Morphology PDF

## Morphology ### Learning Objectives: - What is meant by Morphology? - What is the scope of Morphology? - Why should I learn Morphology? ### What is meant by Morphology? Morphology is one of the branches of linguistics that deals with structure and form of a word in any language. Linguistics d...

## Morphology ### Learning Objectives: - What is meant by Morphology? - What is the scope of Morphology? - Why should I learn Morphology? ### What is meant by Morphology? Morphology is one of the branches of linguistics that deals with structure and form of a word in any language. Linguistics deal with the language itself. In Morphology we deal with words. It deals with the structure and form of words in a language. "Morph" means shape or form, "ology" means the study of something. So together 'Morphology' means the study of shape or form (structure). **In Biology:** Morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms. **In Geology:** It refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land forms. **In Linguistics:** Morphology refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed. ### In what way linguistic is a hierarchical study of language? Linguistic itself is a hierarchical study of language which begins from the basic notion or we call it the simple notion, that is sound. Phonology or phonetics are essential courses before morphology. I must fully understand the sound before I deal with the word form and how to differentiate between sounds, how to make stress, intonation, etc. In morphology, we deal with the internal structure of the word. We analyze the word and determine its root. We then add prefix or suffix. Also, the relationship between word and morpheme. So, linguistics is a hierarchical study because we must study from the very base to the top; the very base is when we are dealing with sounds, phonology or phonetics, then we move to the structure of the word. ### Definitions of Morphology: Morphology is the area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words involving the morphemes that compose them. When we are dealing with form, we're dealing with the role of each word in a sentence. ### Why should we learn Morphology? 1. The first reason is that it is the responsibility of linguists to describe and analyze the world's languages as correctly and insightfully as possible, Morphology provides such tools in the form of a set of analytic ideas. 2. Linguists' second purpose is to create a typology of languages: - What are the dimensions along which languages differ, and how are these dimensions of variation related and restricted? - Do all languages have morphology, and if so, what sorts of morphology do they have? - Is it possible to explain the morphological similarities and differences between languages? 3. Third, morphology is an investigation into the nature of linguistic systems and thus human, natural language. All the way from grammar to the syntax. 4. Finally, morphology can help us understand how linguistic rules work in language perception and production, as well as how linguistic knowledge is mentally represented. ### What is meant by word? The word is a group of letters that have a meaning. The word is a unit of a language that we use to communicate. Studies estimated that average speakers of a language know from 45,000 to 60,000 words. This means that the speakers must store those words in a place in our head, so-called mental lexicon. ### Definitions of word: For some people, the basic definition of words is a group of letters that is preceded by a blank space and followed either by a blank space or a punctuation mark and has a meaning. Some others may say that words are parts of sentences or something which build a sentence. Word can indicate different meanings. If we add morphemes to the word we can change its function. So, a word by itself cannot have two functions unless we add morphemes to it. According to Bauer, one of the Morphologist, Bauer (2019) argued that the word could be defined in four other ways: 1. In terms of sound structure. (i.e., Phonologically) 2. In terms of its internal integrity (Internal structure of the word) 3. In terms of meaning (i.e., Semantically) 4. In terms of sentence structure (ie, syntactically) ### What are the properties of word? She summarized that there are four properties of words: 1. Words are entities having a part of speech specification. 2. Words are syntactic atoms or a composer syntactic in a sentence structure 3. Words (usually) have one main stress 4. Words usually are invisible units (no intervening material possible). Another definition that words are units of language which are basic in two senses, both: 1. They have unpredictable meaning so must be listed in dictionaries. 2. They are building blocks out of which phrases and sentences are formed. These two characteristics will lead us to different notions as in (1) we see words as a lexical item while in (2) words as parts of a sentence or as a sentence component. If morphology is a study of the internal structure of words and people around the globe speak different languages, does it mean that every language has its own language morphology? Yes or No and explain your answer?