Scribd
Upload
394 views

Grammatical Aspects of Language

The document discusses various grammatical aspects of language morphology. It describes how dictionaries have evolved from prescribing language to describing it. It defines content words and function words. It then explains that morphemes are the minimal units of meaning, and morphology is the study of word structure and formation. The key components of morphology discussed are morphemes, bound and free morphemes, rules of word formation including derivational and inflectional morphology, and exceptions. Compounding and other word formation processes are also summarized.

Uploaded by

Al
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
394 views

Grammatical Aspects of Language

The document discusses various grammatical aspects of language morphology. It describes how dictionaries have evolved from prescribing language to describing it. It defines content words and function words. It then explains that morphemes are the minimal units of meaning, and morphology is the study of word structure and formation. The key components of morphology discussed are morphemes, bound and free morphemes, rules of word formation including derivational and inflectional morphology, and exceptions. Compounding and other word formation processes are also summarized.

Uploaded by

Al
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Grammatical Aspects of Language

Morphology: The Words of Language


Dictionaries
 the aim of early lexicographers was to prescribe rather than describe the words of a language
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
 the aim of a dictionary was to "register" (describe) the language, not to "construct" (prescribe) it
 
Content Words and Function Words
content words
 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
 these words denote concepts
 sometimes called the open class words because we can and regularly do add new words to these classes
 
function words
 do not have clear lexical meanings or obvious concepts associated with them
 they specify grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content
for example:
 the articles indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite
 the preposition of indicates possession, but indicates many other kinds of relations
 sometimes called closed class words
 
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning
morpheme
 word derived from the Greek word morphe, meaning "form"
 the minimal linguistic unit
 an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning (or grammatical function) that cannot be further analyzed—
linguistic sign
 
morphology
 study of the internal structure of word
 rules by which words are formed
 consists of two morphemes, morph + ology
 the suffix -ology means "science of" or "branch of knowledge concerning"
 meaning of morphology is "the science of (word) forms"
 
monomorphemic word - a word that contains just one morpheme (a word element)
discreteness
 the decomposition of words into morphemes
 combine morphemes in novel ways to create new words whose meaning will be apparent to other speakers
of the language
 
Bound and Free Morphemes
Prefixes and Suffixes
two components of morphological knowledge:
 knowledge of the individual morphemes, pronunciation, and meaning
 knowledge of the rules that combine them
free morphemes
bound morphemes
 affixes
 prefixes
 suffixes
 infixes
Circumfixes
 morphemes that are attached to a base morpheme both initial and final
 sometimes called discontinuous morphemes
 
Roots and Stems
 root may or may not stand alone as a word
 when a root morpheme is combined with an affix, it forms a stem
 base to mean any root or stem to which an affix is attached
 
Bound Roots
 do not occur in isolation and they acquire meaning only in combination with other morphemes
 
Rules of Word Formation
Derivational Morphology
 when they are added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived
 the form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word
 a different grammatical class than the original word
 have a clear semantic content; in this sense they are like content words, except that they are not words
 some derivational suffixes do not cause a change in grammatical class
 prefixes never do
 
Inflectional Morphology
 it never change the grammatical category
 represent relationship between different parts of a sentence
 closely connected to the syntax of the sentence
 follow the derivational morphemes in a word
 productive: they apply freely to nearly every appropriate base (except "irregular" forms)
 case: grammatical relation of a noun in a sentence
 case morphology: when case is marked by inflectional morphemes
 reduplication: inflecting a word through the repetition of part or all of the word

English Inflectional Morphemes


-s third-person singular present/plural
-ed past tense
-ing progressive
-en past participle
-‘s possessive
-er comparative
-est superlative

 
Inflectional Derivational
Grammatical function Lexical function
No word class change May cause word class change
Small or no meaning change Some meaning change
Often required by rules of grammar Never required by rules of grammar
Follow derivational morphemes in a word Precede inflectional morphemes in a word
Productive Some productive, many nonproductive
The Hierarchical Structure of Words
 a word is not a simple sequence of morphemes. It has an internal structure.
 in order to represent the hierarchical organization of words (and sentences), linguists use tree diagrams
 the hierarchical organization of words is even more clearly shown by structurally ambiguous words
 ambiguity arises because the prefix un- can combine with an adjective
 
Rule Productivity
 some morphological processes, inflection in particular, are productive, meaning that they can be used freely
to form new words from the list of free and bound morphemes
 among derivational morphemes, the suffix -able can be conjoined with any verb to derive an adjective with
the meaning of the verb and the meaning of -able, which is something like "able to be"
 the productivity of this rule is illustrated by the fact that we find -able affixed to new verbs
 un- is not fully productive
o "un-Rule" is most productive for adjectives that are derived from verbs
o most acceptable un- words have polysyllabic bases
o many of the unacceptable un- forms have monosyllabic stems
 
Exceptions and Suppletions
 irregular, or suppletive, forms are treated separately in the grammar
 one cannot use the regular rules of inflectional morphology to add affixes to words that are
exceptions, but must replace the uninflected form with another word
 when a verb is derived from a noun, even if it is pronounced the same as an irregular verb, the regular rules
apply to it
 
Lexical Gaps
accidental gaps (lexical gaps)
 well-formed but non-existing words
 there are always gaps in the lexicon—words not present but that could be added
 some of the gaps are due to the fact that a permissible sound sequence has no meaning attached to it
 other gaps result when possible combinations of morphemes never come into use
 
Other Morphological Processes
Back-Formations
 a new word may enter the language because of an incorrect morphological analysis
example:
peddle was derived from peddler on the mistaken assumption that the -er was the
agentive suffix
 
Compounds
 two or more words may be joined to form new, compound words
  adjective noun verb
adjective bittersweet poorhouse whitewash
noun headstrong homework spoonfeed
verb -  pickpocke sleepwalk
t

 when the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will also be in this category
 the rightmost word in a compound is the head of the compound
 the head is the part of a word or phrase that determines its broad meaning and grammatical
category
 when the two words fall into different categories, the class of the second or final words determines
that grammatical category of the compound
 formed with a preposition are in the category of the nonprepositional part of the compound
 further evidence that prepositions form a closed-class category that does not readily admit new
members
 spelling does not tell us what sequence of words constitutes a compound
 like derived words, compounds have internal structure
 

 
Meaning of Compounds
 the meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meaning of its parts
 other compounds reveal other meaning relations between the parts
 many compounds are idiomatic
 the meaning of each compound includes at least to some extent the meanings of the individual parts
 many compounds nowadays do not seem to relate to the meanings of the individual parts at all
 the meaning of many compounds must be learned as if they were individual whole words
 the pronunciation of English compounds differs from the way we pronounce the sequence of two words
that are not compounded
 in an actual compound, the first word is usually stressed, and in noncompound phrase the second
word is stressed

You might also like