1. Linguistics week 12
Morphology 2

2. We looked at Words, word-forms and lexemes
She’s a good cook, but I can cook better
Function words and content words

3. Two kinds of words Function words Content words
Restricted in number
A closed class
Have a grammatical function
Usually just one morpheme (a grammatical morpheme)
Content words
An open class
New content words often come into use in every language
Which words on this slide …? Chinese examples?

4. You think English is hard?
Ha! When I was at school I had to do Latin
See if you can find out what this is:
amo amamus
amas amatis
amat amant
Or this
dominus domini
domine domini
dominum dominos
domini dominorum
domino dominis

5. They were Latin inflections
The two lists each show the different word-forms, for a Latin noun or verb
dominus is the nominative (subject form)
domine is the vocative form (Oh Master!)
dominum is the accusative (object form)
domini is the genitive (the master’s, of the master)
domino is the dative (to or for the master)
domino is the ablative (in some words, this is different from the dative) (by, with or from the master)
English has a genitive form. What is it?
Does Chinese have one?
In some lexemes, English attests nominative, accusative and genitive forms
What are these lexemes?

6. Inflectional morphology
In English, inflection includes things like
Number
Tense
Fromkin 101 gives a complete list
Although she doesn’t explain that -s and -es (for example) are two realizations (two allomorphs!) of the same morpheme
Also on p101: does the Italian verb inflection list seem familiar?
BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme
so sleepy is not an inflection of sleep
unkind is not an inflection of kind
artistic is not an inflection of artist (which is not an inflection of art (Inflection and derivation task)

7. Inflectional vs derivational morphology
Inflection does not change the word class (syntactic category, part-of-speech, 詞類)
Derivation may or may not change word class
Derivation makes a new lexeme
create  creative
Inflection just changes the grammatical ending of the original lexeme
create  creates
Inflection is productive
You can add –s to any verb, to make it plural
Derivation is not necessarily productive
You cannot always add un- to an adjective, or -ive to a verb

8. Roots and affixes Unbelievable contains
One free morpheme
A root and two affixes
One prefix and one suffix
In English, there are derivational prefixes and suffixes
There are no inflectional prefixes
Suffixes are more common in the world’s languages
But Thai has only prefixes – no suffixes
Fromkin 78: plural in the Zapotec language is relized by a prefix, not a suffix

9. Infixes In Tagalog What is the root morpheme here?
sulat = write
sumulat = wrote
sinulat = was written
What is the root morpheme here?
What are the affixes?
Fromkin describes a kind of infix used in English
I don’t want to go to uni-bloody-versity
Is there any infixing in Mandarin, do you think?

10. Reduplication Afrikaans Motu (Papua New Guinea)
dik = ‘thick’; dikdik = ‘very thick’
Motu (Papua New Guinea)
mero = boy; memero = boys
meromero = little boy
How do you say ‘little boys’ in this language?
And – you guessed it – what uses does reduplication have in Mandarin?

11. Hierarchical structure of words (Fromkin 84)
unbelievable and unsystematic have only one structural analysis each:
believe 相信 + -able 可相信 + un- 不可相信
Unlockable, Fromkin shows on 85-6, is morphologically ambiguous
It can be understood in two ways
Try to understand why, by looking at the trees

12. Reading and exercises 69 to 74 (or further if you like)
Ex 2, 3, 4, 5A, 6
You will probably enjoy these!
You might like to take a look at my master’s thesis
It contains a short section on reduplication in Chinese
It has some ideas about compounding (for next week)
You will get an idea of the structure of a Western-style essay: study, especially, the way the references and bibliography work