UNIT 1.

MORPHOLOGY: WORD AND PHRASE LEVEL

1.1 WORD FORMATION

MORPHOLOGY

What is it?:

“Morphology is the study of word formation, including the ways new words are coined
(acuñadas) in the languages of the world, and the way forms of words are varied depending on
how they’re used in sentences”. (Lieber 2009: 2)

As native speakers we have intuitive knowledge of how to form new words, and every day we
recognize and understand new words that we have never heard before. Think about some of
the words accepted by the RAE in the last few years: precuela, naturópata, tuitear, bloguero,
espanglish. Can you recognize what those words mean and where they come from?

Now, let’s test your knowledge of the English language. Try to answer the following questions:

 Suppose that splinch is a verb that means ‘step on broken glass’; what is its past tense?
 Speakers of English use the suffixes -ize (crystallize) and -ify (codify) to form verbs from
nouns. If you had to form a verb that means ‘do something the way ex-Prime Minister
Tony Blair does it’, which suffix would you use? How about a verb meaning ‘do
something the way ex-President Bill Clinton does it’?
 It’s possible to rewash or reheat something. Is it possible to relove, reexplode, or
rejump something?
 You most probably answered: – The first question with the past tense splinched. – The
second, with the verbs Blairify and Clintonize. – And you might be pretty sure that
relove, reexplode, and rejump are weird, if not just impossible.

Your ability to make up these new words, and to make judgments about words that you think
could never exist, suggests that you also have intuitive knowledge of the principles of word
formation in English, even if you can’t articulate what they are.

 You can also intuitively break up the different components in words. Try to divide the
following words into as many individual parts as you can identify:
 Untrue Un-true
Owner Own-er
Incompletely In-complete-ly
Government Govern-ment
Development Develop-ment
Rewrite Re-write
Fewest Few-est

These components are called MORPHEMES. The main unit in Morphology is the morpheme.
What is it?:
 We can define it as the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning.
 Simple words like giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are morphemes, but so are
prefixes like re- and pre- and suffixes like -ize and -er.

–Morphemes can have lexical and/or grammatical meaning.

– WORDS consist of one or more morphemes

 Words that consist of one morpheme are called simple: giraffe, fraud,
murmur, just, pistachio
 Words consisting of two or more morphemes are known as complex:
opposition, intellectual, crystallize, prewash, repressive, blackboard

FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

 Morphemes that can stand alone as words are called free morphemes (libres):
E.g.: head, walk, jump, crown, cat, box, look
 Morphemes that cannot stand alone as words are called bound morphemes
(trabados): E.g.: pre-, un-, -ify, -ize.

In a word like in-complete-ly we can clearly recognize three morphemes:

 One free morpheme (complete)

 Two bound morphemes (in- and -ly)

Complete is the root or semantic core of the word. in- and -ly are affixes or, respectively, a
prefix and a suffix.

DERIVATION

The process through which new words are formed using prefixes and suffixes (affixes) is known
as DERIVATION. The new words formed via derivation are often referred to as derived words.
Affixes are known as derivational morphemes, because they are used in derivation processes.

Derivation processes change semantic meaning or word class.

• Using the previous example, in-complete-ly:

– The prefix changes the meaning of the root. We add in- (or il-, im-, ir-in other cases) to
modify the meaning to “not complete”.
 – The suffix –ly is used to turn adjectives into adverbs.

HOW MANY WORDS?

Let’s now try to test the adequacy of the term “word” to describe language units. How many
words occur in the following sentence?.

"My friend and I walk to class together, because our classes are in the same building and we
dislike walking alone"

 If you count them individually, you will get 21.

 However you might decide against counting repeated words twice (and).
 You might also have doubts about “class” and “classes” and “walk” and “walking”
being different words. After all, if you look them up in a dictionary, they’re under the
same entry. You might also consider “My” and “I” and “we” and “our” as different
forms of the same pronoun.

To avoid any confusion, we can use the following terms:

 If we count every instance in which a word appears, even if it’s repeated, we’re
counting WORD TOKENS. In this case, that would be 21.
 If we count every word only once, we are counting WORD TYPES. In this case, we
would have 20 of them, as we are excluding “and”.
 If we count families of words that only differ in their grammatical endings or forms, we
would be counting LEXEMES. In this case, we’d have 16.

LEXEMES

As we have just mentioned, lexemes are families of words that differ only in their grammatical
endings or grammatical forms.

 Singular and plural forms of a noun (class, classes)

 verb forms (walk, walks, walked, walking)
 different forms of a pronoun (I, me, my, mine) each represent a single lexeme.
Lexemes are the basis of dictionary entries; dictionaries typically have a single entry for each
lexeme.
 INFLECTION
The other major word formation process, apart from derivation is INFLECTION. Inflectional
word formation expresses grammatical distinctions like number (singular vs. plural); tense
(present vs. past); person (first, second, or third); and case (subject, object, possessive), among
others. Inflection merely changes the grammatical form of lexemes to fit into different
grammatical contexts.

 Note that there are irregular plurals: Sheep, fish, deer, cacti, phenomena, children,
analyses, women, feet, mice, etc.
 As well as for irregular past and past participle verb forms.
- Hit, ran,swam.
- Drunk, bought, hung.
 They are allomorphs [phonologically distinct variants of the same morpheme].
– they have similar but not identical sounds.
– these slightly different-sounding sets of forms share the same meaning or function.
• negative prefix in- – pronounced in- (as in intolerable), im- or il- (impossible,
illegal), as English spelling shows. Since all of these forms still mean ‘negative’,
and they all attach to adjectives in the same way, we say that they are
allomorphs of the negative prefix.
• regular past tense in English is always spelled -ed, – sometimes pronounced
[t] (packed), sometimes [d] (bagged), sometimes [əd] (waited). Still all three
phonological variants still designate the past tense.

ROOT VERSUS STEM

Both terms are taken as a base to which other morphemes are attached.
 STEM: part of a word that remains when inflectional affixes have been removed.
 ROOT: part of a word that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have
been removed.
 BASE: any form to which new morphemes (affixes) of any kind can be added. The base
can be simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one
piece.
untouchables
untouchable-s stem + affix
un-touchable affix + base
touch-able root + affix
[un [[touch] able]] s

touching: touch-ing stem/root + affix

retouch: re-touch affix + base/root
  Words that combine two or more roots or bases are called COMPOUNDS. However,
they act as a single unit, both grammatically and semantically.

 There are many common compounds in English:

– Compounds of two nouns: windmill, dog bed, book store.
– Compounds of two adjectives: icy cold, red hot.
– Compounds of an adjective and a noun: greenhouse, blackboard.
– Compounds of a noun and an adjective: sky blue, cherry red, rock hard

 There is no fixed way to write compounds. They can be:

– Written as one word: database, football, grandmother, lifelike.
– Written as two separate words: blood pressure, ice cream, post office, full moon.
– Written with a hyphen: mass-produced, sister-in-law, well-being, merry-go-round

 There is a fairly reliable test to identify compounds. Try to insert a modifying word,
such as an adjective or adverb, between the two bases and check if the sequence still
makes sense.
Ice delicious cream

1.2 PARTS OF SPEECH AND PHRASE STRUCTURE

 Parts of speech, or word categories, can be divided into two main groups:

– CONTENT WORDS are “those that have meaning in that they refer to objects, events,
and abstract concepts; [and] are marked as being characteristic of particular social,
ethnic, and regional dialects and of particular contexts” (Finegan 1994: 161 apud
Aronoff and Fudeman 2011). These include most nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

– FUNCTION WORDS also have meaning, but it’s mostly grammatical. They are often
best defined by their function. These include determiners, pronouns, prepositions,
conjunctions, and certain verbs – those with little or no meaning such as be, should, or
must.
CONTENT VS FUNCTION WORDS
One generalization we can make to distinguish these categories is that while content words are
an open class and it is possible to coin “acuñar”) new ones, function words are a closed class. A
person cannot easily invent a new preposition or conjunction.
For instance, there have been many attempts at inventing a gender-neutral singular pronoun
for English (co, et, hesh, na, e, thon, tey, etc.), but none of them has caught on.
On the other hand, novel content words, such as selfie, phablet or twerk, enter the language
relatively smoothly.
The latest OED update (June 2015) includes around 500 new words, phrases and senses, none
of which are function words.

WORD CATEGORIES
 Noun (≠names!): designates specific things, including beings, objects, actions,
locations, qualities, or ideas  baby, bargain, Josianne.
  Adjective: qualifies a noun or noun phrase  peaceful, quick, bright.
 Determiner: expresses the reference of a noun or noun phrase.
– Definite and indefinite articles → the, an, a.
– Demonstratives → this, those.
– Possessives → my, his.
– Indefinite → some, any.
– Quantifiers → a few, much.
– Numerals → one, tenth.
– Interrogative → which, whose
 Verb: generally, it conveys an action, an occurrence or a state of being → publicize,
sing, sleep.
 Adverb: modifies the meaning of verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, or larger syntactic
units → readily, carefully.
 Pronoun: substitutes a noun or noun phrase.
– Demonstrative: this, those.
– Possessive: mine, hers.
– Indefinite: all, everybody.
– Interrogative: whom, which.
– Personal: she, us.
– Relative: which, whose.
 Preposition: relational function → in, by, over, below, under.
 Conjunction: connects linguistic elements → and, but, or

PHRASES (=SINTAGMAS)

The previously mentioned parts of speech can be combined into phrases, syntactic
constituents that may contain more than one word.

Their internal structure is built around a single word, known as the HEAD. The different types
of phrases are named after that head: noun phrase, adjectival phrase, adverbial phrase,
prepositional phrase and verb phrase.

Other basic characteristics of phrases are the following:

a. Lexical categories like N, V, Adj, Adv and P admit complements.

b. Some categories are transitive (that is, they select a complement) and others are
intransitive (do not select a complement). This depends on the semantic properties of
words. Prepositions are always transitive. Apart from complements, lexical categories
may be modified by other elements called adjuncts. The difference between
complements and adjuncts is that complements are grammatically required by the
head, whereas adjuncts are not.

c. Complements and adjuncts may precede or follow the head. Different languages
may have different rules about this (e.g. adjectives in noun phrases precede the head
in English, but they follow it in Spanish).
 Noun phrase (NP)

 A phrase in which the head is a noun.

 They function primarily as subject and object.
 From a syntactic point of view nouns share the following characteristics: (i) they may
be preceded by determiners (the boys; a boy); (ii) they may be (pre)modified by
adjectives (a large pizza) or by other nouns (a university degree); and (iii) they may be
followed by a preposition and noun (a prepositional phrase).

[Students]NP are very intelligent

[Students of Linguistics]NP are very intelligent
[Students with long hair]NP are very intelligent
[Students of Linguistics with long hair]NP are very intelligent
[Linguistics students with long hair]NP are very intelligent
[Many students of Linguistics with long hair]NP are very intelligent

 From a semantic point of view, nouns can be divided into groups: (i) common nouns
(house, dog) versus proper names (James, London); (ii) concrete nouns (church) versus
abstract nouns (beauty); and (iii) count nouns (chair) versus noncount nouns, that is,
things which are treated as indivisible units which cannot be broken down in order to
be counted (advice, butter, money).
 Nouns share the following basic characteristics:

Adjective phrase (AdjP)

 Adjective phrases are headed by an adjective. They function primarily as subject and
object complements.
 Although not as often as nouns, adjectives may also have complements, especially
adjectives denoting psychological states (e.g. hopeful, delighted, aware). Adjectives
only take degree adverbs and intensifiers as modifiers.
 Examples:
The student was [proud]AdjP
The student was [proud of her results]AdjP
The student was [rather proud of her results]AdjP
 Adjectives describe properties, qualities or states attributed to a noun. They do not
have a specific morphology that differentiates them from other word classes, although
there are common derivational affixes that are used to create adjectives (accident-al,
drink-able).
 In English, there are adjectives that are derived from the present and the past
participle of verbs (i.e. the –ing and the –ed forms)
 Adjectives share the following basic characteristics:

Adverb phrase (AdvP)

 Headed by an adverb. They serve as adjective and adverb modifiers, and also as
adverbials (=Complemento Circunstancial).
 Adverbs may take adjuncts and complements: John resigned [independently [of my
opinion]]AdvP
 They may be modified by intensifiers and/or degree adverbs, as in the following
examples: John arrived [late]AdvP John arrived [terribly late]AdvP
 Adverbs share the following basic characteristics:

Prepositional phrase (PP)

 Headed by a preposition, followed by a NP. They modify and complement phrases, and
can serve as adjuncts and adverbials.
 By definition, they are always transitive, i.e. they always take an NP as complement.
Example: Students [with long hair]PP are very intelligent
 Some English prepositions include: about, above, across, after, against, along, amidst,
among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside(s), between, beyond, by,
concerning, despite, down, during, except, for, from, in, into, inside, like, near, of, off,
on, onto, opposite, outside, over, past, since, through, to, toward(s), under,
underneath, until, up, upon, with, within, without

Verb phrase (VP)

 Headed by a lexical verb. It’s main function in a sentence is to serve as predicate.
 Transitive verbs take a complement: Peter [bought some books]VP
 Ditransitive verbs take two complements: Peter [never gave the book
to Mary]VP
 Intransitive verbs do not take complements: The bus [arrived late]VP

 Copular verbs (be, seem, become), sense verbs (feel, look), verbs of perception (seem,
appear) and change of state verbs (become, turn) are characterized by taking a subject
complement in the form of a noun phrase or an adjective phrase
 Mary [is a nurse] VP
Mary [is intelligent] VP

 Auxiliary verbs always occur with a main verb, i.e. they cannot appear alone (except in
constructions where the main verb is understood, e.g. Did you see Mary? Yes, I did: be,
have, modal verbs and do. In interrogatives it is always the first auxiliary that is moved
to sentence-initial position and, finally, it is after the first auxiliary that the negative
particle not is placed.
She may have been being followed by the police
May she have been being followed by the police?
She may not have been being followed by the police
 Verbs share the following basic characteristics