Linguistics week 12 Morphology 2

We looked at Words, word-forms and lexemes She’s a good cook, but I can cook better Function words and content words

Two kinds of words Function words Content words Restricted in number A closed class Have a grammatical function Usually just one morpheme (a grammatical morpheme) Content words An open class New content words often come into use in every language Which words on this slide …? Chinese examples?

You think English is hard? Ha! When I was at school I had to do Latin See if you can find out what this is: amo amamus amas amatis amat amant Or this dominus domini domine domini dominum dominos domini dominorum domino dominis

They were Latin inflections The two lists each show the different word-forms, for a Latin noun or verb dominus is the nominative (subject form) domine is the vocative form (Oh Master!) dominum is the accusative (object form) domini is the genitive (the master’s, of the master) domino is the dative (to or for the master) domino is the ablative (in some words, this is different from the dative) (by, with or from the master) English has a genitive form. What is it? Does Chinese have one? In some lexemes, English attests nominative, accusative and genitive forms What are these lexemes?

Inflectional morphology In English, inflection includes things like Number Tense Fromkin 101 gives a complete list Although she doesn’t explain that -s and -es (for example) are two realizations (two allomorphs!) of the same morpheme Also on p101: does the Italian verb inflection list seem familiar? BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme so sleepy is not an inflection of sleep unkind is not an inflection of kind artistic is not an inflection of artist (which is not an inflection of art (Inflection and derivation task)

Inflectional vs derivational morphology Inflection does not change the word class (syntactic category, part-of-speech, 詞類) Derivation may or may not change word class Derivation makes a new lexeme create  creative Inflection just changes the grammatical ending of the original lexeme create  creates Inflection is productive You can add –s to any verb, to make it plural Derivation is not necessarily productive You cannot always add un- to an adjective, or -ive to a verb

Roots and affixes Unbelievable contains One free morpheme A root and two affixes One prefix and one suffix In English, there are derivational prefixes and suffixes There are no inflectional prefixes Suffixes are more common in the world’s languages But Thai has only prefixes – no suffixes Fromkin 78: plural in the Zapotec language is relized by a prefix, not a suffix

Infixes In Tagalog What is the root morpheme here? sulat = write sumulat = wrote sinulat = was written What is the root morpheme here? What are the affixes? Fromkin describes a kind of infix used in English I don’t want to go to uni-bloody-versity Is there any infixing in Mandarin, do you think?

Reduplication Afrikaans Motu (Papua New Guinea) dik = ‘thick’; dikdik = ‘very thick’ Motu (Papua New Guinea) mero = boy; memero = boys meromero = little boy How do you say ‘little boys’ in this language? And – you guessed it – what uses does reduplication have in Mandarin?

Hierarchical structure of words (Fromkin 84) unbelievable and unsystematic have only one structural analysis each: believe 相信 + -able 可相信 + un- 不可相信 Unlockable, Fromkin shows on 85-6, is morphologically ambiguous It can be understood in two ways Try to understand why, by looking at the trees

Reading and exercises 69 to 74 (or further if you like) Ex 2, 3, 4, 5A, 6 You will probably enjoy these! You might like to take a look at my master’s thesis It contains a short section on reduplication in Chinese It has some ideas about compounding (for next week) You will get an idea of the structure of a Western-style essay: study, especially, the way the references and bibliography work