Morphology Chapter 7 Prepared by Alaa Al Mohammadi

What is Morphology? What is a ‘word’? Items marked in black separated by spaces? What about the ‘thecatsatonthemat’? In Swahili the form ‘nitakupenda’ stands for what we might say in English ‘I will love you’? What about the word ‘replayed’ and ‘play’? The concept ‘word’ turns out to be a complex fuzzy category. Depend on ‘elements’ rather than ‘words’

Definitions Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words. = the study of how words are built  = set of morphemes + the rules of how they are combined How words are put together out of smaller pieces  morphemes e.g. replayed consists of re+play+ed

Morpheme A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function Minimal= can’t be broken down any further. Meaning? Grammatical function? renewable Tourists re + new + able tour + ist + s

Morphemes A word that contains more than one morpheme is a morphologically complex word One morpheme is the basic one, the core of the form  root or stem The add-ons bound morphemes are affixes E.g. ‘rearranged’ ‘teachers’

Free vs. Bound morphemes Types of morphemes Free vs. Bound morphemes Free Bound Can stand alone as separate words Cannot occur on their own as separate words Single morphemes e.g. hunt, kill, the, play, child, book. Affixes -s in dogs -ness in happiness -ed in walked

Free Morphemes Divided into : Lexical morphemes vs. Functional Morphemes. Lexical morphemes Functional morphemes a.k.a content words: carry the content of the message a.k.a function words Includes nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs such as, children, love, beauty, play, sing Include pronouns, articles, conjunctions, prepositions as, the, on, from, and, in, etc. Open class word Close class words

Bound Morphemes Affixation Prefix: An affix that is attached to the front of a base, e.g. re-play. Suffix: An affix that is attached to the end of a base, e.g. kind-ness. Infix: An affix that occur within a base, e.g. (in Indonesian) s-in-ambung.

Bound Morphemes Divided into derivational vs. inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes make new words in a language- different grammatical category from the stem e.g. suffix –ness in happiness Inflectional morphemes indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word. e.g. suffix –ed in walked indicate past tense

Derivation vs. Inflection It changes the category and/or the type of meaning of the word, so it is said to create a new word. e.g. suffix –ment in government It does not change either the grammatical category or the type of meaning found in the word. e.g. suffix –s in books Bound morphemes always appear in order, first derivational then inflectional. E.g. teachers

English Inflectional Morphemes Nouns –s plural –’s possessive Verbs –s third person singular present –ed past tense –en past participle –ing progressive Adjectives –er comparative –est superlative

Some examples of English Derivational Morpheme -ic : Noun  Adj ; alcohol  alcoholic -ly : Adj  Adv ; exact  exactly -ate : Noun  Verb ; vaccin  vaccinate -ity : Adj  Noun ; active  activity -ship : Noun  Noun ; friend  friendship re- : Verb  Verb ; cover  recover

Categories of Morphemes

The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher Analyzing words The girl’s wildness shocked the teacher The  functional girl  lexical -s  inflectional Wild  lexical -ness  derivational Shock  lexical -ed  inflectional The  functional Teach  lexical -er  derivational

Morphs and allomorphs Phoneme and allophone? Morphs are the actual realization of morphemes. Morphemes are abstract units- morphs are discrete. Some morphemes are realized by one or more morphs according to their position in a word or a sentence  allomorph

Morphs and allomorphs Morpheme of plurality represented as -s E.g Cats – digs – forces Allomorphs are represented {-s}, {-z} and {-iz} Phonetic influence of neighboring sound Allomorphs for the morpheme of past tense –ed?

Describe the italic affixes: impossible terrorized terrorize desks dislike humanity fastest Derivational prefix Inflectional suffix Derivational suffix

Describe the italic affixes: premature untie darken fallen oxen faster lecturer Derivational prefix Derivational suffix Inflectional suffix

Analyze different types of morphemes The young boy played with his friends. The  Young  Boy  Play  -ed  With  His  Friend  -s  Functional Lexical Inflection inflectional