Morphology!

But puns first.  In partnership with Gabe  Have you seen Ken Burns' new documentary on the impact of yeast on agricultural societies?  The Metacritic rating is rising, but it isn't doing well at the box office.  Right now, their profits are in the bread.  Now, it’s time for some morphology: because you can never get enough phology.

Morphology? Qu’est-ce c’est? Fa fa fa fa fa fa...  Morphology is the study of the structure of language – how little bits of meaning combine to make things like words and sentences

Basic Lexical Categories  Über-important for syntax and morphology  You probably already know these  Nouns: cat, Eat Pray Love, Donald Trump, Mr. Rose  Verbs: eat, pray, love, trump, rise  Adjectives: descriptive, prescriptive, Kennedyesque  Adverbs: quickly, ponderously  There are many more. These are just the basic ones.

Back to Morphology  A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language  “Cat” is a morpheme. “C” is not, nor is “t” or “ca.”  Unsinkable has three morphemes: “un-,” “sink,” and “-able”  Two types:  Free morphemes can stand alone as a complete word (e.g. “cat,” “of”)  Bound morphemes must join to other words (e.g. “un-,” “dis-,” “-ing”)

Types of Bound Morphemes  Inflectional morphemes indicate number, case, tense, or gender. They don’t change the inherent meaning of the root.  “-s” and “-es” attach to nouns to make them plural  “-ed” (and other irregular forms) put verbs in past tense  Derivational morphemes do change the meaning of the root.  Adding “un-” to “happy” changes the meaning just a little  Some derivational morphemes change the lexical class of the word (e.g. “energy” + “-ize” = “energize” – an adjective becomes a verb)

 That last point about a morpheme changing a root’s lexical class brings us to a semi-related tangent about a very special morpheme…

The Null Morpheme!  Sometimes there exist multiple forms of a word that appear to be exactly the same. They appear to have exactly the same morphemes, but clearly have different meanings.  e.g. “heat” (the noun) and “heat” (the verb)  The null morpheme, written as Ø, is not pronounced or written as part of a word, but can change its meaning

Zero Derivation  Zero Derivation is the process of adding a Ø to a word  It changes the lexical category of the word  “This is a baby.” (noun)  “This is a baby finch.” (adjective)  “You baby your child too much.” (verb)  The original lexical class may not be clear  “heat” can be used as a noun or a verb. What lexical class did it start as?  ¯\_( ツ )_/¯  Anyway, end of tangent

Roots  Every word has one root – a free morpheme to which bound morphemes can be attached  Did I say “every?” Well, I lied. There are exceptions.  Compound words (e.g. “catnap,” “blackboard”) have multiple roots. Those roots are free morphemes.  Bound roots: some words have clearly separable morphemes, but no free roots (no roots that can stand alone)  “Antagonize” and “antagonist” have “-ize” and “-ist” morphemes, and clearly come from the same root, but “antagon” just ain’t a word.

Affixes  An affix is a morpheme that is added onto a root (all bound morphemes are affixes)  Two types in English:  Prefixes are attached to the beginning of the root (e.g. “un-,” “de-”)  Suffixes are attached to the end of the root (e.g. “-ing,” “-ize”)

Affixes 2  Affixes in other languages:  Infixes are inserted into the middle of the root  Does English have an example of an infix?  Abso-fucking-lutely!  “-fucking-” is the only English infix  Actually, I lied: the “-ma-” in “edumacation” is an infix, and is so legitimate that there is an actual paper (Yu 2004) that studies it  Circumfixes are broken into two parts and surround the root  Does English have an example of a circumfix?  Fuck-absolutely-ing not!  There are no English circumfixes

Foreign Language Morphology  Languages can be grouped based how they handle morphology  Isolating (or analytic) languages: nearly every word is a free morpheme  e.g. Vietnamese khi tôi dên nhà ban tôi, chúng tôi bát dâu làm bài When I came to my friend's house, we began to do lessons

Foreign Language Morphology 2  Synthetic languages: words have multiple morphemes. There are two types:  Agglutinative languages: morpheme sequences are added in a specific order. Each morpheme has one and only one meaning. These languages are usually very regular.  e.g. Turkish ev house evin your house evinde at your house  Ojibwe is another example

Foreign Language Morphology 3  Fusional languages: one morpheme may encode several meanings  e.g. Latin “-us” indicates gender (masculine) and number (singular) (and also nominative case) Changing to masculine plural requires using a completely different morpheme, “-i”

A Sample Morphology Problem Or, What You Already Know How to Do

Sample Problem Obokobo 1.namekobolipa 2.namemanamanahu 3.nakobomanamanalihu 4.naninakobomanamanazulihu 5.naninamemanamanazuhu 6.pomemanamanazuhu 7.pokobomanamanalihu English “I do not like your face.” “Your face is ugly.” “My face is not ugly” “My sister’s face is also not ugly.” “Your sister’s face is ugly, also.” “Your hair is also ugly.” “My hair is not ugly.”

Step 1: Sort face namekobolipa namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu ugly namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu like namekobolipa hair pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu I/my namekobolipa nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu pokobomanamanalihu be (“is”) namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu sister naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu you/your namekobolipa namemanamanahu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu not namekobolipa nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu pokobomanamanalihu also, too naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu

Step 2: Find Similarities face ‒ na namekobolipa namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu ugly ‒ manamana namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu like ‒ pa namekobolipa hair ‒ po pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu I/my ‒ kobo namekobolipa nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu pokobomanamanalihu be (“is”) ‒ hu namemanamanahu nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu pokobomanamanalihu sister ‒ nina naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu you/your ‒ me namekobolipa namemanamanahu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu not ‒ li namekobolipa nakobomanamanalihu naninakobomanamanazulihu pokobomanamanalihu also, too ‒ zu naninakobomanamanazulihu naninamemanamanazuhu pomemanamanazuhu

Step 3: Find Patterns objectpossessorsubjectpossessor adjectivealsonotverb namekobolipa“I do not like your face.” faceyourInotlike nakobomanamanalihu“My face is not ugly.” facemyuglynotis naninamemanamanazulihu“My sister’s face is also not ugly.” facesistermyuglyalsonotis