Morphology and Syntax- Week 5 Dr. Monira I. Al-Mohizea

Derivation This process creates new lexical items with a new meaning or grammatical category. Derivational morphology in English includes: Affixation Conversion Compounding

Consider the following: Likable Amoral Supremacy Disagree Applicant Ex-chairman Denial Re-sell Payee unclean Driver Ironing Childish Vanity

(1) Affixation Definition: it is the process of creating words throw suffixes and prefixes. The most important process of derivational processes is affixation. The set of derivational suffixes is large, unlike the set of inflectional suffixes, it can have new members. The openendedness (e.g. lite) Discuss??

English derivational Affixes:

The nature of word formation rules It is generally agreed that word-formation are like phrase-structure (sentence formation) rules used in syntax. In morphology there are different types of units that are allowed to form a word, and the order in which they occur.

Word-structure rule Think of examples?? Word Rule Examples a. ward > affix stem exhale b. word > stem affix sentiment c. word > word affix amazement d. word > affix word rewrite e. word > word word motorway Note: (i) stem means a bound non-affix morpheme. (ii) The arrow means 'consists of'. (iii) The rule indicates the order at constituents, e.g., affix before stem vs. stem before a affix. Think of examples??

A phrase structure rule is usually translated into a phrase structure tree diagram. Words have internal structure, affixes and roots are not put together higgledy-piggledy. There must be a head element that dominates everything and determines the word class, and the slots that it can occupy in a sentence. In English word, the head is the right-hand-most element, be it a root or a suffix. This principle is known as right-hand-head-rule. E.g. (disagree, amazement, exhale)??.

Phrase Structure Trees: Word affix stem In the lexicon each affix is assigned a syntactic category. The syntactic categories of the affix percolates to it from the entire word.

Compositionality Consider the following: E.g. He Kicked the bucket => to die Vs. He spilled the beans => to spread the secret

Compositionality and its limits Definition of compositionality: If a linguistic structure compositional, then the meaning of the whole can be inferred from the parts, taking into account the grammatical relations between them. Affixed words are composed of building blocks, each contributing its syntax and meaning. Often the meaning of a complex word containing affixes can be computed from the meaning of its parts. You can usually work work out the meaning of a word that you may not have encountered before, if you know the meaning of its constituents parts. E.g. retraditionalization.

Limits of compositionality Consider the following: Seeker, writer, looker. What do the derive?? Miscarriage?

Compositional Vs. Non-compositional seeker and writer derive a noun meaning 'somebody who does whatever' However, if we applied the same interpretation to looker, we would be wrong. A looker is not someone who looks, it is a handsome person. Hence, the meaning of looker is non-compositional. So this word has to be listed in the lexicon, and memorized.

Thank you 