Morphology

Bound Morpheme

Affixes, on the other hand, always have to be attached to the stem of some word in order to be used. Because they cannot stand alone, affixes are called bound morphemes... It is a morpheme that always attaches to other morphemes, never existing as a word itself. REMEMBER MORPHEMES are the smallest Linguistic units of meaning!

Reduplication

Process of forming new words by doubling either an entire word/free morpheme (total reduplication) or part of a word (partial reduplication). English makes no systematic use of reduplication as a part of the language's grammar. There are a very few nonsystematic cases of lexical reduplication, however, such as "bye bye." Furthermore, in colloquial speech, we may often see reduplication used to indicate intensity; this can happen with verbs, adjectives, and nouns. Ex. * Do you just like him as a friend, or do you like-like him? * That shirt isn't what I had in mind; it's much too pale of a green. I want a shirt that is green-green. * Yesterday we just went out for coffee, but this weekend we're going on a date-date.

Affixation

Process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes (prefix, infix, and suffix). Although English uses only prefixes (affixes that precede the stem they attach to) and suffixes (affixes that follow the stem they attach to), many other languages use infixes as well. Infixes are inserted within the root morpheme. Note that English has no regular infixes. At first glance, some students think that -ful in a word like doubtfully is an infix because it occurs in the middle of a word; In some colloquial speech or slang, there is some evidence of English infixes, but although some of these forms may be moderately productive, they are far from routinized. Tagalog, on the other hand, one of the major languages of the Philippines, uses infixes quite extensively. For example, the infix -um- is used to form the infinitive form of verbs:

Prepositions

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc. Syntactically, this category consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expression of category prepositional phrase; Words we use before nouns or pronouns to show their relationship with other words in the sentence. Example: behind (the tree), across (Maple Street), down (the stairs) — a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in "the man on the platform," "she arrived after dinner," "what did you do it for ?"

Adverb

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc. Syntactically, adverbs can be verb phrase adjuncts; a word that modifies/describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

Determiners

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase—in front of nouns to indicate if referring to something specific or something or a particular type. 3 types: definite articles (a, an, the); demonstratives (this, that, these, those); possessives (my, your, his, her, its, our, their) ... to express definiteness, indefiniteness, quantity, ie. THE book, A table, EVERY day

Adjective

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the comparative suffix -er or the suffix -ness can be added. Syntactically, the category consists of those expressions that can be noun adjuncts or occur in between a determiner and a noun; a word that describes a noun.

Noun

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. Morphologically, consists of words to which the plural suffix -s or the suffix -like can be added. Syntactically, consists of expressions that can combine with determiners to their left, the resulting expression being of category noun phrase; a person, place, thing, or idea.

Verb

The name of a lexical category that consists of all words to which, for example, -ing or -able can be suffixed. Not a syntactic category; an action word.

Pronoun

The name of a lexical category that consists of words such as I, she, us, etc. Syntactically, pronouns belong to the category noun phrase; a word that takes the place of a noun

Homophonous

The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or non-phrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e., sound the same.

Prefix

Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem; a syllable or word that comes before a root word to change its meaning.

Form and Meaning in Words

(dog v.s. cat) Your answer, like that of almost anyone familiar with English, is very probably "Of course they are different words! Isn't it obvious?" The reasons that this is obvious include both differences in form, that is, what a word sounds like when spoken (/kæt/ is quite distinct from /dɑɡ/; refer to the chart at the end of the book for help with any unfamiliar symbols) and differences in meaning, such as the fact that you cannot simply use cat and dog interchangeably to mean the same thing. On the other hand, you might say cat and dog are both kinds of pets, so the words aren't 100% different; they do have something to do with each other. These sorts of similarities, however, are not enough to lead us to claim that cat and dog are the same word. Based on the discussion above, some readers might hesitate before answering this question. These two words share some elements of form, the /kæt/ part, but catalog doesn't seem to have the meaning of cat anywhere in it. Similarly, the words kid and kidney may sound partly the same, but it seems that they are not actually related in their meaning. Even though it sounds like there could be a cat and a log in catalog, or a kid in kidney, and such a connection might even be used as a source of humor in a joke or cartoon, English speakers consistently distinguish these pairs as each containing two unrelated words. Thus, when looking to see whether two items are the same word, we must consider both their phonological form and their meaning. Nevertheless, the thought that one word could be found "inside" another word is an important one.

Circumfix

A bound morpheme, parts of which occur in a word both before and after the root; type of affix that surrounds the root.

Conjunctions

A lexical category that consists of function words such as and, but, however, etc; Connects words and phrases; always followed by a comma—Remember FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

Free Morphemes

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word. Morphemes such as the simple words above (walk, book, red, big, etc.) are called free morphemes because they can be used as words all by themselves.

Suppletion

A morphological process between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other. Ex. is v.s. was, go v.s. went Ex. good v.s. better v.s. best --> adj. comparative. superlative

Derivation

A morphological process that changes a word's lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way. With respect to form, cat is obviously a shorter word (i.e., contains fewer sounds) than catty. The meaning of catty also seems to be based on the meaning of cat, rather than the other way around. This suggests that catty is based on cat or, in other words, that cat is the root on which catty is built. This process of creating words out of other words is called derivation. Derivation takes one word and performs one or more "operations" on it, the result being some other word, often of a different lexical category. When the resulting new word is not of a different lexical category, the meaning of the root word is usually changed. For example, while playable is an adjective derived from the verb play, replay is a verb derived from a verb, and unkind is an adjective derived from an adjective, but with altered meanings: re- derives verbs meaning 'Verb again' (where "Verb" stands for the meaning of the root verb, e.g., replay 'play again'), and un- derives adjectives meaning 'not Adjective' (e.g., unkind 'not kind'). In the simplest case, the root is used "as-is," and one or more additional pieces are tacked onto it (but see the discussion of allomorphy in Section 4.5.1). The added pieces are called affixes. The thing to which the affixes attach is called the stem. In the case of catty, cat /kæt/ is both the root and the stem, and the affix is /i/, spelled <y>, which is attached to the end of the stem.2 Affixes such as /i/ are called derivational affixes since they participate in derivational processes.

Inflection

A morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information, such as person, number, tense, gender, etc. This time the answer to the "same or different" question is not as obvious as it was in the earlier cases. Cats represents a different grammatical form of the word cat, used just in case we need to talk about more than one member of the class of cat. The creation of different grammatical forms of words is called inflection. Inflection uses the same sorts of pieces, such as stems and affixes, or processes (see File 4.2) that derivation does, but the important difference is the linguistic entity that inflection creates—forms of words, rather than entirely new words. For example, in contrast to derivational affixes, inflectional affixes such as -s typically do not change the lexical category of the word—both cat and cats are nouns. Similarly, both wind and winding are considered verbs. The forms that result from inflection are often required by the grammar, regardless of any meaning difference. For example, while cats means 'more than one cat,' the plural ending is always required in English, even if the plural meaning is conveyed elsewhere: *I have four cat is ungrammatical, even though the meaning is clear (see Files 5.1 and 5.2 for more on this topic), in contrast to the meaning differences of derived forms, e.g., She is kind/She is unkind/She is not kind. In sum, we find that the idea of "same" or "different" with respect to words can be unexpectedly complicated since words have a number of different properties that need to be considered; at the very least, these include phonological form, meaning, and lexical category. There are actually very few inflectional affixes in English, so it may help to collect them in one table for easy reference (see (3)). (Table (3) shows all of the functions of inflectional affixes of English and most of the common forms that those affixes take. However, there are some less common affixes that do not appear in the table. For example, the plural of ox is formed with the suffix -en, but because the plural marker -en appears on very few words, it is not listed below.) Notice that all of the inflectional affixes in the table—and all of the inflectional affixes of English—are attached after the stem. (Derivational affixes in English may attach either before or after the stem.) This generalization does not hold for all languages, however.

Infix

A type of bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of the stem; an afffix with an word. e.g. Tagalog -um- which shows that a verb is in the past tense: sulat "to write" -sumulat "wrote"

Suffix

Affix that attaches to the end of a stem/end of the word.

Affix

Bound morpheme that attaches to a stem; a prefix or suffix

Lexical Category

Class of words grouped together based on morphological properties. Traditionally known as part of speech. Apart from having a certain phonological form and a meaning, words also belong to lexical categories, which are also sometimes called parts of speech. Lexical categories are classes of words that differ in how other words can be constructed out of them. For example, if a word belongs to the lexical category verb, it is possible to add -ing or -able to it to get another word (e.g., wind and drink are verbs). If a word belongs to the lexical category adjective, you can add -ness or -est to it to get another word (e.g., quick and happy are adjectives). If a word belongs to the category noun, you can usually add -s to it to make it plural (e.g., desk and dog are nouns). You can add -like to nouns to form an adjective (e.g., woman-like, city-like, etc.). You can also add -ly to many adjectives and form an adverb (e.g., quickly, happily, and readily). Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are also called open lexical categories because new words added to the language usually belong to these categories. In contrast, closed lexical categories rarely acquire new members. Closed lexical categories include pronouns (e.g., we, she, they), determiners (e.g., a, the, this, your), prepositions (e.g., on, of, under, for), and conjunctions (e.g., and, or, but).1

Monomorphemic

Consisting of a single (free) morpheme; it is made of only one part. Ex. Simple words like cat, dog, book, and walk cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful pieces—they consist of exactly one morpheme. Affixes like -ing or -y also consist of only one morpheme but cannot stand alone like single-morpheme words.

Possible kinds of morphemes

Content Morphemes • Content words: Free Morphemes • Nouns • Determiners • Verbs • Adjectives • Adverbs Function Morphemes • Function words: Free Morphemes • Determiners • Prepositions • Pronouns • Conjunctions • Inflectional affixes (also Bound) Bound Morphemes ~ Content Morphemes • Bound roots • Derivational affixes • Inflectional affixes (also Function)

Inflectional Affixes of English

Functions ~ AFFIX(ES) Attaches to Example 3rd per. sing. present -s verbs She waits there at noon. PAST TENSE -ed verbs She waited there yesterday. PROGRESSIVE ASPECT -ing verbs She is waiting there now. PAST PARTICIPLE -en, -ed verbs Jack has eaten the cookies. Jack has tasted the cookies. PLURAL -s nouns The chairs are in the room. COMPARATIVE -er adjectives, Jill is taller than Joe. adverbs Joe runs faster than Jill. SUPERLATIVE -est adjectives, Ted is the tallest in his class. adverbs Michael runs fastest of all.

Closed Lexical Category

Lexical category in which the members are fairly rigidly established and additions are made very rarely and only over long periods of time.

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are also called Open Lexical Categories...

Lexical category into which new members are often introduced.

Content Morpheme / Content Word

Morpheme that carries semantic content (as opposed to merely performing a grammatical function). Content morphemes include all derivational affixes, bound roots, and free roots that belong to the lexical categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Free content morphemes, that is, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are also called content words. Sometimes, it is said that content morphemes carry semantic content (roughly, they refer to something out in the world), while [function morphemes] do not. A free root like cat is a prototypical content morpheme with a fairly concrete meaning. It carries semantic content in the sense that it refers to certain feline individuals out in the world. The affix -ing, on the other hand, is a prototypical function morpheme; it marks aspect on a verb but doesn't have semantic content in the way that cat does.

Bound Roots

Morpheme that has some associated basic meaning but that is unable to stand alone as a word in its own right... Affixes are not the only things that can be bound. There are some roots that do not have stand-alone forms; that is, they only appear with one or more affixes attached. For example, the words infer, confer, refer, defer, prefer, and transfer all seem to have a root -fer (stem /fɹ̩/) with a prefix attached to its left. This root, however, does not correspond to any free morpheme in English. The same is true of boysen- and rasp- in boysenberry and raspberry. While berry is a free morpheme, neither boysen- nor rasp- can stand alone. Morphemes of this sort are called bound roots because although they do seem to have some associated basic meaning (in the case of -fer, the meaning is something like 'carry, bring'), they are unable to stand alone as words in their own right. Other examples are -ceive (conceive, receive, deceive) and -sist (resist, desist, consist, subsist). Can you think of a single basic meaning for each of these bound roots? Note that bound roots, while fairly common in English, are not necessarily morphological analyses that all English speakers will agree on. Many of the bound roots, including -fer, -sist, and -ceive, are the result of English borrowings from Latin (often via Old French; see also File 12.2), and are not productive (i.e., currently used to make new words; this is also true of some affixes in English). For many speakers of English, words such as transfer and transport or boysenberry cannot usually be broken down any further into morphemes, but speakers are able to make the generalization that words beginning with trans- must consist of a prefix plus a root of some sort, since trans- is productive; and since boysenberry is obviously a berry of some sort, it is likely to be a compound like blueberry or blackberry, even if we're not sure what boysen means.

Function Morphemes

Morpheme that provides information about the grammatical relationships between words in a sentence. Function morphemes include all inflectional affixes and free roots that belong to lexical categories preposition, determiner, pronoun, or conjunction. Free function morphemes, that is, prepositions, determiners, pronouns, and conjunctions, are also called function words.

Allomorph

One of a set of nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar; variation of a morpheme.

Solving Morphemes

Our goal is this: given a set of data in phonetic representation, perform a morphological analysis of the forms in the data, identifying each morpheme, its meaning, and its type. You should also be able to tell where a morpheme appears with respect to other morphemes in the word. Is it a prefix, suffix, etc.? Does it attach directly to the root, or does it attach after or before another morpheme? Now it is time to consider the procedure. It can be summed up in three steps. 1. Isolate and compare forms that are partially similar, as we did for Classical Greek [ɡrapʰ-ɛː] and [ɡrapʰ-ɔː]. 2. If a single phonetic form has two distinct meanings, it must be analyzed as representing two different morphemes. 3. If the same function and meaning are associated with different phonetic forms, these different forms all represent the same morpheme (i.e., they are allomorphs of the morpheme), and the choice of form in each case may be predictable on the basis of the phonetic environment. The lesson to be learned here is that you cannot assume that another language will make distinctions in the same way that English does. For example, while every language has some method of indicating number, not all languages do so in the same way or under the same circumstances. As we've seen, English uses an affix, Tagalog uses a separate word, and Indonesian reduplicates the word to show plurality (see File 4.2). Nor can you assume that the distinctions English makes are the only ones worth making. Languages must be examined carefully on the grounds of their own internal structures. Finally, although the exercises for File 4.6 will generally involve affixation, do not forget that often in the world's languages, morphological marking will happen through some other process or a combination of processes.

Compounding

Process of forming words by combining two or more independent words. The words that are the parts of the compound can be free morphemes, words derived by affixation, or even words formed by compounding themselves. Ex. girlfriend, black bird, textbook ~ free morphemes Ex. air-conditioner, ironing board, watch-maker ~ affixed Ex. lifeguard chair, aircraft carrier, life-insurance salesman ~ Compounded words Compounds that have words in the same order as phrases have primary stress on the first word only, while individual words in phrases have independent primary stress. Some other examples are listed in (8). (Primary stress is indicated by ´ on the vowel.) Because English does not consistently write compounds as one word or joined with hyphens, speakers are sometimes unaware of how productive compounding is and how complex the structures can be (even if linguists may not always agree on the analysis of longer compounds as resulting from morphological processes versus syntactic processes). Some examples of longer compounds in English are given in (9). Can you think of others?

Morphemes

Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function; the smallest units of meaning in a language (Roots and Affixes). Ex. unit with a meaning (e.g., the morpheme cat) or a grammatical function (e.g., the morpheme -ed that indicates past tense). Of course, a morpheme also has a certain phonological form. Thus, there are no smaller forms that carry their own meaning or grammatical function than morphemes. -------------------------------------------------------------- A few notes are in order about the terminology that we use to discuss morphemes. First, while a root by definition contains only one morpheme, a stem may contain more than one morpheme. For example, in cattiness, the root is cat, but the stem to which the derivational affix -ness is added is catty, which itself contains two morphemes, as we have already observed. Each affix is also a single morpheme. Affixes that follow a stem are called suffixes, whereas affixes that precede a stem are called prefixes. Another thing to notice about affixes is that sometimes different meanings or functions can be marked by the same phonetic shape (note the two -s affixes in table (3)). Affixes that sound alike but have different meanings or functions are homophonous (see Section 5.5.3). (Different words that sound the same are likewise said to be homophonous.) Another example is the case of -er, which can be either inflectional or derivational. As an inflectional suffix, it marks comparative degree on adjectives and adverbs (like in taller, faster in the table), but the same phonetic shape can be used to derive an agent noun from a verb, as in speak, speaker. These two -er affixes are homophonous with each other, and it is therefore important to consider not only form but also meaning when you are analyzing morphological structures. Further evidence that both form and meaning are necessary when identifying morphemes comes from cases of words that merely appear to contain multiple morphemes, but in fact do not. Look again at the word catalog. In terms of both its orthography and its pronunciation, it appears to contain the words cat, a, and log. Neither felines nor sections of tree limbs have anything to do with 'inventories,' though. Thus, we conclude that catalog is monomorphemic: it is made of only one part. As a final caution, do not confuse word length with number of morphemes. Some words, such as Madagascar, lugubrious, or pumpernickel, are quite long but contain only one morpheme; other words, such as ads, are very short but contain two morphemes.

Stem

The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added. The stem always includes the root and may also include one or more affixes.

Word Formation Process

The combination of morphemes according to rules of the language in question to make new words or forms of words.

Root

The free morpheme or bound root in a word that contributes most semantic content to the word, and to which affixes can attach. Ex. Cat v.s. Cat/ty, where Cat is the root/noun and -y is the adjective

Input

The linguistic form before the application of a rule or a set of rules.

Output

The linguistic form obtained after an application of a rule or a set of rules.

Alternations

The morphological process that uses morpheme-internal modifications to make new words or morphological distinctions. While alternations have to do with the sounds in a particular word pair or larger word set, these alternations mark morphological distinctions, whereas the rules in the phonology files (see File 3.3) dealt with pronunciation independent of meaning. Ex. Although the usual pattern of plural formation is to add a suffix, some English plurals make an internal modification for this inflected form: --> man v.s. men, woman v.s. women The usual pattern of past and past participle formation is to add an affix, but some verbs show an internal alternation: --> ring v.s. rang v.s. rung, hold v.s. held v.s. held Some verbs show both an alternation and the addition of an affix to one form: --> break v.s. broke v.s. broken Although the above examples are all inflectional, sometimes a derivational relation such as a change in part of speech class can be indicated by means of alternations. In the case of (20), the final consonant of a noun voices in order to become a verb. --> strife v.s. strive

Morphology

The study of how words are constructed out of morphemes; units of meaning involved in word-formation. In short, it is the component of mental grammar that deals with types of words and how words are formed out of smaller meaningful pieces and other words. Every speaker of English knows that wind is an English word, as are unwind, rewind, winding, windable, windy, etc. However, even though woman is also an English word, none of the following are possible: unwoman, rewoman, womaning, womanable, womany, etc. Why is it that you can add re- to wind and get another word, but adding re- to woman does not result in a word? Morphology as a subfield of linguistics studies the internal structure of words. It tries to describe which meaningful pieces of language can be combined to form words and what the consequences of such combinations are on the meaning or the grammatical function of the resulting word. For example, the addition of re- to wind modifies the meaning of wind in a certain way, and in fact, it does so in the same way when added to unite (reunite) or play (replay).

How Words Are Put Together

When we examine words composed of only two morphemes, a stem and an affix, we implicitly know something about the way in which the affix combined with its stem. That is, the word was formed via the addition of the affix to the stem. By itself, this fact seems neither particularly significant nor particularly interesting. After all, there are no other options. However, when a word comprises more than two morphemes, the order in which the morphemes are put together becomes a more significant question. In order to consider such questions, we first will note two facts about morphemes and lexical categories. First, the stems with which a given affix may combine (its input) normally belong to the same lexical category. For example, the suffix -able attaches freely to verbs, but not to adjectives or nouns. Thus, we can add this suffix to the verbs adjust, break, compare, and debate, but not to the adjectives asleep, lovely, happy, and strong, nor to the nouns anger, morning, student, and success. Second, all of the words that are formed when an affix attaches to a stem (its output) also normally belong to the same lexical category. For example, the words resulting from the addition of -able to a verb are always adjectives. Thus, adjustable, breakable, comparable, and debatable are all adjectives. It turns out that these two facts have an important consequence for determining the way in which words with more than one derivational affix must be formed. What it means is that you can trace the derivational history of words as though they were formed in steps, with one affix attaching to a stem at a time. Words with more than one affix can be represented as forming by means of several steps. For example, consider the word reusable, which is composed of a prefix re-, a stem use, and a suffix -able. One possible way this morphologically complex word might be formed is all at once: re + use + able, where the prefix and the suffix attach at the same time to the stem use. This cannot be the case, however, knowing what we know about how derivational affixes are restricted with respect to both their input and their output. Which attaches to use first, then: re-, or -able? The prefix re-, meaning 'do again,' attaches to verbs and creates new words that are also verbs. (Compare with redo, revisit, and rewind.1) The suffix -able also attaches to verbs, but it forms words that are adjectives. (Compare with stoppable, doable, and washable.) When working with problems such as those described in this file, you may find it helpful to anthropomorphize the affixes a bit in your mind. For example, you can think about re- as the sort of thing that says, "I am looking for a verb. If you give me a verb, then I will give you another verb," and -able as the sort of thing that says, "I am looking for a verb. If you give me a verb, then I will give you an adjective." We learn from examining these two rules that re- cannot attach to usable, because usable is an adjective, but re- is "looking for" a verb. However, re- is able to attach to the root use, because use is a verb. Since reuse is also a verb, it can then serve as a stem to take -able. Thus, the formation of the word reusable is a two-step process whereby re- and use attach first, and then -able attaches to the word reuse. In this way, the output of one affixation process serves as the input for the next. The restrictions that each affix is subject to can help us determine the sequence of derivation. Words that are "layered" in this way have a special type of structure characterized as hierarchical. This hierarchical structure can be schematically represented by a tree diagram that indicates the steps involved in the formation of the word. The tree for reusable appears in. Interestingly, some words are ambiguous; that is, they can be associated with more than one meaning