MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES Dr. Monira I. AL-Mohizea

morphological processes  there are a set of important (inflectional) morphological processes involving mainly (phonological) changes that must be taken into perspective:  Zero morph  Internal change  Exponence  Suppletion  Syncretism  Haplology  Reduplication  Stress placement

Consider the following: a. Put it in the bin (n.) b. Bin (v.) it! Take a fast (adj.) train The train goes very fast (adv.) He has short legs (n.) We legged (v.) it

(1) Conversion  Conversion is a very productive method of deriving words, especially verbs from nouns and nouns, from verbs.  Definition: (also called 'zero-derivation') when conversion is used, a new word is formed by assigning an existing word a new syntactic category (part of speech) without changing its form in any way.  The word class of the derived word can be detected by looking at the context in which it appears.  Examples??

(2) Affixation  Affixation is word-building involving the use of affixes.  It is extremely common.  Affixes can be classified as prefixes and suffixes depending on whether they precede or follow the root.  Another type of affixation is the infixation which is very marginal in English.  Expletive infixation is used commonly for expressive purposes, as of McCarthy (1982) but it has no grammatical role.  Consider the following: Fan-bloody-tastic

Consider the following:  A sheep was walking along the river. vs.  20 sheep were walking along the river.

(3) Zero morph  In this process, the word sheep unlike other nouns, has no overt marking of number even when its meaning is plural.  (Twenty) clearly indicates plurality as well as the auxiliary verb (were) which indicates that.  English syntax recognizes the plurality of this noun and requires the verb agreeing with it to be plural.  Likewise many monosyllabic verbs, as let, cut, hit, are not marked overtly when they occur in a context where the syntax requires past tense inflection on the verb.  E.g. I cut it yesterday.

Consider the following: Nouns Singular Plural foot [fot] feet /fi:t/ Mouse [maus] mice [maIs] Verbs Present Past Past participle ride rode ridden sing sang sung

(4) Internal change  Definition: Sometimes inflection is done by changing a vowel in the root. This is called internal change or (apophony).  In some cases, apophony may be accompanied by affixation as in the case of (Ridden).  Think of other examples??

Consider the following:  In sweets [s] realizes ??  In parked (the actual pronunciation of -ed) is ?? it realizes: ?? Or ??, or ??

(5) Exponence  Definition: Exponence is the realization of morpho- syntactic features via inflection.  The morpheme [s] in (sweets) is the exponent of the morpho-syntactic feature plural, and [t] (the actual pronunciation of –ed in parked) realizes past tense or past participle.  The relationship between morphs and morpho-syntactic features such as plural, past tense, present tense, etc. is one of realization (or representation) rather than composition.

Simple vs. Cumulative exponence  Simple exponence: one morpheme for one morphosyntactic feature.  E.g. [s] in (sweets) realizes plural.  Cumulative exponence: more than one morphological feature maps onto a single morpheme.  E.g. [s] in (she thinks), realizes third person, present tense, and singular.

Consider the following: A. Parked B. Lived Missed Ruled Watched Spied

 Normally allomorphs of a morpheme are phonologically related.  The regular past tense ending in English is realized as [t] after a verb whose last sound is voiceless. (e.g. parked (pa:kt).  If the verb’s last sound is voiced (e.g. lived [livd], it is realized as [d].  The sounds [t] and [d] are similar, both are alveolar stops.

(6) Suppletion  Occasionally we find allomorphs of the same morpheme whose phonological shapes are unrelated.  If a phonological relationship is totally non existent, we speak of total suppletion (E.g. good & better, go & went).  The term partial suppletion is used to describe situations where residual phonetic similarity between allomorphs can be detected (e.g. seek – sought, bring - brought, etc).

Consider the following: A. Past Past participle gave given sang sung Vs. B. Past Past participle Cooked Cooked Brought Brought

(7) Syncretism  Definition: Syncretism refers to a situation where morpho-syntactic categories that are represented by distinct forms elsewhere are mapped on to the same form in some contexts.  In many regular verbs, and some irregular ones, the morph-syntactic properties of past and past participle are mapped onto different forms (e.g. gave– given) No syncretism.  Without syncretism there is internal change and suffixation of -en, to signal past participle.  With syncretism, the same form, i.e., -ed is suffixed, and only the context can help distinguish between past participle and past tense.

Consider the following:  Probably  *probly  Jones's house  Jones' house

(7) Haplology  Avoidance of sequences of identical linguistic forms is a phenomenon found in many languages.  Definition: Haplology is a type of dissimilation, when two identical or very similar syllables or sounds occur next to each other and one is be deleted.  It can happen internally within a word or root morpheme of at least three syllables (e.g. probably).  If a weakly stressed syllable is next to an adjacent syllable that is identical as in (probably) haplology occurs.  The genitive suffix is spelled and is phonologically realized as [s] - [z]. If it is too similar to the final sound of the base it is merged in many people's pronunciation and normally omitted in writing (e.g. Jones's house => Jones' house).  The genitive in this situations is indicated merely by the presence of the apostrophe.

Consider the following:  night-night  go-go  bye-bye  airy-fairy  hoity-toity  razzle-dazzle

(8) Reduplication  Reduplication is the creation of a new word by repetition of an existing word in its entirety, or in part.  Repetition of the entire word is called full reduplication (e.g. bang-bang, bye-bye).  In partial reduplication, only part of a word is repeated it has traditionally involved rhyming (e.g. airy-fairy, hoity-toity, razzle-dazzle, and nitty-gritty.  Partial reduplication can also be ablaut (vowel change) as in tip-top, shilly-shally, zigzag, pitter-patter.  The process affects a monosyllabic word. The vowel of the rhyme is changed, leaving the rest of the word intact.

Consider the following:

Stress placement  In some cases, derivation is effected by changing stress placement.  Nouns can be derived from verbs and verbs from nouns by certain rules.

Thank you