1. What is Morphology? Word Structure
Lec. 1
What is Morphology?
Word Structure

2. Linguistic levels Semantic level  meaning 
Syntactic level  sentence-structure
Morphological level  word-structure
Phonology  sound system

3. What is morphology?
The study of the internal structure of words / the study of word formation.
In the 19th century, morphology & the reconstruction of Indo-European (Latin-Sanskrit-Persian- Germanic)
Sound system & word-formation patterns

4. What is a word?
native speakers have intuitive knowledge of how to form new words:
E.g. ‘splinch’ = to step on broken glass
E.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v)/ Vietnamize (v)
E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode? redie?

5. What is a word?
A person
a word is stretch of letters that occurs between blank spaces.
a word is something small that means something.
A linguist
a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning.
E.g. giraffe, red, re-,
-ize, etc.

6. 1. What is a word?
A word is one or two morphemes that can stand alone in a language.

7. Simple words & Complex words
giraffe
sit
pistachio
Michael
oops
just
Complex words
opposition
prewashed
blackboard
inseparable
orphanage

8. Exercise
While reading, an English book, you come across the word ‘pockled’? What would you do?
‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ?
Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items
pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles,
وردة
ورود – وردات - أورد – تورد –وردتين – وردتان

9. 1.1. The Lexeme
We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of the abstract vocabulary item using the term lexeme. The forms eats, eating & eater are all different realisations/ representations/ manifestations of the lexeme EAT.

10. 1.1. The Lexeme
Lexemes share a core meaning although they are being spelled & pronounced differently.
predictable / prediction / predictability
Lexemes are the words listed in the dictionary
e.g.
Predict

11. Exercise
Group words that belong to the same lexeme: sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes – seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy – boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman – sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller – catching – jumping – sees - women

12. 1.2. The word-form
We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a particular physical realisation of a specific lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a particular word-form.

13. The physical word-form The realisation of the lexeme
see – sees- seeing – saw – seen
sleep, sleeping, sleeper, slept, sleeps
catch, catches, catching, caught,
The realisation of the lexeme
SEE
SLEEP
CATCH

14. 1.3. The grammatical word
The word is a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morphosyntactic properties (morphological + syntactic), such as noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

15. Exercise
Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words represented by the word cut:
Usually I cut the bread on the table
Yesterday, I cut the bread in the sink
* Jane has a cut on her finger

16. Morphemes Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning. E.g.
unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under

17. Morphemes
The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function from which words are made up.
A morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller meaningful units, or units that mark a grammatical function.

18. Exercise -er player / caller / pretender -ness
Kindness / cleanliness / goodness
ex-
ex-wife / ex-minister
pre-
Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school

19. Morphemes & meaning
It is possible to combine several morphemes together to form more complex words.
E.g.
uncleanliness
unfaithfulness
reincarnation

20. Morphemes & meaning Meaning & morphemes:
speakers may have different mental lexicons, based on their personal experience
helicopter – pteropus - diptera (pter=wings)
Bible – bibliography – bibliophile
(bibl=book)

21. Identification of morphemes
What is true of science in general is also true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957)
It is not possible to establish mechanical techniques for the identification of morphemes
But, there are a number of reasonably reliable & widely accepted techniques proposed by linguists working in morphology

22. 2.1. the principle of Contrast
We contrast forms (words) that differ in :
1. phonological shape
/e/ vs. /i/ ten & tin / six & sex
2. meaning (meaning & grammatical)
The girl plays vs. the boy plays
The girl plays vs. the girl played

23. 2.2 morphemes & morphs
Morphemes are the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.

24. 2.1. morphemes & morphs
The analysis of morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs.
A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).

25. morphemes & morphs morpheme
By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find that they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person singular), work + ed (a marker for past tense), work + er (a
marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work + house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these morphemes is called morphology.
morph
Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker, workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, -ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of an element, a segment, which is not yet classified.
Source:

26. Exercise Identify the morphs:
I parked the car
We parked the car
He parks the car
She parked the car
She parks the car
We park the car
He parked the car
The morphs are:

27. Exercise
Identify the morphs which represent the past tense morpheme in English:
/d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/
clean, weigh, enjoy, burb…
/t/ the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/
park, miss, watch, …
/id/ the verb ends with /t/ or /d/
mend, paint, hand, wait, …

28. Allomorphs
If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs
Sometimes the difference in form is not associated with a difference in meaning
/d/, /t/, & /id/
/s/, /z/, & /iz/

29. morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs
‘past tense’
morph
/id/
/d/
/t/
Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English

30. Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English
Morphemes
‘plural’
morph
/s/
/z/
/iz/

31. Identification of morphemes
The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the notion of distribution; the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs.

32. Classification of morphs
We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in complementary distribution:
If morphs:
represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical function, and
are never found in identical contexts

33. The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English are in complementary distribution
/id/
/d/
/t/

34. Exercise Identify the allomorphs of the negative morpheme
impossible, impatient, immovable
intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive, inelegance
incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude

35. Notes
If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorphs used in a given context is phonologically conditioned (assimilation).
Spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in many languages (e. g. English)