Morphology - Linguistics 3 - PDF

Linguistics 3: Morphology 1 first semester What is Linguistics? It is the study of language on several interrelated levels:  Phonetics/Phonology: deals with the system of speech sounds produced by native speakers; the written form of language is called orthography.  Morphology a...

Linguistics 3: Morphology 1 first semester What is Linguistics? It is the study of language on several interrelated levels:  Phonetics/Phonology: deals with the system of speech sounds produced by native speakers; the written form of language is called orthography.  Morphology addresses the structure of words.  Syntax/Grammar is concerned with the rules governing the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences;  Semantics studies meanings of words, phrases and sentences;  Pragmatics is concerned with meaning in use/context. What is Morphology?  The term ‘morphology’ has been taken over from biology where it is used to refer to the study of the forms of plants and animals.  In biology, morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of creatures, and in geology, it refers to the study of the formation and evolution of landforms.  Its etymology is Greek: morph - means ‘shape, form’, and morphology is the study of form or forms.  In linguistics, morphology refers to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed. Morpheme: Definition  A morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”.  English word forms such as talks, talker, talked, and talking consist of one element (talk), and a number of other elements such as -s, -er, -ed, and -ing.  All these elements are described as morphemes.  In a morpheme, there is an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning, which cannot be further analyzed. Morphemes & Words A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes: 1. one morpheme: boy, desire 2. two morphemes: boy + ish; desire + able 3. three morphemes: boy + ish + ness; desire + able + ity 4. four morphemes: gentle + man + ly + ness; un + desire + able + ity 5. five morphemes: un + gentle + man + ly + ness How is a Morpheme Represented as a Sound-Meaning Unit (Phonetically & Semantically)?  It may be represented by a single sound: the ‘on’ morpheme; the ‘a-’ in afoot or ashore;  It may be represented by a syllable: child; and –ish in childish; 1   It may be represented by more than one syllable: two syllables as in lady; or by three syllables as in crocodile; or by four or more syllables as in salamander. Three Criteria of a Morpheme 1. It is a word or a meaningful part of a word; 2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning or without meaningless remainders; 3. It is repeated in different verbal forms with a relatively stable meaning. Example: Straight /streit/ 1. It is listed as a word in the lexicon (dictionary); 2. It cannot be divided without violation of meaning: a. Meaningful forms: - /treit/trait; /reit/rate; ate b. Meaningless remainders: /s-/, /st-/, and /str-/ 3. ‘Straight’ recurs with a relatively stable meaning in such forms as ‘straighten’ and ‘straightness’. Thus, STRAIGHT is a MORPHEME. Morphemes: Types and Classification  Morphemes can be classified as FREE or BOUND: 1. A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning: boy, desire, gentle. Such morphemes can form words by themselves. 2. A bound morpheme cannot be uttered alone with complete meaning. It is never a word but always a part of a word. It is annexed to one or more morphemes to form a word. Examples: ‘ante-’ in antedate, ‘-ly’ in manly, ‘-ed’ in played, ‘inter-’ and ‘-vene’ in intervene. Morphemes: Types and Classification: Morphemes are also classified as BASES and AFFIXES.  A base morpheme is the part of a word that has the principal/main meaning. Examples: mistake; lovable; importer.  Most of the bases in English are Free morphemes, but some are bound like ‘- fer’ in confer, infer, prefer.  A word may contain one base and several affixes. Bound Base: Meaning & Form  It is hard to attach a precise meaning to a bound base.  Many bound bases in English come from Latin and Greek. 2   Examples: ‘-sent’ in ‘sentiment’, ‘consent’, ‘resent’.  A base may have more than one form: /senti-/, /-sent/, /zent/.  We usually must use our dictionary to find out the Latin or Greek meaning of the bound base in the etymology of the word. Affixes An affix is a bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base. Prefixes: Bound morphemes that occur before a base as in export, reconsider, unable. There are about 75 prefixes in English! Suffixes are bound morphemes that occur after a base, as in carriage, purify, normalization. Derivational Suffixes  English has many derivational suffixes with specific features:  They change the part of speech, e.g., act (n.), active (adj.), activate (v).  They make a noun. To change the verb carry into a noun, we must add ‘-age’ to get carriage; but to make a noun from fail, we have to add ‘ure’ to get failure.  Derivational suffixes do not close off a word: national, nationality.  The inflectional suffix “s” in “nationalities” closes the word. Inflectional Affixes (Suffixes and Infixes) Inflectional affixes can be classified as follows: 1. {-S pl} to form noun plural: dogs, oxen 2. {-S ps} to form noun possessive: boy’s 3. {-S 3rd} to form present 3rd person singular: activates 4. {-ING vb} to form present participle: playing 5. {-D pt} to form past tense: chewed, rode 6. {-D pp} to form past participle: chewed, chosen, swum 7. {-ER cp} to form comparative adjective: bolder 8. {-EST sp} to form superlative adjective: boldest Inflectional Affixes: Four Rules 1. Inflectional suffixes are used with all stems of a given part of speech, e.g., he eats, drinks, dreams. 2. They do not change the part of speech: Examples: Boy-Boys (both are nouns); ask-asked (both are verbs). 3. They come at the end of the word, closing it off. 3  Examples: industrializing; shortened. 4. They do not pile up; only one suffix ends a word: Examples: higher, written, working. Suffixal Homophones What is a Suffixal Homophone?  A homophone generally refers to words (e.g., threw/through) with the same pronunciation but different meanings.  Suffixal homophones refer to both inflectional and derivational suffixes that have the same sound but different meanings. 1- Suffixal Homophones: {-ER}  The inflectional morpheme {-ER cp} has two homophones:  Derivational suffix {-ER n} forms a noun by indicating an agent or doer: e.g. hunt + er (hunter); or from a non-verb stem, e.g., teen + ager (teenager).  Derivational suffix {-ER rp} conveys repetition, e.g., chatter, mutter. 2- Suffixal Homophones: {-ING}  The verbal inflectional suffix {-ING vb} has two homophones: 1. Nominal derivational suffix {-ING nm} forms a verbal noun (gerund): meetings, weddings, and writings. 2. Adjectival suffix {-ING adj} as in a charming speaker, an interesting book. o Adjectival {-ING adj} can be preceded by qualifiers like very, quite, or by comparatives such as more or most. 3- Suffixal Homophones: {-D}  Verbal inflectional {-D pp} has the following homophone: Adjectival derivational {-D adj} is used as in “She is very excited about her new job” or “He is a devoted father.” Adjectival {-D adj} can be preceded by qualifiers like very, quite, or rather. 4- Derivational Suffixal Homophones: {-LY}  The derivational suffix {-LY} can act as: 4  1. Adverbial Derivational suffix {-LY adv} added to an adjective to form an adverb: kindly, gently. 2. Adjectival Derivational suffix {-LY adj} forms adjectives, e.g., love: lovely; friend: friendly, which can further take -er or -est inflections.  Added to monosyllabic nouns to form adjectives that can be inflected with –er or –est (e.g., lovely, lovelier, loveliest friend, friendly, friendlier, friendliest).  Added to nouns to form adjectives that cannot be inflected with –er or –est. Examples, mother: motherly, beast: beastly.  Added to a short list of ‘time’ nouns to form adjectives. Examples: day, daily; month, monthly. These adjectives cannot be inflected with -er or –est, and some of them may have functional shift and become nouns: He subscribed to two dailies and three quarterlies. Immediate Constituents: A Model of Analysis  To analyze the three kinds of morphemes (Bases, Prefixes and Suffixes) that are put together to build the structure we call a word.  A word of one morpheme, like ‘boy’ has only one unit or morpheme (free).  A word of two morphemes, like ‘boyish’, is made of two parts and can be divided as follows: boy|ish. Immediate Constituents as Layers of Structure  Words with multiple morphemes are organized in a hierarchy rather than a simple string of morphemes.  A word of three or more morphemes is not made up of a string/chain of individual parts, but it is built with a hierarchy of pairs.  As shown below, we have layers of structure by which the words have been composed, down to its ultimate constituents: en-, throne, and –ment dis-, en-, throne, and –ment. Ultimate Constituents: Definition  By doing such diagrams to show layers of structure, we make successive divisions into two parts, each of which is called an immediate constituent (IC).  The process is continued until all component morphemes of a word - its ultimate constituents - have been isolated.  So, by ultimate constituents we mean all the morphemes of which a word is composed. 5 Immediate Constituents: Tree Structure Recommended Analysis Procedures 1. If a word ends with an inflectional suffix, the first cut should be between the suffix and the rest of the word. 2. The meaning of the immediate constituent should be related to the meaning of the word. Allomorphs Morphemes and Allomorphs Is every morpheme pronounced the same in all contexts? Many morphemes such {-S pl} have two or more different pronunciations, called allomorphs; the choice between them is being determined by the phonological context. An allomorph means that some morphemes have the same meaning but different pronunciations. Let’s have some examples: 6 The morpheme {-D pt} that indicate the past-tense ending: 1. Waited /weitId/, /-Id/; intended /IntendId/ /-Id/ 2. Asked /askt/ /-t/ ; 3. Begged /begd/ /-d/ These three phonemic forms of the {-D pt} are not interchangeable. Complementary Distribution (CD) The occurrence of one phoneme or another depends on its phonological environment or context, that is the preceding sound. This pattern of occurrence of related forms is called COMPLEMNTARY DISTRIBUTION (CD). Definition of Allomorphs  Allomorphs are variant forms of a morpheme that share meaning but are not interchangeable, e.g., /-d/, /-t/, /-Id/ for past tense.  When the related forms of a group like the three forms of the {-D pt} have the same meaning and are in complementary distribution – i.e. they are not interchangeable - , they are called ALLOMORPHS, and belong to the same morphemes.  So, we can say that the morpheme {-D pt} has three allomorphs: {-D pt} = /-Əd/ ; /-t/; /-d/ Phonological and Morphological Conditioning The plural morpheme {-S pl} has five allomorphs: 1. Dishes /-iz/ 2. Sons /-z/ 3. Cats /-s/ In these three cases, the selection of an allomorph is phonologically conditioned or determined because it depends on phonological environment; 4. Oxen /-ən/ 5. sheep /Ǿ/ Here the selection is morphologically conditioned. 7 Replacive Allomorphs / Infixes The {-D pt} has three allomorphs and other replacive allomorphs: {-D pt} = /-Əd/; /-t/; /-d/ But what about the past tense of sing /siȵ/ ? It is sang /saȵ/. In this case the sound /-i/ becomes /-a/ and it is another allomorph of the morpheme {-D pt}. It is called a replacive allomorph or an infix because it is positioned within a word. Classes of Words: processes of word formation: Classes of Words English words can be classified according to the kinds of morphemes (free or bound) of which they are composed: 1. Simple words consists of a single free morpheme: long, boy, fly. 2. Complex words include, as their immediate constituents (ICs), either two bound morphemes or a bound and a free morpheme. Examples of two bound morphemes as ICs: tele|vise; matri|cide Examples of bound and free morphemes as ICs: tele|phone; hunt|er; Helio|polis 3. Compound words have free morphemes, usually two, as their ICs: Examples: green|house; out|side; under|go. A few number of compound words are made of three or four free morphemes as coordinate ICs, e.g., daughter|in|law; man|about|town. When the two words belong to the same grammatical part of speech, the compound will be in this category: N+N = N (housewife); Adj+Adj = Adj (bitter-sweet) When the two words belong to different parts of speech, the class of the final word will be the grammatical class of the compound word: N+Adj.= Adjective (lifelong). BUT we have exceptions: breakdown (N) The meaning of the compound word is NOT always the sum of the meanings of its individual parts : A redcoat is a British soldier in former times; Such compounds do not relate to the meanings of the individual parts: a turncoat is a traitor; a highbrow?; a bigwig?. Hence the meaning of many compound words must be learned as if they were individual simple words. 8 Processes of Word Formation: 1. Derivation: it is the formation of new words by combining derivational affixes or bound bases with existing words: e.g., beauty – beautify – beautification. 2. Compounding: Combining two words to form a new meaning. 3. Borrowing: Sources and Examples It is the “process by which one language or dialect takes and incorporates some linguistic element from another”. The lexicon (dictionary) of any language includes native and non-native words (loan word). A native word is one whose history (or etymology) can be traced to the earliest known stages of the language. English has been a great borrower of words from other languages throughout its history. This process has been taking place through invasion, migration, exploration, trade and other ways. There are examples of Loan Words from: French: parliament, jury, chauffeur, au pair Latin: bonus, exit, describe, camp Greek: drama, botany, atomic Arabic: alcohol, cipher, zero, sheikh Italian: opera, balcony 4. Coining / Invention A new word can be coined or created to fit some specific purpose. For example, Kodak, nylon, and Dacron were names made up for certain consumer items. ‘Kleenex’, Frigidaire, Vaseline, originally brand names, are now used as the general name for many brands of the actual product. Notice that these brand names are created from existing words: Kleenex from clean; Frigidaire from frigid + air. 5. Echoism It is the formation of words whose sound suggests their meaning: hiss, roar of the waterfall, clang of a bell, click, murmur, and quack. 9 6. Blending It is the fusion of two words into one as in smog = smoke + fog; motel = motor + hotel; blog = web + log. Blended words are quasi compounds, and some of them become part of the standard lexicons. 7. Clipping / Abbreviation It means cutting off the beginning or the end of the word or both, leaving a part to stand for the whole. The resultant form is called a ‘clipped’ or ‘abbreviated’ word. Examples include lab, dorm, exam, gym, math, phone, flu. Clipped words can also be formed from two words: parachutist trooper = paratrooper. 8. Acronym It is the process where a word is formed from the initials of a chain of words. In some cases, the initials are pronounced as letters as in SSM = surface to surface missile; In other cases, the initials are pronounced as one word: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization); UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization); LASER (light amplification by stimulated emission or radiation) 9. Rhyme-Motivated Compounds (Reduplication) It is the formation of a word by doubling a free morpheme usually with a change in vowel or initial consonant. Examples: ticktock; hocus-pocus, tiptop. Exercises: Underline correct answers: 1. The term “morphology” in linguistics is best defined as the study of: (Sentence structure - Word sounds - Word form and structure - Communication patterns). 2. What is the smallest unit of meaning in a language? (Phoneme - Morpheme – Allophone - Allomorph). 3. “Man about town” is an example of a (complex – compound – simple - bound) word. 10 4. A word formed from the initials of several words and pronounced as one word is known as: (Abbreviation – Blending – Acronym – Echoism). 5. Which of the following is an example of an inflectional morpheme? ("Un-" in “unfriendly” - "-ed" in "talked" - "Re-" in "redo" - "-ness" in "happiness"). 6. What type of morphemes are used to create a compound word? (Bound and free - Free and free - Bound and bound - Bound and inflectional). 7. Which pair demonstrates a regional difference between British and American English? (Device vs. devise - Council vs. counsel - Licence vs. license - Compliment vs. complement). 8. Which example contains a derivational morpheme? (Faster - Gardener - Running – Played). 9. Identify the function of "-en" in the word "shorten": (Noun-making morpheme – Verb-making morpheme – Inflectional morpheme – Adjective-making morpheme). 10. In the sentence, "The charming woman smiled," the suffix "-ing" is acting as: (An inflectional suffix - An adjectival suffix - A nominal suffix - A verbal suffix). 11. What is the main purpose of IC analysis? (Dividing words into syllables - Breaking down words into Ultimate Constituents - Translating words into simpler forms - Combining morphemes into sentences). 12. Which word has both a derivational and an inflectional morpheme? (Friends - Friendlier - Friendship - Friendless). 13. She has a stronghold in the club. The word stronghold is a (compound word - grammatical structure – bound morpheme – free morpheme). 11 14. When analyzing "disgraceful," which of the following would be an accurate first division? (Dis + graceful - Grace + ful - Dis + grace - Grace + full). 15. The word “golden” uses which type of morpheme? (Inflectional - Derivational – Nominal – Functional). 16. In the word "friendly," what type of morpheme is "-ly"? (Inflectional – Derivational - Free – Functional). 17. An inflectional morpheme: (Creates new words - Adds grammatical meaning - Can change a word’s category - Is always a prefix). 18. Which of these is a lexical morpheme? (On - Tiger – Because – But). 19. What is the grammatical function of the suffix "-ing" in "I am running"? (Adjectival – Nominal - Inflectional – Derivational). 20. The term “blog” is formed by: (Clipping - Blending - Compounding - Echoism). 21. How many morphemes are there in the word “ungentlemanliness”? (Three - Four - Five – Six). 22. A morpheme that cannot function independently in a sentence is called a: (Free morpheme - Compound morpheme - Bound morpheme - Lexical morpheme). 23. Which structure is used in IC analysis to visualize the breakdown of complex words? (Flowchart - Tree diagram - Venn diagram - Pie chart). Give short answers: a) What is the difference between allomorphs and homophones? b) What are the differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes? c) Why is it important to study morphology? 12