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Faculty of Arts English Department

Morphology Talib M. Sharif Omer

Asst. Lecturer, Talib.Omer@soran.edu.iq

December13, 2015

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Outline

• Infixes and types of infixes • Morphs and allomorphs• Quality of morphemes

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Infixes:

• Infixes are bound morphemes that have been inserted within a word.

• They have two types:

1-Addition: for example get at able from able where the preposition at get is kept as infix in able as adjective, although the preposition is removed like accountable from (account for). However, in English morphology this rarely happens.

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Infixes:2-Replacement: This type of infixes in English language is most commonly used. They occur in a few nouns plural for example, goose becomes geese. It also happens in some irregular past tense participle, such as chose, choose. The verb chose {o} is replacing double {oo} of choose. All of this is called replacement or replacive allomorph.

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Allomorphs:

• Allomorphs are defined in different ways but all of them have the same purpose of allomorphs.

• For example, Scotthuranbery (2009) defined that allomorphs are variants of a morpheme.

Apparently, an allomorph is any 2 or 3 morphemes that have the same purpose but are spelt or sound differently.

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Types of Allomorphs:

Allomorphs have different types:

• Phonological conditioned allomorph:For example, English morpheme(s) can appear /s/ as in books. /z/ as in dogs, /iz/ as in boxes. Or e.g. {D pt} this morpheme has three phonemic forms: such as wanted (id), ended helped (t) m and opened(d).

Each of these three pronunciations is allomorphs of the same morpheme.

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Types of Allomorphs:• Morphological and syntactical conditioned allomorphs.

if (ed ) has three allomorphs, is this is all? Then what about spoke? How do we count?Obviously, that this is called replacement or replacive allomorph. But zero allomorph for some irregular verbs whose present, past tens forms are the same. For example, put, becomes put, and some nounssheep, sheep or fish, fish.

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Types of Allomorphs

differences is shown in the following table.Phonological conditioned allomorph Morphological& syntactical

conditioned allomorph

1. /z/ beds, knees2. /s/ parents, books3. /iz/ houses, 4. /t/ helped5. /d/ consumed6. /id/ wanted, landed 7. /dis/ disagree, discount, disbelieve

1. Feet, gees,, mice2. Knife , knives , deep, depth 3. En, oxen, children,.4. Zero allomorph, deer, sheep, and

Some irregular vebs, put, put,put.5. Sume changes to Consume ,

consumption, or

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Types of Allomorphs

Note, zero allomorph refers to invisible affix by a specific meaning, such as fish and cut.

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Morphs

• According to Katamba(2007) Morph is a physical form representing some morphemes in a language which it recurrent distinctive sounds.

• A morph is considered a piece that denotes one morpheme in sound or writing. For example, the word disrespected is made up of three morphs--dis-, respect -ed- each of which represents one morpheme.

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Morphs

So there are morphs / id/ d/ t/ which represent regular past tense of morpheme/ ed/ in the past tense this is called complementary distribution.• Morphs tend to be complementary

distribution. How?

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Types of Morphs

Generally , there is two types of morphs :

• Free morph: is the morph that refers directly to objects and other pieces of real word. E.g . dog, walk, table.

• Bound morph: the morph that has been modifying the meaning of the lexical morphs by adding them . e.g. ( un, re, d, ent, ly, ize. tion ,dis, ment).

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Types of Morphs

• For example, disbelieve'/ disbili:v/MorphsDis/dis/Believe/ beli:v/. Thus, every single phonetic symbol of morpheme is named morph.

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Suppletion:

• Suppletion some grammatical functions are not represented by inflectional endings.

e.g. good, better, am, is, are become were, was.

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Homophones:

• Homophones: phonologically, they are words that have the same pronunciations but in different meaning and different spelling.

For example,right, ride, write, rite. Similarly in morphology they happened differently and in different morphemes. For example, meat, and meet, or he feels/z/excited, these birds /z/are beautiful. Ahmed's bag/z/.

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Quality of morpheme:

• Special morpheme quality is found in bound morpheme is called bound root morpheme quality.

• So special morpheme quality has lexical meanings when they are attached to another bound morpheme to form a content word.

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Quality of morpheme:

• Is cran affix in cranberry?No

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Quality of morpheme:• While roots can be free but not all roots are free. • many roots are incapable of occurring in isolation

they always occur with some others.• For example,• A: mit as in remit, commit, admit.• B:ceive as in perceive, receive , conceive , deceive. • C:Pred, as in predate, predatory.• D: sed: sedate, sedan, sedentary . • E: Cran, cranberry

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Exercise:1

In the following groups of words underline each infixes.• 1-Find, found, found. • 2- write, wrote, written, • 3- ring, rang, rung.• 4-foot,feet,5- tooth, teeth.6- mouse. Mice.7- child, children. 8-Speak, spoke, spoken.

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Exercise:1

Answers• 1-Find, found, found. • 2- write, wrote, written, • 3- ring, rang, rung.• 4-foot,feet,5- tooth, teeth.6- mouse. Mice.7- child, children. 8-Speak, spoke, spoken.

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Exercise:2

• Explain why Allomorphs of the indefinite article :a/ an has one morpheme?

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Ends and Thanks

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References • -Aronoff (2009) what is morphology. Cambridge:

Cambridge university Press. • -Hartmann, R.R.K., and F.C. Stork. 1972.Dictionary of

language and linguistics. London: Applied Science.• - Francis,K., Stonham,A. (2006) Modern Linguistics:

Morphology. 2nd (ed) Palgrave: Macmillan Press. • https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-

linguistics/branches/morphology/what-is-morphology

• http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/Morph.htm