn new words throughout our lives. ## Importance of Words - Words are an important part of linguistic knowledge and constitute a component of our mental grammars. - One can learn thousands of words in a language and still not know the language. - Anyone who has tried to communicate in a foreign country by merely using a dictionary knows this is true. - On the other hand, without words we would be unable to convey our thoughts through language or understand the thoughts of others. ## Where does one word end and another begin? - Someone who doesn't know English would not know where one word begins or ends in an utterance like **Thecatsatonthemat**. - We separate written words by spaces, but in the spoken language there are no pauses between most words. - Without knowledge of the language, one can't tell how many words are in an utterance. - Knowing a word means knowing that a particular sequence of sounds is associated with a particular meaning. - A speaker of English has no difficulty in segmenting the stream of sounds into six individual words- **the, cat, sat, on, the, and mat**- because each of these words is listed in his or her mental dictionary, or lexicon (the Greek word for dictionary), that is part of a speaker's linguistic knowledge. - Similarly, a speaker knows that **uncharacteristically**, which has more letters than **Thecatsatonthemat**, is nevertheless a single word. ## Content Words and Function Words - Languages make an important distinction between two kinds of words- **content words and function words**. - **Content words** denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas that we can think about like **children, build, beautiful, and seldom**. - **Content words** are sometimes called the **open class words** because we can and regularly do add new words to these classes, such as **Facebook (noun), blog (noun, verb), frack (verb), online (adjective, adverb), and blingy (adjective)**. - **Function words** do not have clear lexical meanings or obvious concepts associated with them. - **Function words** include: - **Conjunctions** such as **and, or, and but**. - **Prepositions** such as **in and of**. - **The articles** **the and a/an**. - **Pronouns** such as **it**. - **Function words** are called function words because they specify grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content. - **Function words** are sometimes called **closed class words**. - This is because it is difficult to think of any conjunctions, prepositions, or pronouns that have recently entered the language. - The small set of personal pronouns such as **I, me, mine, he, she, and so on** are part of this class. ## Morphemes: the minimal units of meaning - **Morphemes** are the most elemental unit of grammatical form. - The word is derived from the Greek word **morphe**, meaning **'form'**. - If Goldwyn had taken a linguistics course, he would have said, more correctly, “In two morphemes: **im-possible**.” - **Morphology** refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed. - **Morphology** also refers to our internal grammatical knowledge concerning the words of our language. - **Morphemes** may be represented by a single sound, such as the morpheme a- meaning 'without' as in **amoral and asexual**, or by a single syllable, such as **child and ish in child + ish**. - **Morphemes** may also consist of more than one syllable: - By two syllables, as in **camel, lady, and water**. - By three syllables, as in **Hackensack and crocodile**. - By four or more syllables, as in **hallucinate, apothecary, helicopter, and accelerate**. - **Morphemes** are an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning (or grammatical function) that cannot be further analyzed. - **Morphemes** are solidly welded in the mind that it is impossible for you to hear or read a word you know and not be aware of its meaning, even if you try. ## Bound and Free Morphemes - **Bound morphemes**, like **-ify, -cation and -arian** are called **derivational morphemes**. - When they are added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived. - The addition of -ify to **pure** – **purify** – means 'to make pure,' and the addition of -cation – **purification** – means 'the process of making pure.' - **Free morphemes** can be used independently as words, such as **the words in the sentence The child put the puppy in the garden**. - **Free morphemes** are called **content words** because they contribute meaning to a sentence, such as **the words in the sentence The child put the puppy in the garden**. - When **bound morphemes** are added to a base, it adds meaning. - The derived word may also be of a different grammatical class than the original word,. - For example, the addition of -able to **desire** results in an **adjective**, **desirable** - **Bound morphemes** are not words. - They are sometimes called **closed class words** because it is difficult to think of any conjunctions, prepositions, or pronouns that have recently entered the language. - The small set of personal pronouns such as **I, me, mine, he, sh, and so on** that are part of this class. ## Inflectional Morphemes - **Inflectional morphemes** are bound morphemes that have a strictly grammatical functions. - **Inflectional morphemes** mark properties such as tense, number, person, and so forth. - Most languages, including English, have **inflectional morphemes**. - **Inflectional morphemes** never change the grammatical category of the stems to which they are attached ## Rules Of Word Formation - When a new word enters the language, the regular inflectional rules generally apply. - For example, the plural of **geek**, when it was a new word was **geeks**. - However, some exceptions do exist. - The past tense of the verb **hit** is **hit**. - The plural of the noun **sheep** is **sheep**. - These are **suppletive exceptions** to the rules. ## The Hierarchical structure of words - Words are not simply sequences of morphemes. - They have an internal structure. - **Syntactic categories** are a family of expressions that can be substituted for one another without loss of grammaticality. - In English and every other language, a sentence is composed of a **Noun Phrase** followed by a **Verb Phrase**. - A **Verb Phrase** is composed of a **Verb** that may be followed by a **Noun Phrase** and so on. ## The Grammaticality of Sentences - In English and in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence of words is a sentence. - Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are **well formed** or **grammatical**, and those that violate the syntactic rules are **ill formed** or **ungrammatical**. ## Sentences Are Not Random Strings Of Words - **Sentences must conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language.** ## What Else Do You Know About Syntax? - **Syntactic knowledge** goes beyond being able to decide which strings are grammatical and which are not. - It accounts for the multiple meanings, or ambiguity, of expressions. - The humor in jokes often depends on the ambiguity of expressions. - **Sentences have hierarchical structure** as well as word order. ## Phrase Structure Trees - **Phrase structure trees** are graphic representations of a speaker's knowledge of the sentence structure in their language. - **Phrase structure trees** show that: - The linear order of the words in the sentence - The groupings of words into syntactic categories - The hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories ## Heads and Complements - **Heads** are the most important element of a phrase. - The head of a **Verb Phrase** is the **verb**. - The head of a **Noun Phrase** is the **noun**. - **Complements** complete the meaning of the head. - The direct object is a **complement** to a **verb**. - A **sentence** can also be a **complement** to a **verb**. ## Syntactic Categories - **Syntactic Categories** are families of expressions that can be substituted for one another without loss of grammaticality. - **Syntactic Categories** include: - **Noun Phrase (NP)** - **Verb Phrase (VP)** - **Prepositional Phrase (PP)** - **Sentence (S)** - **Determiner (Det)** - **Adjective (Adj)** - **Noun(N)** - **Preposition(P)** - **Adverb(Adv)** - **Auxiliary Verb (Aux)** - **Adjective Phrase (AP)** - **Noun Phrase (NP)** ## Morphological Analysis: Identifying Morphemes - **Morphemes** are the most basic units of meaning in a language. - **Morphemes** can be identified by looking for recurring forms in a list of words. - **Morphemes** can be either **bound** or **free**. - **Bound morphemes** cannot stand alone as words, but must be attached to other words to form a new word. - **Free morphemes** can stand alone as words. ## What is grammaticality based on? - **Grammaticality** is based on the syntactic rules of a language. - **Syntactic rules** determine the order of words in a sentence, and how the words are grouped. - **Syntactic rules** can be learned through experience. ## What makes a sentence grammatical? - A sentence is grammatical if it conforms to the syntactic rules of a language. - Meaning does not determine grammaticality. ## What are morphology and syntax? - **Morphology** is the study of the internal structure of words. - **Syntax** is the study of sentence structure. ## Universal Properties of Language: - All human languages have morphology and syntax. - All human languages have **content words, function words and morphemes**. ## The Universality Of Compounding - Compounds are formed by combining words. - **Compounds** can be found in all languages. - **Compounds** can be idiomatic, meaning their meaning is not always predictable from the meaning of their parts. ## Pullet Surprises - **Pullet Surprises** are errors that students make when they are learning a new language. - **Pullet Surprises** reveal a lot about how students learn a language. ## Sign Language Morphology - **Sign language** is rich in morphology. - **Sign language** has: - Root morphemes - Affix morphemes - Content morphemes - Grammatical morphemes - Morphological rules ## The Importance Of Syntax - **Syntax** allows us to understand the meaning of sentences. - **Syntax** explains how we can understand an infinite number of sentences. - **Syntax** reflects the speaker's knowledge of how words are combined in sentences.