Linguistics: words and morphemes

- Free vs. bound morphemes

*Free morphemes:* can stand alone as complete words. *Bound morphemes:* cannot stand alone, e.g. affixes.

Simple vs. complex words.

*Simple words:* words comprised of a single bound morpheme. *Complex words:* words comprised of multiple morphemes.

What is a word

- A unit that speakers recognise intuitively - identifiable in continuous speech, delineated by spaces in writing. - Speakers know a lexeme e.g. run can form e.g. running, runs and that all of these are different grammatical words. - Language disorders may affect formation of multi-morpheme constructions

Compounding

- Created by joining simple words or complex words together. - Generally have a semantically dominant head which precedes dependents. - Meaning of compound can be related to internal parts (e.g. blackbird restricting reference of bird) or entirely novel (e.g. turncoat, highbrow). - Compounds are marked prosodically with stress on the first element (e.g. 'redcoat vs. a red 'coat). - Compounds can be nouns, adjectives, verbs in English. - Grammatically they function as a single word.

Number

- Obligatory to inflect for number in English. *Regular formation:* • Suffixes -s, -es (realised as [s], [z] after final voiced consonant, [ez] after final sibilant. *Irregular formation:* • Change in stem (mouse/mice, tooth/teeth, woman/women). • -en (child/children, ox/oxen). • Identical forms (sheep/sheep). • Plural form for singular object (scissors, pants).

Derivation

- Prefixing and suffixing. - Word class changes. - E.g. affix -able commonly derives adjectives from nouns, 'hate' to 'hateable'.

Case

- Signals grammatical relationships. - Largely lost in English. - English does still mark genitive (possessive) case with inflectional affix -'s.

Morpheme

- Smallest unit of meaning bearing language. - Discrete, cannot be broken down any further. - All words contain at least one morpheme.

Inflection

- Suffixing. - Doesn't change word class. - Adds grammatical information relating to number, case, grade.

Word formation

1) Derivation. 2) Inflection.

Brown's MLU calculations

Do not map exactly to linguistic morphemes. Based on what morphemes are significant to children's developmental level.

Grade

Regular formation: 1) *Absolute* (e.g. tall). 2) *Comparative* (e.g. taller). 3) *Superlative* (e.g. tallest). Irregular formation: • E.g. good/better/best, ?bad/worse/worst. • Some adjectives do not inflect, e.g. beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful. • As a rule adjectives of more than two syllables take 'more' and 'most' rather than inflecting for grade.

Root morpheme

The free morpheme that forms the base for a complex word is known as the *root*.