Chapter 4 - Morphology

circumfixes

(affixes surrounding the root, or entering the root at different places) are inserted to create words out of the ktb combination: katab (write), kutib (have been writing).

There are only 8-9 inflectional bound morphemes in English and they are all suffixes, as listed below:

- The plural marker (-s) The pens are on the table. - The possessive (-'s and -s') It was Andrew's car./ They are the boys' toys. - The 3rd person, present singular (-s). He always comes home late. - The comparative (-er) This milk is fresher than that.- The superlative (-est) This is the freshest milk. - The progressive (-ing) He is walking down the street. - The past tense (-ed) She arrived late. - The past participle (-en) Jim has beaten his opponents.

Parts of Speech

Are a system of grammatical categories for classifying words according to their usage or function. - The traditional concept classifies each word into one of eight categories: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection.

How new words are formed

Certain categories of words show greater openness than others. That is, the number of words in open classes of words grow, whereas the number of words in closed classes of words do not usually grow. - In English, new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are always being formed. Yet new conjunctions, pronouns, or prepositions are rare. - Similarly, some morphemes are very productive and others are not. Bound morphemes like -ly, -able, -s, -ment, pre-, and in- can be added to thousands of words, including new words. - On the other hand, some forms are not productive. Boysen-is used in only one word in English and is unlikely to be used in many more. The inflectional morpheme -en as in oxen is also nonproductive. It is a historical oddity; new nouns formed in English would most likely be pluralized by -s not -en.

infix

In Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines, the infix-in- can be added to a root morpheme to change it from present to past tense. - A verb such as sulat (write) can be changed to sinulat (wrote). In Arabic, the root of most words can be reduced to three consonants to complete the meaning of the word. The combination of the three consonants ktb has a general meaning related to the act or process of writing.

Morpheme

Phonology is the study of the sound system of language. The minimal unit of phonology is the phoneme. A phoneme conveys no meaning in itself. However, phonemes can be strung together in specific rule-governed ways to produce the meaningful units of language. - These units are called morphemes. They are the smallest units of meaning. This means that morphemes cannot be broken down further and remain meaningful. - The word cat /kæt/is one morpheme; the word cats /kæts/ is two morphemes, consisting of cat and -s. - Morphemes and words are not equivalent. Catis a word and a morpheme, but cats is two morphemes and a word. But -s is not a word.

Morphology

The study of the rules governing the formation and combination of morphemes The study of the structure and classification of words and the units that make up words.

Types of Morphemes cont'd

The suffix -er is also a derivational bound morpheme. When it is added to the words work and drive, it makes the new words worker and driver. - But the suffixes -er and -est are inflectional bound morphemes. When they are added to the word small, they do not create new words, but make grammatical changes. So small becomes smaller and smallest. - A language such as Spanish has multiple inflectional morphemes. The Spanish infinitive hablar can be transformed into the forms hablo, hablas, hablaba, hablamos, etc, by adding a variety of inflectional morphemes.

Foreign Word Borrowing

We often borrow words from foreign languages when we come into contact with other cultures. Through trade, travel, and migration, words from one language enter other languages. English has borrowed the word recipe from French, solo from Italian.

Typology

a branch of linguistics that studies the structural similarities of languages. - Languages are placed into the same type if the feature of that type characterizes them. Sometimes languages that are not related historically or geographically can be placed into the same type.

Analytic or Isolating Language

a language in which most words are single morphemes. - In a pure or ideal analytic language, every word would be a single free (or root) morpheme, and there would be no bound morphemes. In reality, languages classified as analytic might have low but varying numbers of bound morphemes. - The meaning that would be conveyed in other languages by bound morphemes is usually carried by free morphemes. - The order of morphemes (word order) alone conveys the grammatical function of the word, that is, whether the word is the subject, object, modifier, verb, and so on. - Mandarin and Vietnamese are examples of languages that come close to the ideal analytic principle.

Polysynthetic Language

a synthetic language in which each word is the equivalent to a whole sentence in other languages. - In these languages, one word can be very long and made up of numerous morphemes. - Inuktitut is a Native American polysynthetic language spoken in Northern Canada. This is one word - qasuirrsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq. It means, "someone did not find a completely suitable resting place." There is no language that is purely one type or another. Although English is typically classified as an isolating language (with each word standing by itself), there is also agglutination (in words like talked, talks) and inflection (in words like mouse - mice, bring - brought). - English words are relatively short; typical of isolating languages. - Newer words are longer; words get shorter and are clipped over time, such as flu from influenza, bike from bicycle, or fridge from refrigerator.

Agglutinating Language

a type of synthetic language in which each bound morpheme adds only one specific meaning to the root morpheme. - For instance, in Hungarian, the word for man is ember. To form the word men, the suffix -em is added. Unlike the -u in Russian that added several bits of information, the suffix -em adds only the concept of plurality to the root word.

allomorph

a variation of a morpheme. - Just as allophones are the variations of a phoneme, allomorphs are the variations of a morpheme. - For instance, the meaning "more than one," which is usually expressed as the suffix -s in English, can actually be pronounced three different ways: /s/ as in mats /mæts/, /z/ as in zoos /zuz/, or /əz/ as in churches /čʌrčəz/. /s/, /z/, and /əz/ are said to be allomorphs of the plural morpheme -s - The -'s in Bill's is possessive, not plural, so it is not an allomorph. - The agent marker morpheme -er, as in the words teacher and lawyer, is a more productive (used more often) version of its allomorph -or, as in the word actor. - The -able (meaning "capable of being...") in lovable is an allomorph of the morpheme -ible, as in edible. - Broke is an allomorph of break.

Trade Names

are also responsible for adding words. - New words are invented to label new products and sometimes trade names become so widely used that they become the generally used term for that type of product. Some common trade names include Kleenex, Xerox, and Jello-O

Derivational Bound morphemes

are bound morphemes that change the meaning or lexical category of a word. For example, in the word honorary, honor is a free morpheme with a definable meaning. But -ary doesn't have an easily definable meaning, yet it functions to change the noun honor into the adjective honorary. The morpheme changes the word from one lexical category (part of speech) to another.

Inflectional Bound Morphemes

are bound morphemes that do not change the essential meaning or lexical category of a word. They change grammatical functions (other than lexical categories). In the word cats, the general meaning of the word cat is maintained; the words cat and cats are both nouns. In English, free morphemes greatly outnumber bound morphemes. Of the bound morphemes found in English, most are derivational. Latin, Russian, and Finnish are rich in inflectional forms. English has a few bound root morphemes, as in unkempt, boysenberry, and a large number in Latin borrowings, e.g., ceive in perceive, conceive, etc.

Lexical categories

are major grammatical classes into which words (not morphemes) can be divided. - Many grammar teachers call these lexical categories the parts-of-speech.

Morphophonemic Rules

are rules that specify which allomorph will be used in a specific phonetic environment. - The term is used to show the interrelationship between phonology and morphology. - Attaching one the of the three allomorphs of the plural -s to a root is not a random process; it is rule-governed. The rule follows the rule of the obligatory phonological process voice assimilation. - Other allomorphs are based on other ways in which the same morpheme can be expressed differently. For instance, the morpheme spelled -ing can be pronounced /ɪn/ or /ɪŋ/. In this case, the choice of which allomorph to use is optional and indicates the speaker's level of formality.

Eponyms

are words formed using a person's name. - Proper names are used to label animals and plants (Darwin's Finches), inventions (the saxophone, named for Adolf Joseph Sax), places (Washington, for George Washington), and activities (boycott from Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott).

Compounding

creating a word with more than one root. - It is a common way to label a new thing or activity. Examples include cross-trainer, bunkhouse, veggie burger, and mallrat.

Clipping

deleting a section of a word to create a shortened form. - Gas is clipped from gasoline, phone is clipped from telephone, and gym is clipped from gymnasium.

hyphenated compound

has a hyphen or hyphens between the different roots of the compound. Examples include father-in-law and eight-year-old.

open-form compound

has spaces between its roots. Words such as real estate and half brother are considered compounds.

affix

is a bound morpheme that can be added to a root. Affixes include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or circumfixes.

closed-form compound

is a compound word with no space or hyphen between the different roots. Some closed-form compounds are schoolhouse, evergreen, into, andtextbook.

Free Morpheme

is a meaningful grammatical unit that can stand alone. - Cat is a free morpheme; it can be used by itself as a meaningful unit.

Bound Morpheme

is a meaningful grammatical unit that cannot occur alone. - The -s in cats is a bound morpheme; it cannot be used by itself and must be attached to another morpheme. A bound morpheme can be classified on the basis of the function it serves.

Root (base/stem)

is a morpheme that serves as a building block for other words and carries the main meaning of those words. The word cat, in addition to being called a free morpheme, may also be called a root. - Words can be built by adding morphemes to the root.

compound

is a word made up of two or more roots.

Prefix

is an affix added to the beginning of a root.

suffix

is an affix added to the end of a root. in the word predetermined, determine is the root, pre- is the prefix, and -ed is the suffix.

Fusional Language or inflectional Language

is one type of synthetic language in which one bound morpheme may convey several bits of information. - For instance, in the Russian word komnatu (room) the -u is a bound morpheme (suffix) that conveys the meaning as feminine and singular and identifies the word grammatically as a direct object (accusative case).

head of a compound

is similar to its topic, that is the main, most general, or core meaning of the compound. The head also determines the grammatical function of the compound. - In English, the head is usually the morpheme that is to the right of all other morphemes in the word. So in schoolhouse, the head is house. - Although most English compounds are right headed, some are left headed such as secretary general.

Etymology

is the study of the history of words.

Back-formation

is used to form a new word by removing what appears to be an affix from that word. This is how the word edit was created from editor. - The word televise was coined from the word television. - The word revise can be used as the root to form the word revision. This is a derivational process. However, televisionwas not derived from televise. (Television was formed as a compound of tele and vision.) - Televise, the verb, was formed by back-formation from television, the noun, rather than being the root for it.

Neologisms

newly formed words. - A major principle of anthropology is that there are no inferior languages. For instance, a culture with less complex technology than another culture does not have a language with less complex grammar. - However, it is true that technologically more complex cultures with high rates of technological innovation will generate more neologisms. They have more things to name.

Derivation

the process of forming a new word by adding a derivational affix to a word. - The word plane serves as a root for deplane. The derivational affix de- is added to create this new word. - Numerous affixes in English can be used in this productive way. Some of them are: re-, un-, dis-, in-, pre-, anti-, sub-, -ly, -ness, -er, -ity, --ation, -able, -ful. New affixes are rare, but occasionally a new one is formed and then can be used to derive a new set of words. - For instance, the prefix cyber- has become common, and combined with such words as space, punk, and theft to derive cyberspace, cyber punk, and cyber-theft.

Blending

the process of taking two or more words (compounding), clipping parts off one or more of the words, and then combining them. The new word is a blend carrying a bit of meaning from each of its parts. - A blend is a word that is the result of the process of blending. - They are often used for results of technology, such as the words nylon and betatron. Nylon is formed by combining vinyl and rayon. Betatron is a combination of beta ray and electron.

Morphological Typology

the study and classification of languages based on how morphemes create words. - Classifying a natural phenomenon into a limited number of types is always artificial. The types we discuss are ideals. In reality, most languages, combine two or more of the principles that we will discuss.

Open classes of words or content words

types of words (such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) that grow in number in a language.

Closed classes of words or function words

types of words (such as prepositions and pronouns) that don't typically grow in number.

Synthetic Language

uses bound morphemes to affect the meaning or mark the grammatical function of a free morpheme. There are three types of synthetic languages:

Acronyms

words that are formed from the first letter or letters of more than one word. - Unlike initialisms, in which each letter is simply named (FBI is /ɛf bi ay/), acronyms are pronounced, as any word would be. Both acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations. - So, since NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration) is pronounced as /næsa/ it is an acronym. - They are popular because they can be said faster and are easier to remember than the whole phrase they represent.