Morphology Complex Words

Simplex words and complex words to walk, to dance, to laugh, to kiss to purify, to enlarge, to industrialize, to head-hunt house, corner, zebra collection, builder, sea horse green, old, sick regional, washable, honey-sweet

Morphemes A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that adds its own distinct bit of meaning to the word. kill-er, work-er, print-er wash-able, laugh-able re-paint-ing

Cranberry morphemes blueberry blackberry gooseberry (goose?) cranberry (cran???)

Free morphemes and bound morphemes Free morphemes can stand on their own. Bound morphemes, or affixes, cannot: Q: Is that green? A: *No, at best it’s –ish. Q: Is she any good at football? A: *Yes, she’s a great –er. Q: Does he play the piano often? A: *Yes, he –s it all the time.

Suffixes and prefixes Suffixes green-ish build-er wash-able solid-ify industry-al-ize Prefixes en-large re-en-act de-throne ex-minister

Circumfixes and infixes leef ge-leef-d huur ge-huur-d (Dutch) play played live lived Infixes: base: labas verb: l-um-abas ‘come out’ (Tagalog) base: pasok verb: p-um-asok ‘enter’ base: bili verb: b-um-ili ‘buy’

Compounding Combining two free morphemes: sea + horse  sea horse head + strong  headstrong hand + made  handmade

Productivity Some types of compounding are more productive than others. N-N compounding is completely productive in English: word + kitchen  word kitchen (e.g. a kitchen for morphologists) tree + laptop  tree laptop (e.g. a laptop with a picture of a tree) gorilla + window  gorilla window (e.g. a window through which you can see a gorilla) window + gorilla  window gorilla (e.g. a gorilla that always sits behind a window)

Derivation Making a completely new word with an affix: buildverb  build-ernoun largeadjective  en-largeverb industrynoun  industry-aladjective industry-aladjective  industry-al-izeverb

Inflection Providing grammatical information about a word with an affix: workverb-s (expresses that the verb has a third person singular subject) workverb-ed (expresses that the event expressed by the verb took place in the past) housenoun-s (expresses that we are dealing with more than one house)

Inflectional morphology can be obligatory in some syntactic contexts. *Sylvia usually walk to work. Sylvia usually walks to work.

Conversion ‘Invisible’ morphology to build – a build-er to dance – a danc-er to run – a run-er to kill – a kill-er to cook – a cook

Conversion between different categories: to runVERB – a runNOUN yellowADJECTIVE – to yellowVERB downPREPOSITION – to downVERB greenADJECTIVE – a greenNOUN

Null affixes in inflection: I/You usually go- to the market on Saturdays.

Tree structures Representing the structure of a complex word in the form of a tree diagram N N plural N N s school V N teach er

Structural ambiguity This ex-president-office-manager works for Bill Clinton. This ex-president-office-manager is now a street artist.

N N N N ex N N N manager N N ex N office N N manager president president office