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Lesson 5 Morphology

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16 views

Lesson 5 Morphology

Uploaded by

talanikola.insiang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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MORPHOLOGY

The Words of Language


 We all have a mental dictionary of all the
words we know, which includes the
following information:
– Pronunciation
– Meaning
– Orthography (spelling)
– Grammatical category
Content Words and Function Words

• The brain treats content and


function words differently
• Some aphasics are unable to
read the function words in and
which but can read the
content words inn and witch.
Content Words and Function Words

• Content words may be inadvertently


switched in speech, but there is no
documentation of function words
being switched in this way
• Children often omit function words
from their speech when learning their
first language (“doggie barking”)
Content Words
• The words that convey conceptual
meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
etc.)
• Open class: new types of content
words can be added all the time
• E.g. a new noun called a flurg would
be fine
Function Words
• The words that convey grammatical meaning
(articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.)
• Closed class: new function words are very
rarely added to a language
• English does not have a gender-neutral third
person singular pronoun, and rather than adopt
a new pronoun, many people use they instead
of choosing between he and she.
MORPHOLOGY
• The study of the structure of words and the rules for
word formation
• Morpheme: the minimal units of meaning
• Morphemes can be words on their own, and/or can
often be combined with other morphemes to make
words
• E.g. the word book has one morpheme
• E.g. the word books has two morphemes:
book + -s
N plural marker
MORPHEMES
Deals with the meaning and structure
of words in their smallest unit.
The smallest grammatical
components of words.
As such, they are also the smallest
components of books made up of
words.
MORPHEMES
• Discreteness: In all languages, sounds
combine to make morphemes, morphemes
combine to make words, and words combine
to make sentences
• Creativity: We can combine morphemes in
new ways to create new words that can easily
be understood
– writable – rewritable – unrewritable
FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES
• Free morphemes can stand
alone
• E.g. love is a single morpheme
that can be uttered with no
other morphemes connected
to it
FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES
• Bound morphemes cannot
stand alone, and must be
attached to other morphemes
• E.g. un- and -ish are bound
morphemes because they
cannot stand alone
BOUND MORPHEMES

Prefixes: bound morphemes that


attach to the beginning of a root
E.g. un- as in un tie
Suffixes: bound morphemes that
attach to the end of a root
E.g. -ness as in kindness
ROOTS AND STEMS

Roots: the morpheme


base upon which other
morphemes are attached
to create complex words:
un-love-able
ROOTS AND STEMS

Stems: once an affix has


been attached to a root,
the result is called a stem
to which more morphemes
may be attached: unlovable
ROOTS AND STEMS

Bound roots: Roots that cannot stand


alone and can only occur in
combination with other morphemes –
-ceive: receive , conceive , perceive ,
deceive – Ungainly (*gainly), discern
(*cern), nonplussed (*plussed)
– Huckle berry, luke warm, cran berry
RULES OF WORD FORMATION

Derivational morphemes change the


meaning and/ or part of speech of a root
Adding –un to the word do changes the
meaning drastically – Adding –ish to the
noun boy creates the adjective boyish
Derivational morphemes carry semantic
meaning and are like the affix version of
content words
RULES OF WORD FORMATION

 When a new word is created through


derivation, other possible derivations may be
blocked
 Communist exists, therefore we don’t need
Communite or Communian
 Some derivations trigger pronunciation
changes, while others do not
 specific specificity and Elizabeth Elizabethan
vs. – bake > baker and wish > wishful
• Inflectional morphemes have only grammatical
function (similar to function words) and never
change the part of speech of the root
- waited , waits, waiting
• Inflectional morphemes are always suffixes in
English and always follow any derivational
morphemes
- commit + ment can become commit + ment + s
but not commit + s + ment
• Inflectional morphemes are
productive, meaning they apply freely
to almost any appropriate base
• Most nouns will take the inflectional
suffix –s to make a plural noun
• Only some nouns will take the
derivational suffix –ize to make a verb
CASE Nominative Objective Possessive
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Number

1st I We Me Us Mine Ours

2nd You You You You Yours Yours


Person
3rd He, She, They Him, her, it them His,
It hers, Theirs
its

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