1. Morphology, Part 2
September 27, 2010

2. Mr. Burns Quick Write First off: a note on paying attention.
Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary inside his head?

4. Interesting Thoughts

5. Interesting Thoughts

6. The Last Word

7. In Our Last Episode Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”)
Word-formation rules
Free and bound morphemes
Simple and complex words
Affixes and roots

8. Cranberry Morphemes Cranberry morphemes are bound root morphemes.
They have no independent meaning.
They also have no parts of speech
Some more examples:
perceive, receive, deceive
-ceive?
infer, refer, defer
-fer?
commit, permit, submit
-mit?
Also: the liberation of cran?

9. Conjugation
In many languages verbs are conjugated by adding affixes specifying person and number to a bound root form.
Italian: parlare “to speak”
Singular Plural
1st Io parlo “I speak” Noi parliamo “We speak”
2nd Tu parli “You speak” Voi parlate “Y’all speak”
3rd Lui parla “He speaks” Loro parlano “They speak”
Lei parla “She speaks”
Note: the root form /parl-/ never appears on its own, without an ending.

10. Bases (or Stems)
Once an affix has attached to a root morpheme, it forms a base…
to which other affixes may attach.
Example:
boy (root) + -ish (suffix) = boyish
Round two:
boyish (base) + -ness (suffix) = boyishness
Another example: black (root) + -en = blacken
Round two: blacken (base) + -ed = blackened
In some linguistic circles, bases are called stems.

11. Lexical Categories
Important: we know that word-building takes place in stages because specific affixes are particular about what kinds of words they can attach to.
A quick and dirty review of lexical categories (parts of speech):
Nouns
=people, places, things
dog, cat, bike, person, planet, ball, etc.
Verbs
=actions, sensations, states
run, kick, scratch, scream, bite, walk, be, have, etc.

12. Lexical Categories, reviewed
3. Adjectives
= properties or qualities
happy, sad, angry, funny, clear, fuzzy, ugly, etc.
4. Prepositions
spatial relationships (= pre + position)
to, for, of, with, out, in, above, below, etc.
5. Adverbs
= properties or qualities of verbs and adjectives
often, seldom, rarely, purely, frequently, etc.
We’ll talk about these again when we get to syntax…

13. Picky, Picky
Affixes generally attach to a base with a particular lexical category.
Examples:
verb = [re-] + verb (“to do again”)
recycle = [re-] + cycle reuse = [re-] + use
adjective = [in-] + adjective (“opposite of”)
insecure = [in-] + secure
incomplete = [in-] + complete
noun = [ex-] + noun (“former”)
ex-wife = [ex-] + wife
ex-president = [ex-] + president

14. Tricky Picky
Other affixes attach to a base of a particular lexical category…
And create a word of a different lexical category.
noun = verb + [-er]
sweeper = sweep + [-er] teacher = teach + [-er]
verb = adjective + [-en]
blacken = black + [-en] freshen = fresh + [-en]
adjective = verb + [-able]
desirable = desire + [-able]
squeezable = squeeze + [-able]

15. Quiz Time
Which affixes are being attached in the following sets of words?
Which lexical categories do those affixes attach to?
Which lexical categories are formed by adding the affix?
uncertain, unhappy, untrue
exactly, profoundly, deeply
moralize, vandalize, sermonize
deconstruct, decode, derail

16. Layers of Words
Words that are formed through the addition of multiple affixes have a layered, or hierarchical structure.
One (ugly) way to represent this structure is through bracket notation:
[root] [construct]
[[affix] + [root]] [[re-] + [construct]] (=base)
[[base] + [affix]] [[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]]
WORD reconstruction

17. Tree Structures
In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to represent word structure.
(because they look better and are easier to read)
re construct ion un desire able
Tree terminology: branches
nodes: where two branches meet
nodes represent constituents of the word

18. Building the Perfect Beasts
To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation…
tree structures should represent the lexical categories of all constituents at each node in the tree.
Noun Adj
Verb Adj
Aff Verb Aff Aff Verb Aff
[re-] [construct] [-ion] [un-] [desire] [-able]

19. Test Case What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like?
Noun
Verb
Aff Verb Aff
[re-] [assign] [-ment]
3. reassignment
2. reassign
1. assign
deploy - deployment
arrange - arrangement
employ - employment, etc.

20. Another Test Case How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”?
Noun
Verb
Aff Noun Aff Aff
[mis-] [category] [-ize] [-ation]
4. miscategorization
3. miscategorize
2. categorize
*miscategory
1. category
Construe - misconstrue
Appropriate (v) - misappropriate
Play (v) - misplay
confusion - *misconfusion

21. Ambiguity Some complex words can have more than one interpretation
Different derivations can result in different interpretations
Example: “unlockable”
Note: [un-] can attach to both adjectives and verbs
[-able] attaches to verbs and creatives adjectives

22. Unlockable, part 1 Adj Aff Verb Aff [un-] [lock] [-able]
= not able to be locked

23. Unlockable, part 2 Adj Verb Aff Verb Aff [un-] [lock] [-able]
= able to be unlocked

24. Inflections vs. Derivations
Linguists draw another distinction among affixes:
Inflectional affixes:
mark grammatical properties
(person, number, gender, tense, aspect)
don’t change other aspects of meaning
are required by rules of sentence structure
create a new “word form”
Derivational affixes:
change meaning
create a new word
(typically) have clear semantic content
may change the lexical category of the word

25. Inflectional Affixes
There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English:
-s 3rd person wait --> waits
-ing progressive wait --> waiting
-ed past tense wait --> waited
-en past participle eat --> eaten
-s plural card --> cards
-’s possessive dad --> dad’s
-er comparative tall --> taller
-est superlative weak --> weakest
All of these are suffixes.

26. Inflectional Affixes
Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes.
Examples from French: parler “to speak”
1st person, plural: parlons “We speak”
2nd person, plural: parlez “You guys speak”
Past tense:
1st person, singular: parlais “I spoke”
1st person, plural: parlions “We spoke”
2nd person, plural: parliez “You guys spoke”
Plus many, many more.
Note: Volapük. (

27. Derivational Affixes
In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes:
Create new words when they’re attached to roots
Examples:
re- cycle --> recycle
de- code --> decode
-y fish --> fishy
-ize vandal --> vandalize
Also: English has far more derivational affixes than inflectional affixes.
For fairness’ sake: