What is Morphology? Word Structure Lec. 1 What is Morphology? Word Structure

Linguistic levels Semantic level  meaning  Syntactic level  sentence-structure Morphological level  word-structure Phonology  sound system

What is morphology? The study of the internal structure of words / the study of word formation. In the 19th century, morphology & the reconstruction of Indo-European (Latin-Sanskrit-Persian- Germanic) Sound system & word-formation patterns

What is a word? native speakers have intuitive knowledge of how to form new words: E.g. ‘splinch’ = to step on broken glass E.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v)/ Vietnamize (v) E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode? redie?

What is a word? A person a word is stretch of letters that occurs between blank spaces. a word is something small that means something. A linguist a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning. E.g. giraffe, red, re-, -ize, etc.

1. What is a word? A word is one or two morphemes that can stand alone in a language.

Simple words & Complex words giraffe sit pistachio Michael oops just Complex words opposition prewashed blackboard inseparable orphanage

Exercise While reading, an English book, you come across the word ‘pockled’? What would you do? ‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ? Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles, وردة ورود – وردات - أورد – تورد –وردتين – وردتان

1.1. The Lexeme We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of the abstract vocabulary item using the term lexeme. The forms eats, eating & eater are all different realisations/ representations/ manifestations of the lexeme EAT.

1.1. The Lexeme Lexemes share a core meaning although they are being spelled & pronounced differently. predictable / prediction / predictability Lexemes are the words listed in the dictionary e.g. Predict

Exercise Group words that belong to the same lexeme: sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes – seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy – boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman – sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller – catching – jumping – sees - women

1.2. The word-form We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a particular physical realisation of a specific lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a particular word-form.

The physical word-form The realisation of the lexeme see – sees- seeing – saw – seen sleep, sleeping, sleeper, slept, sleeps catch, catches, catching, caught, The realisation of the lexeme SEE SLEEP CATCH

1.3. The grammatical word The word is a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morphosyntactic properties (morphological + syntactic), such as noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

Exercise Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words represented by the word cut: Usually I cut the bread on the table Yesterday, I cut the bread in the sink * Jane has a cut on her finger

Morphemes Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning. E.g. unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under

Morphemes The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function from which words are made up. A morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller meaningful units, or units that mark a grammatical function.

Exercise -er player / caller / pretender -ness Kindness / cleanliness / goodness ex- ex-wife / ex-minister pre- Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school

Morphemes & meaning It is possible to combine several morphemes together to form more complex words. E.g. uncleanliness unfaithfulness reincarnation

Morphemes & meaning Meaning & morphemes: speakers may have different mental lexicons, based on their personal experience helicopter – pteropus - diptera (pter=wings) Bible – bibliography – bibliophile (bibl=book)

Identification of morphemes What is true of science in general is also true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957) It is not possible to establish mechanical techniques for the identification of morphemes But, there are a number of reasonably reliable & widely accepted techniques proposed by linguists working in morphology

2.1. the principle of Contrast We contrast forms (words) that differ in : 1. phonological shape /e/ vs. /i/ ten & tin / six & sex 2. meaning (meaning & grammatical) The girl plays vs. the boy plays The girl plays vs. the girl played

2.2 morphemes & morphs Morphemes are the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.

2.1. morphemes & morphs The analysis of morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).

morphemes & morphs morpheme By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find that they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person singular), work + ed (a marker for past tense), work + er (a marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work + house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these morphemes is called morphology. morph Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker, workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, -ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of an element, a segment, which is not yet classified. Source: http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/Newwords.pdf

Exercise Identify the morphs: I parked the car We parked the car He parks the car She parked the car She parks the car We park the car He parked the car The morphs are:

Exercise Identify the morphs which represent the past tense morpheme in English: /d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/ clean, weigh, enjoy, burb… /t/ the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/ park, miss, watch, … /id/ the verb ends with /t/ or /d/ mend, paint, hand, wait, …

Allomorphs If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs Sometimes the difference in form is not associated with a difference in meaning /d/, /t/, & /id/ /s/, /z/, & /iz/

morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs ‘past tense’ morph /id/ /d/ /t/ Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English

Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English Morphemes ‘plural’ morph /s/ /z/ /iz/

Identification of morphemes The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the notion of distribution; the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs.

Classification of morphs We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in complementary distribution: If morphs: represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical function, and are never found in identical contexts

The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English are in complementary distribution /id/ /d/ /t/

Exercise Identify the allomorphs of the negative morpheme impossible, impatient, immovable intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive, inelegance incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude

Notes If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorphs used in a given context is phonologically conditioned (assimilation). Spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in many languages (e. g. English)