Morphology 5.1, 5.3 (Ex. p 154 #0, 1) Homework: 5.2 (due 3/19)

Morphology Up to this point we have studied the sounds of English and how they interact in systematic ways The next step: Strings of language sounds form units of meaning

Morphology Morphology is the study of how units of meaning are formed

Morphology How many units of meaning are present in the following sentence: my shoes are untied

Morphology Or in this sentence: I waited for her all morning

Morphology Or in this sentence: those socks are smelly

Morphology *Morpheme — the smallest unit of meaning in a language –i.e., it cannot be subdivided into smaller units of meaning

Morphology We usually think of morphemes as bases/stems affixes

Stem *Base / stem — the meaning unit that affixes attach to This is the core of the word, which has the lexical meaning that is added to in some way by an affix

Morphology *Affixes – attach to bases/stems

Affixes Prefixes attach to the front of a stems or words (in-)sight (dis-)arm (un-)aware

Affixes Suffixes — attach to the end of stems or words try(-ing) examin(-ation) navig(-ate) rect(-ify)

Affixes Infixes – attach in the middle of a word Karl (-the mailman-) Malone, etc. fan(-f…-)tastic a(-whole-)nother thing

Morphology Through the systematic interaction of morphemes, the units of meaning of a language are formed Part of what we know when we know a language is how morphemes interact

Morphology Some morphemes show variation in use Colder More beautiful

Morphology Adjectives / Adverbs (-er) ‘more’ slower (-est) ‘most’slowest Can we make a descriptive rule for this variation?

Morphology *Allomorph: Variants of morphemes That is, variations in the form of the morpheme, with each form having the same meaning

Allomorphs Plural (-s) morpheme /z/ /əz/ /s/ beds sashes hats Question: Which is basic plural in English?

Allomorphs Possessive (-s) /z/ Bill’s /əz / Marcus’s /s/ Clark’s

Allomorphs 3Person Singular /z/ reads /əz/ watches /s/ hits

Allomorphs *RULE: after voiced sounds, /z/ after sibilants, /əz/ after other voiceless sounds /s/ [sound familiar?]

More Allomorphs Past tense (–ed): /d/ feared, burned, cried /t/wished, kissed [for some, burnt, learnt] /əd/ heated, mended

More Allomorphs RULE: after voiced sounds, /d/ after voiceless sounds, /t/ after alveolar stops, /ed/

Allomorphs We can see that many allomorphs in English are phonologically conditioned — Their form is determined by neighboring sounds Cf. Spanish: amigos (in Spanish, no such conditioning)

Allomorphs Other allomorphs in English: pres. part. (-ing)[ən], [i ŋ ] ‘playing’ free variation (only stylistic variation)

Allomorphs Unlike Inactive Impossible Illogical Irreversible What rule produced these allomorphs?

Morphology Lexical categories: I. Content words: have lexical meaning II. Grammar words: provide primarily grammatical information

Lexical categories I. *Content words (form class words) Content (form class) words change form to fit into the grammar — pitch (V.) → pitcher (n.)

Content words 1. Constitute most of vocabulary — by far the greatest number of words

Content words (form class words) 2. Have lexical meaning — that is, they mean something — table, floor, eat (Nouns, Verbs, Ajs., Avs.)

Content words (form class words) 3. Open category: New ones can come into the language at any time — CDRom; mouse; blog; google; mcjob

Lexical categories II. *Grammatical (function class) words 1.Smallest part of vocabulary — only a small fraction of words

Grammatical (function class) words 2.Primarily grammatical meaning — and, but, on, under, who, etc. These not so much mean things as signify grammatical relationships

Grammatical (function class) words 3.Closed class — unchanging grammatical structure words No new ones

Morphology Content (Form Class) words in English may take inflectional morphemes or derivational morphemes

*Inflectional morphemes 1.Contain grammatical information 2.Do not change word class 3.Suffixes only

Inflectional morphemes Inflectional morphemes of English: N — pl. (-s) two shoes –p possessive (-s) a dog’s breakfast

Inflectional morphemes V — 3 person sing. –s She eats at noon. –pres. participle –ingare eating –past tense (-ed) earned $20 –past participle (–en) has eaten [includes (-ed), vowel change]

Inflectional morphemes Adj / Adv— (-er) slower (-est) slowest English has these 8 exactly

Derivational morphemes *Derivational morphemes of English participate in deriving new words 1.Change word meaning — (im-) port (un-) do

Derivational morphemes 2. Can change word class (-er) driv-er, can open-er noun making (-ation) inform-ation noun making (-ize) real-ize verb making (-al) individu-aladjective making (-ious) delic-iousadj. making

Derivational morphemes 3. May be suffix or prefix (un-)like(-ly) (im-)practic(-al)

Morphology *Word Formation — Note sequence in which morphemes are attached to stems and words: Smell-y Tie → un-tie → un-tie-d form → re-form → re-form-ation Veri-fy →veri-fi-able → un-veri-fi-able

Word formation Native speakers of a language know which combinations are possible and which are actual ?saltish crackers ?sugary cookies ?three-years-old girl

Inflection vs. Suppletion Contrast Spanish and English verb patterns: Spanish ser conjugation Yo soynosotros somos Tu eres(vosotros sois) ustedes son El esellos son

Suppletion The English be verb paradigm: –I amwe are –You areyou are –He / she / it isthey are demonstrates suppletion — separate items used to produce forms in a grammatical pattern

Suppletion More examples in English: go / went person / people good / better bad / worse

Word formation These elements of word formation are an important component of the fundamental, complex knowledge we have of our language