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English Morphology (Unit 2 Morpheme and their composition (Ex. Visitors…
English Morphology
Unit 1 What is Morphology?
Word formation
, including the
ways new words are coined
, and the
way forms of words are varied
.
Linguists define a
morpheme
as the
smallest unit of language that has its own meaning
.
A
word
is defined or more morphemes that
can stand alone in a language
.
Phrase
/ grammatical
category
sentence member/
function
(syntagma).
Morpheme
= minimal meaningful element.
Word
/ part of speech (choice of a member of a paradigm).
Words
Words that consist of
only one morpheme
, like giraffe, oops or just,
can be termed simple or simplex words
.
Words that are made up of
more than one morpheme
, like opposition, crystallize or blackboard,
are called complex
.
Words and lexemes, types and tokens
If we
count every instance in which a word
occurs in a sentence, we are counting
word tokens
.
If we
count duplicate words only once time
, we are counting
word types
.
If we
count by using a thought of families of words that differ only in their grammatical endings or grammatical forms
, each represent a single
lexeme
.
Word formation is divided into
derivation
-the formation of new lexemes- and
inflection
, the different grammatical word forms that make up lexemes.
Unit 2 Morpheme and their composition
Speakers of a language can recognize that word forms may include a number of units.
Ex.
Visitors
The word
visitors
consists of
3 morphemes
.
One minimal unit of meaning is
visit
, another minimal unit of meaning
-or
(
making "person who does something"
)
The other minimal unit of grammatical function
-s
(
indicating plural
)
In linguistics, a morpheme is
conventionally indicated between braces
.
Ex
. refilled = {re} + {fill} + {ed}
One or more morphemes may represent a single word.
Ex.
sing = singer, happy = unhappy
In addition, a
single sound
may
represent a morpheme
.
e.g. the morpheme
a
meaning
"without"
as in
asocial and amoral
is composed of a single sound.
A morpheme may also consist of
a single syllable
, such as boy and fish and
two or more syllables
, as in paper (two syllables), and crocodile (three syllables).
Another point is that a
morpheme has a constant meaning
.
e.g. morpheme
-er
means
"someone who does"
as in words like
player, teacher, and singer.
However, there is also the
comparative morpheme
** -er
meaning
"more"
as in
faster, shorter and prettier.
The
same sounds represent more than one morpheme
, meaning that
different morphemes may be 'homophonous' or pronounced identically
.
In summary, some morphemes may be
simple words that cannot be broken down further into meaningful units
. These are called
free morphemes.
can stand alone as an independent, single word.
Ex.
open and visit
Other morphemes are
the smallest units of meaning or grammatical function that are attached to other forms to generate complex words
. Such morphemes are called
bound morphemes
.
cannot normally stand alone and must be typically attached to another form.
Ex
. the plural morpheme
-s
can only occur when
it is attached to nouns
, or the past tense
-ed
morpheme
must be attached to verb
.
Lexical and Functional Morpheme
lexical morphemes
=
n., v., adj. and adv.
that transmit the content of the messages speakers want to convey
“Content words”
functional morpheme
=
articles, prep., conj., quantifiers and pron
. we cannot create new functional morphemes in the language easily, they are treated as a closed class of words
“Function words”
Morph and allomorph and pronunciation of morphemes
morphs
are the actual forms that are used to
realize
phonetic
realization of
morphemes
.
We can state that there are
three different morphs
(-s, z and әz) that are used
to realize the
inflectional morpheme
“plural”
in English.
To sum up,
a morph
is the
phonetic realization of a morpheme
(cats, buses, flies), whereas an
allomorph
is
one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme
Unit 3 Lexeme formation: affixes
What is affix?
Affixes
= are classified according to whether they are attached before or after the form to which they are added.
Prefixes
= are attached before the form of word. The (re-} of resaw is a prefix.
Suffixes
= are attached after the form of word. The bound morphemes are all suffixes.
Root, derivational, and inflectional morphemes
Besides being bound or free, morphemes can also be classified as
root, derivational,
or
inflectional
.
A root morpheme
= the basic form to which other morphemes are ttached. It provides the basic meaning of the word
A derivational morpheme
= often changes the grammatical category or part of speech of the root word to which it is added.
Inflectional morpheme
is a suffix that's added to a word (a noun, verb, adjective or an adverb)
to assign a particular grammatical property to that word, such as
its tense, number, possession, or comparison.
Word formation rules
is a rule of grammar by which morphologically complex words are formed out of (free and/or bound) morphemes.
Word formation rules are necessary in theories which assume that the lexicon only contains a set of underived words, and that complex words are derived from these listed forms.
Unit 4 Inflection
Introduction
Inflection refers to word formation that does not change category and does not create new lexemes, but rather
changes the form of lexemes.
grammatical meaning can include information about
Number (singular vs. plural)
person (first, second, third)
tense (past, present, future)
other distinctions as well.
Inflection in English
why English has so little inflection
In fact, if you study the history of English,
you’ll find that at one time English had quite a bit more inflection than it now has
.
The earliest form of English,
Old English had three genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter
– and a case system with four cases – nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive, articles and adjectives agreed with nouns in case and number.
what we have
singular, plural
nouns, pronouns
verbs
perfect
passive
Irregular noun plurals, Irregular verb forms
Paradigm
A paradigm consists of
all of the different inflectional forms of a particular lexeme or class of lexemes
.
these paradigms
show the various endings and stem changes that are exhibited by nouns of different genders in the singular and plural in different cases
, and
in the present and past of strong and weak verbs in different persons.
Inflection and productivity
rules of inflection are almost always fully productive :
every verb in English, for example, has a progressive form with the suffix -ing, and just about every verb can form a past tense.
It is often said that inflection differs from derivation in terms of productivity.
Unit 5 Derivation
Relationship between lexemes
There is no grammatical factor that requires specifically the presence of -ance on performance.
There are grammatical factors that determine the choice between perform, performs and performed (in appropriate contexts)
The suffix -ance is not one of the small class of suffixes whose use is tightly determined
by grammar
.
It must be derivational.
How lexemes can be related?
with relationships involving affixation , and the grammatical and semantic tasks that such affixation can perform.
As we will see, both the affixes and their tasks are quite diverse (vary).
Word classes and conversion
word classes such as ‘adjective’, ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and etc.
in traditional terminology are called parts of speech
many contemporary linguists call lexical categories
Adverbs derived from adjectives
in fact, simple or monomorphemic adverbs, include some very common words (OFTEN, SELDOM, NEVER, SOON), and some other adverbs are morphologically complex without containing -ly (NOWHERE, EVERYWHERE, TODAY, YESTERDAY).
Also, there are common adverbs that are formed by conversion: FAST and HARD, derived from the adjective FAST (as in a fast car) and HARD (as in hard work).
Conclusion: generality and idiosyncrasy
This chapter has illustrated, by no means exhaustively, the wide variety of tasks that derivation can play.In this respect, derivation contrasts with inflection in English.
Unit 6 word and word formation process
Processes of word formation
There are systematic word-formation processes that take place across human languages.
Depending on the language, some of these processes might be available in particular languages, whereas others may not.
But the result is the same:
new words are always created and added to the lexicon of the language.
Conversion
Conversion is the extension of
the use of one word from its original grammatical category to another category
.
For example, the word must is a verb (as in
“You must attend classes regularly”
), but it can also be used as a noun as in “
Class attendance is a must
”.
Derivation
most
productive process of word formation
in a language is the use of derivational morphemes to form new words from already existing forms.
For example, from
arrange
we can derive
rearrange,
from which we can still derive
rearrangement
.
Borrowing
Borrowing is the process of actually borrowing words from foreign languages.
Most of the loan words are nouns, only some of them are verbs or adjectives.
Back-formation
Back-formation results when a
word is formed from another word by taking off what looks like a typical affix in the language.
A noun enters the language first and then a verb is “back-formed” from it.This is the case with the verbs
edit
and
televise
, for example, which entered English as back-formations from
editor
and
television
.
Compounding
New words are also created through the common process of compounding, ie combining two or more words together to form a new complex word.
Blending
Blending is another way of combining two words to form a new word.
The difference between blending and compounding, however, is that in
blending only parts of the words, not the whole words
, are combined.
Unit 7 sound and shapes
Phonological boundaries in the generative model
The syllable boundary, as we have seen, is different form the others in that it is phonological in its nature, its location is not (fully) dependent on the morphological structure of the word.
The phonological phrase boundary is the strongest of all.An l in English is dark before consonants and also before a phonological phrase boundary, that is, when the speaker pauses.
Morpheme boundaries
The morpheme boundary (represented by '+') is found between the morphemes that make up the word.In some cases a free stem and a suffix are joined by a morpheme boundary, though in most cases such stems are bound.
Rules applying in a given context, that is, to a segment occurring before and/or after certain segments, apply irrespective of the presence of a morpheme boundary in that string.
Verbal prefix boundaries
Another property of stress in English also necessitates reference to the verbal prefix boundary.
In verbs of three (or more) syllables, stress regularly falls on the penult if the ult is light (just like in regular shorter verbs), but on the antepenult if the ult is heavy.
Word boundaries
Word boundaries occur between words.The problem is that it is far from obvious what it means to be a word in linguistics.
Identifying boundaries