Morphology Study of word making
Morphemes 2 kinds of morphemes: a. Free morpheme: can be used by itself Ex. “what is that?” “dog” b. Bound morpheme: cannot be used by itself Ex. “how many dogs are there?” *“–s”
Word formation processes Affixation Compounding Reduplication Alternations Suppletion
Affixation A bound morpheme attaches/interjects the root (or stem) of a word to form a new word. Prefix Suffix Infix Circumfix
4 kinds of affixation a. Prefix unhappy b. Suffix walked c. Infix Fillipines (Tagalog) -um- is a infinitivizer sulat “write” sumulat “to write” d. Circumfix Fillippines (Tuwali Ifugao) ka -- an is a nominalizer baddang “v. to help” kabaddangan “n. helpfulness”
Prefix Examples Latin ab-‘away from’ ad- ‘to, towards, near’ ambi- ‘both’ circum- ‘around’ con- ‘with’ contra- ‘against’ endo- ‘within’ epi- ‘on, upon’ extra- retro- ‘outside, beyond’ semi- ‘half’ sub- ‘under, below’ super-, supra- ‘above, upper’ Greek a-, an- ‘negative’ anti- ‘against’ apo- ‘away from’ di- ‘two, twice, double’ dia- ‘’through’ ecto- ‘outside’ exo- ‘outside, outward’ para-‘along side of’ syn- ‘with’
Compounding Putting two free morphemes together whíte hóuse Whíte House blue berryblueberry Tom boyTomboy
Reduplication Repeat a morpheme to form a new word Indonesian (singluar vs. Plural) anak ‘child’ anakanak ‘children’ orang ‘person’ orangorang ‘people’ ibu ‘mother’ibuibu ‘mothers’ Japanese (noun vs. adverb/adjective) toki ‘ time’tokidoki ‘sometimes’ iro ‘color’iroiro ‘variety of…’
Alternations Change a sound (sounds) within a word manmen goosegeese foot feet runran holdheld
Suppletion Completely irregular or unrelated to the root to form (usually) a small class of words English copula verb‘be’ is/are/was/were go/went
Derivation of words How do you think words are put together? reconstruction
Derivation of words You have to think about… Grammatical category Typical behavior of morphemes How to approach? Separate the word into morphemes Word making process is always one step at a time some morphological restrictions (i.e., you cannot randomly attach morphemes=a certain order to form a word)