Morphology: Introduction PDF

**Morphology** **\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_** Introduction to morphology 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. **Origins of morphology** **Origins of Morphology date back to the early studies of ancient Greek, Indian and Arab grammarians. Over th...

**Morphology** **\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_** Introduction to morphology 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. **Origins of morphology** **Origins of Morphology date back to the early studies of ancient Greek, Indian and Arab grammarians. Over the years, many linguists have claimed that morphology has played an important role in the reconstruction of Indo- European languages.** **As cited in** Katamba, **Franz Bopp published the result of a study supporting the claim, originally made by Sir. William Jones in 1786, "that Sanskrit, Latin, Persian and the Germanic languages were descended from a common ancestor. Bopp's evidence was based on a comparison of the grammatical endings of words in these languages" (1993, page 3)** **Another important linguist called Jacob Grimm published his work pointing out that the Germanic languages are branch of Indo-European due to their structure and phonology. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.** **Indeed, all these conceptions have been abandoned during this century where morphology is regarded as a discipline concentrated on the study of word structure.** **The most important understanding that we can gain is that any history has to start somewhere that is why it would be difficult to reach an agreement where all began.** 2. **What is morphology?** **Several researches have shared a number of concepts trying to give the best definition to Morphology.** **Here you can see two more examples:** "Morphology, therefore is simply a term from that Branch of linguistics which is concerned with the forms of words in different uses and constructions" (Matthews, P. H. 2012, page 3) "In this century morphology has been regarded as an essentially synchronic discipline, that is to say, a discipline focusing on the study of word-structure at one stage in the life of a language rather than on the evolution of words". (Katamba, F., & Stonham, J. 1993, page 3) **Inevitably, the notion of morphology has been particularly discussed where many linguists conclude that it is the branch of linguistics that deals with the structure and forms of a language.** **\*For further instruction it is recommended to watch this video** Source: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7t6Q0uebY&ab\_channel=EvanAshworth]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7t6Q0uebY&ab_channel=EvanAshworth) **It is advisable to see the whole video to have a big picture of the study of morphology** 3. **The role of morphology in language acquisition.** The history and evolution of the study of morphology is connected to different steps in learning a language as it is noted here: **Thus, in all sense morphology plays an important role in language learning. It enables students to comprehend the word structure. It is important to develop the morphological awareness of the learners to increase the learners' vocabulary and to recognize the meaning easily when affixes are attached in words. Also, when students master good vocabulary, they increase their reading and writing abilities.** **For further instruction about how children acquire language, it is recommended to read this article** **https://iread-project.eu/2021/07/27/researching-morphological-awareness-how-children-attend-to-shapes-of-words/** 4. **The place of morphology in early generative grammar** Without doubt, among the most purposed studies of morphology has been the place of morphology in generative grammar. As this extract refers: **So, we understand Generative grammar as a class of theories of grammar. In other words what a person has in his /her head consists of an instinct of some kind that helps to create a sentence in that speaker's language.** **Similarly, "Morphology" studies how the words in a sentence are formed. For example, the plural form in English differs from other languages. Other languages use a different process to pluralize. Morphology analyzes these kinds of processes.** 5. **The morphology and phonology interaction** Morphology and phonology interaction is clearly seen in some cases. Let's take the three different realizations of the plural morpheme -s in English. The three variants, /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/ are determined by their environment. Likewise, Katamba has written: Although this might be difficult to process, we can say that Morphological level and phonological level are together in the formation of new lexical items in spoken production. 6. **The morphology and syntax interaction** **Going deeper in the study of interaction of morphology with different levels of linguistics, some authors claim that it expands its interaction to the syntactic level as it is cited here:** **As regards the interaction with syntax, the form of a word may be affected by the syntactic construction in which the word is used. For instance, the verb walk has a number of forms including walk, walks and walked. The selection of a particular form of this verb on a given occasion is dependent on the syntactic construction in which it appears. Thus, in the present tense. the choice between the forms walks and walk depends on whether the subject of the verb is third-person singular (in which case walks is selected as in he/she it walks) or not (in which case walk is selected as in I/you/we/they walk). In the past tense, walk is realized as walked in all cases** Katamba, F., & Stonham, J. 1993, page 13) **In this way, it would not be difficult to see that the interaction is found in the use of inflectional forms of the verb. For example, the use of play and plays depends on the subject or better said on the syntactic context.** **Additional resources** **Famala Eka Sanhadi Rahayu, 2018;*Introduction to English morphology* [[https://repository.unmul.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/19755/An%20Introduction%20to%20English%20Morphology-Famala.pdf?sequence=1]](https://repository.unmul.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/19755/An%20Introduction%20to%20English%20Morphology-Famala.pdf?sequence=1)** **Read pages 1-5 in this document.** **References** Kiefer,f: [the formal analysis of natural languages](https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110885248/html): *morphology in generative grammar*: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110885248-017 Domínguez, J. (1991.The Role of Morphology in the Process of Language Acquisition and Learning Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 4 Katamba F; Stonham J, 1993. *Morphology* St.Martin\'s Press Matthews P, 2012, *Morphology* - Cambridge University Press