1. Brief introduction to morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure and word formation processes in language.

2. Terminology
A morpheme is the smallest meaning-bearing unit in a language.
Free morphemes are independent words.
Bound morphemes, called affixes, cannot stand on their own.
Types of affixes:
prefix attaches at front of word
suffix attaches at end of word
circumfix attaches around word
infix attaches inside word

3. References for examples
Examples are either from our textbook or from Linguistics, second edition, by Akmajian, Demers and Harnish, MIT press.

4. Morphological processes
There are different kinds of morphological processes, in particular:
inflectional morphology
derivational morphology

5. English inflectional morphology
nouns
plural marker: -s (dog + s = dogs)
possessive marker: -’s (dog + ’s = dog’s)
verbs
3rd person present singular: -s (walk + s = walks)
past tense: -ed (walk + ed = walked)
progressive: -ing (walk + ing = walking)
past participle: -en or -ed (eat + en = eaten)
adjectives
comparative: -er (fast + er = faster)
superlative: -est (fast + est = fastest)

6. Properties of (English) inflectional morphology
Inflectional morphology does not change grammatical category
In English, all inflectional affixes are suffixes (they attach to the end of a word)
Inflectional affixes are attached after any derivational affixes:
modern + ize + s = modernizes (OK)
modern + s + ize (NOT OK)
modern + ize + s + able (NOT OK)
Inflectional morphology carries a regular meaning transformation.

7. English derivational morphology
Derivational morphology can (but need not) change grammatical category.
un + do = undo (both verbs)
program + able = programmable (verb, adjective)
Derivational morphology does not always induce a regular/predictable meaning change: there is “drift”
fix + able = fixable (able to be fixed)
read + able = readable (more than just “able to be read”)
wash + able = washable (more than just “able to be washed”)

8. Concatenative vs. nonconcatenative morphology
Concatenative morphology combines morphemes by concatentation (prefixes and suffixes demonstrate this)
Non-concatentative morphology combines in a non-concatenative manner
circumfixes and infixes
templatic morphology

9. Circumfix example German: sagen (“to say”)
ge-t (past particple circumfix)
sagen + ge-t  gesagt (“said”)

10. Infix example Bontoc Igorot (Philippine language) English
kayu (“wood”)
-in- (“product of a completed action)
kayu + -in-  kinayu (“gathered wood”)
English
abso-bloody-lutely (emphasis)

11. Templatic morphology Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew)
stem (root), e.g. ktb (write)
consonant-vowel (CV) template: CVCCVC (causative)
vocalization: ui (perfect passive)
Combination: consonants in stem map onto Cs in template, vowels in vocalization map onto Vs to yield surface form: kuttib (“will have been written”)

12. Example detail
k t b
C V C C V C
 kuttib
u i

13. Parsing refers to the recovery of structure from analysis of input
often refers to the processing of sentences
can also refer to the processing of words
Stemming refers to the recovery of a word stem given a surface form of the word:
uncharacteristically = un + character + istic + ally

14. Lexicons One approach: list all words
difficult in English because some morphology is productive (applies to new words of language too):
(table adapted from page 62 of text)
STEM
walk
merge
try
map
google
text -s
walks
merges
tries
maps
googles
texts
-ing
walking
merging
trying
mapping
googling
texting
-ed
walked
merged
tried
mapped
googled
texted (?)

15. Issues Not only do some affixes attach to large numbers of stems,
they also attach to new words in the language
spam, spams, spamming, spammed, spammer
Idea: encode morphological rules to generate all forms of words from a minimal set of word stems.

16. Applications
lexicons
stemming
generating correct surface word forms

17. Try it out!
Try: kutib