A short introduction

Morphology

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwwyhndrobwllllantysiligogogoch

(a town name in Wales)

How is it that we can use and understand words in our language that we have never encountered before?

Morphology: Background and Basic Terms

Morphology :

the component of a grammar that deals with the internal structure of

words.

Morphology: Background and Basic Terms (2)

Adjectives are abstract; they are not real forms. The real forms that represents them (in-,-s, and –ful) are therefore usually called morphs. (Hocket,1947)

Morphology: Background and Basic Terms (3)

Words Morphs Morphemes

watched watch-ed WATCH+PAST

pens pen-s PEN+PLURAL

unhelpful un-help-ful NEGATIVE+HELP+ADJECTIVE

• Type of investigation which analyzes all those basic “elements” which are used in language elements= linguistic message (morphemes). (Yule:1985)

• The study of forms of words (Matthews:1979)

• While syntax is concerned with how words arrange themselves into constructions, morphology is concerned with the forms of words themselves. (Malmkjaer:1991)

Definition

A word need not have any special phonetic properties: some words bear stress but

others do not, some words set off by intonational signals but

others are not.

a door - adore

The Minimal Meaningful Units of Language(Words Versus Morphemes)

Tone languages: a language is said to have tone when differences in word meaning are signaled by differences in pitch

H

[ma] ‘mother’ High tone

H

[ma] ‘hemp’ Low rise

[ma] ‘horse’ Fall rise

[ma] ‘scold’ High fall

L

HLM

LH

(a) The hunters pursued the bear.

(b) The bear was pursued by the hunters.

A word is a minimal free form

• Words, though they may be definable as minimal free forms, are not minimal meaningful units of language.

• The word hunters can stand alone (a free form), nonetheless consists of three meaningful parts : hunt, er, and s. (Morphemes).

• The minimal meaningful units of language ARE NOT words, but arbitrary signs or MORPHEMES.

• A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function (Yule:1985)

• The smallest linguistic unit that has meaning (Johnson & Johnson:1999)

• The elementary particle of lexicogrammar, the thing out of which words are built (Halliday:2004).

• The smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme cannot be divided without altering or destroying its meaning. For example, the English word kind is a morpheme. If the d is removed, it changes to kin, which has a different meaning. (Richard & Schmidt:2002)

Morpheme

One Morphe

me

Two Three More than three

and

boy boy-s

hunt hunt-er hunt-er-s

hospital hospital-ize

hospital-iz-ation

Hospital-iz-ation-s

gentle gentle-man

gentle-man-ly

gentle-man-li-ness

Morphological Description: Elements of Morphology (Yule)

Morphemes

free

bound

lexical

functional

derivational

inflectional

Yule:1985

• Free: A form which can be used on its own : Betty, horse, red, write, love, drive

• Bound: a linguistic form (a MORPHEME) which is never used alone but must be used with another morpheme, e.g. as an AFFIX or COMBINING FORM. For example, the English suffix -ing must be used with a verb stem: writing, loving, driving. (Richard & Schmidt:2002)

Free and Bound Morphemes

Bound Morphemes : Derivational Morphemes

• used to make new words in the language and different grammatical category from the stem. The derivational morphemes -ness changes the adjective good to the noun goodness.

[[good](Adj) ness] N

Bound Morphemes : Inflectional Morphemes

• are not used to make new words in the language , but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word• Plural/Singular, tense, comparative/possessive form• English : All inflectional morphemes are suffixes.

Bound Morphemes

Bound

Derivational Inflectional

Suffix and prefix

Suffix

Plural/Singular, tense, comparative/possessive

form

New words

Free Morphemes

Free

lexical functional

Ordinary nouns, adjectives, verbs

Conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns.

The boy -’s wild -ness(functional)

(lexical)

(inflectional)

(Lexical) (derivational)

shock -ed the teach -er -s(Lexical) (inflec

tional)

(functional)

(Lexical) (derivational)

(inflectional)

The elements of morphology: The boy’s wildness shocked the teachers.

Morphological Description: Elements of Morphology (Bauer)

Morphology

inflection

word-formation

derivation

composition/compounding

Bauer:1983

• Two or more words combine into a morphological unit (Marchand:1969)

• The combination of two free forms or words that have an otherwise independent existence. (Adams:1979)

Word-formation:Composition/ Compounding

N+N V+N N+V Adjective+N

Particle+N

V+

Particle

Phrase compoun

ds

football pickpocket, killjoy

nosebleed, moonshine

software, slowcoach

in-crowd, aftertaste

clawback, dropout

gin-and-tonic, forget-me-not

• Backformation: occurs when suffix is removed from a complex word (liaison – to liaise)

• Blend: where normally initial and terminal segments of two words are joined together to create a new word: brunch (breakfast +lunch), chunnel (channel+tunnel), fantabulous (fantastic+fabulous).

• Acronyms : words formed from the initial letters of a fixed phrase or title : SALT (strategic arms limitation talks), misty (more ideologically sound than you).

Word-formation:Other word-formation types

• Any of the different forms of a MORPHEME

• For example, in English the plural morpheme is often shown in writing by adding -s to the end of a word, e.g. cat /kæt/ – cats /kæts/. Sometimes this plural morpheme is pronounced /z/, e.g. dog /dig/ – dogs /digz/, and sometimes it is pronounced /Iz/, e.g. class /kleNs/ – classes /`kleNsız/. /s/, /z/, and /Iz/ all have the same grammatical function in these examples, they all show plural; they are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.

Allomorph

The structure of the entire word may be represented by means of either a set of labeled brackets or a tree diagram.

Word Structure

[[[hospital]Nize] ed]V V V

V Af

N Af

hospital

iz ed

1. Draw the appropriate tree structure for each of these words:

a) unhappiness c) fearlessly

b) denationalization d) pre-viewer

2. What are the functional morphemes in the following sentences:

The old man sat on a chair and told them tales of the woe

3. What are the inflectional morphemes in the following phrases:

a) the teacher’s books b) the newest model

Discussion