Morphology

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

What is a Morpheme?

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar

of a language.

Morphemes Can Be Free or Bound

Free: Bound:

Read Reader,

Polite Impolite

Cover recover

Morphemes – er – re- and – im- are bound because

they do not exist as separate words.

Morphemes and Allomorphs

Not all bound morphemes are affixes!

• I would like to record this lecture.

• He listened to his favorite record.

Stress is the bound morpheme!

• Give-gave

• Blow-blew

The vowel change is the bound morpheme!

Morphemes have allomorphs just as phonemes have allophones

--a-- and --an-- are the allomorphs of the indefinite article:

a dog but an apple

--as-- or --es-- ending in Spanish verbs:

tú hablas or tú comes

Some languages have only FREE morphemes (Vietnamese)

These languages are isolating or analytic.

In some languages most morphemes are bound and each has

a separate meaning.

These languages are agglutinative (Swahili)

European languages are fusional (their bound morphemes

often carry more than one meaning.)

Affixes Can Be Inflectional or Derivational

Worker

Neonatal

Useful

Politeness

Inflectional affixes add

grammatical information to

already existing words.

There are only 8 inflections in

English:

Derivational affixes attach to a

morpheme or a word to derive

a new word.

•Possessive –s- (Mary’s book

•Plural –s- (books)

•3rd. person singular –s- (walks, talks)

•Past tense –ed- (walked)

•Present participle –ing- (walking, driving)

•Past participle –ed/-en (has walked, have driven)

•Comparative –er- (taller)

•Superlative –est- (tallest)

Why Plural “s”?

Wilhelm von Humboldt

• identified human language as a

rule-governed system.

• was the first to classify languages

morphologically.

• founded Berlin University.

• created Prussian Education

System.

• studied the Basque Language.

• translated Aeschylus into German.

• laid foundations of Noam

Chomsky's theory of language.

(1767-1835)

Types of Word Formation

• Compounding: steamboat, restroom

• Neologisms (coining): hacker, login

• Eponyms: boycott, casanova

• Blends: apathetic; brunch; scroll

• Conversions: mother, parent (as verbs)

• Clipping: bro, math, lab, sub

• Acronyms: SARS, NASA, AIDS

• Backformation: edit, scavenge

• Reduplication: knock-knock; bye bye

Eponyms: What Do We Know about These People?

Badminton, cardigan, limousine, tuxedo, zeppelin,

Starbucks, derringer, volt, quisling, hollandaise,

forsythia, Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima.

•Eponyms

Could you name some more?

Borrowings from Other Languages

Germanic Languages 26%Old/Middle English (Old Norse, Dutch)

French 29%Include Anglo-French

Latin 29%

Derived from Proper Names 4%

The History of English

How Were the Words Borrowed?

“Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's

language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and

sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty

is its vitality.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

How did English Evolve?

The Love Story of English and French

Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than

he has read.

1709-1784

Noah Webster

One of the Founding Fathers.

An American Dictionary of the English

Language.

Advocate for American textbooks.

The author of Blue Backed Speller.

learned 28 languages.

introduced new spelling of some words.

(1758-1843)