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A definition of morphology
• The area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words involving the morphemes that compose them
What is a word?
• An orthographic definition
• A phonological definition
• A semantic definition
• A syntactic definition
An orthographic definition
• Words as units in the writing system: words are uninterrupted strings of letters
• For ex. writing is a word because there are blank spaces surrounding it
Problems with this definition:
• Can you make a list of punctuation marks?
• Can you think of instances of words characterized by different spellings?
• What about compound nouns?
How many words are there in the following sentences?
• a. John’s girl friend lives in a high-rise apartment building.
• b. Mary’s a policewoman in the United States.
• - Is John’s in a. above one or two words?
• - Is Mary’s in b. above one or two words?
• - Is high-rise in a. above one or two words?
The orthographic word may not coincide with our intuitions:
• Compound nouns: apartment building, parking ticket, ground floor, United States.
• Phrasal verbs: get up, look after, put up with.
A phonological definition
• Words as phonological units: spoken in isolation each word can only have one main stress
• E.g. Words as elements of the system The underlined characters indicate the main stress
Problems with this definition:
• Function words (i.e. words such as as, of, the) do not seem to have a main stress;
• Clitics (i.e. ‘s in the example below) do not seem to have a main stress-
• Ex. Jane’s in the garden: ‘s, in, the are not stressed.
A semantic definition
• Words as meaningful units:
• a. Words express unified concepts
• b. Words are the minimum meaningful units of a language
Problems with these definitions:
• Concepts can be expressed by noun groups or larger units; for ex. the man who lives next door or that beautiful summer morning of 1985 when we drove to the beach on an old CV2
• Function words may not have an easily identifiable meaning (for ex. can you specify the meaning of the?)
4. A syntactic definition #1
• Words as syntactic units: words are the smallest syntactic elements in a sentence:
• a. They belong to certain word classes (and follow the rules of these syntactic categories)
• Words can be grouped into 2 main categories:• 1. Open-class words: classes of words which can
contain an infinite number of words • (i.e. nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs)• 2. Closed-class words: classes of words which
contain a limited number of words• (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and
modal verbs, conjunctions, determiners)
4. A syntactic definition #2
• b. Only words (and groups of words) can be moved to a different position in a sentence
• 1. She can ride the bike • 2. Can she ride the bike?
• 1. She brought the can opener.• 2a. The can was brought by her opener. ✘• 2b. The can opener was brought by her. ✓
The relationship between words and meanings
Words with unpredictable meanings:dog, door, desk, book, pen, …Words with predictable meaningsComplex words: unhappy, helpful, madly, …
E.g. The relationship between the sequence of letters cat and its meaning [domestic feline] in English is the result of a convention. Whenever this association form-meaning is the result of a convention, the meaning of a word is unpredictable on the basis of its form.
Exception: onomatopoeic words splash resembles the sound of a liquid hitting something; beep resembles a short high sound, like the sound of a car horn.
Non-words and meanings
• entities that are larger than a word with unpredictable meanings– Idioms: pull someone’s leg; kick the bucket; …– Collocations: hard work, white coffee, white-
collar worker …
– Proverbs: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, birds of a feather flock together, a bad workman blames his tools, …
The difference between words and lexical items
Words are the smallest syntactic units in a sentence (i.e. words are grammatical entities)
• Lexical items are semantic units whose meanings are unpredictable; they may be larger than words, but often they can coincide with them (i.e. lexical items are semantic entities)
Taking words apart
• Why is the meaning of the following words predictable to a certain extent?
• unbelievable, capitalistic, mismatched, disproportional, misunderstanding, irregularity.
• lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.
Complex words: affixation• Words can be composed of identifiable smaller parts, morphemes,
put together in a systematic fashion, so that the meaning of the whole can reliably be determined on the basis of the meaning of the smaller parts.
• un-believe-able, anti-capital-ist-ic, de-colony-al-ize-ation, dis-proportion-al, mis-under-stand-ing, ir-regul-ar-ity.
• This group contains words which are divisible into:• a component that carries most of the meaning (e.g. believe, capital,
colony, proportion, etc.) • other elements that are associated with it to add some other aspects
of meaning (e.g. –able in believable = something or someone is capable of being believed; un- in unbelievable = something or someone is not capable of being believed).
• The process through which these words are formed is called affixation.
Word compounding
• B. lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.
• Group B contains words which are divisible into two other words.
• These component words can be found independently in an English dictionary, but when they associate they form a compound word
• The meaning of the union is not necessarily a function of the meaning of the two combining words. For ex. a lighthouse is neither a light nor a house. This process is called word compounding.
Word compounding: exercise
• How many compund words can you create with the following words?
bag
car
box
case
Hand-, body-, air-, sick-, punch-, sleeping
bag
Sports, estate, company, courtesy,
car
Mail-, post-, letter-, telephone, gear-
box
Book-, suit-, brief-, display, lower
case
A morpheme must
– be identifiable from one word to another– However, consider:
Attack
Stack
Tackle
Taxi (/tæksi/)
A morpheme must
– Also contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word
Believ-ableEat-able
Read-ableWork-able
N.b. this extra meaning is not necessarily equal in all cases, e.g. readable, does not mean ‘can be read’ in a literal sense, but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.
How can I recognise a morpheme?
Morphemes must be identifiable from one word to another: identifying affixes:– un- : uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear, …– -able: variable, changeable, solvable, …– de- : deselect, dethrone, detoxify, …– -al: cultural, federal, liberal, modal, …– -ize: computerize, realize, …
Identifying the core element:
• Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly;
• Change: change-able, chang-ing, un-chang-ed;
• Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly;
• Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber-ty;
• Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al
Distinguishing between morphemes:
• Bound and free morphemes: • Free morphemes can occur on their own:
– happy, change, select, green, house, …• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to
other morphemes:– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)– liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …
• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy, materi-al
Bound morphemes as core elements: words derived from LatinCircul- Circular Liber- Liberty
Circulation Liberation
Circulator Liberalize
Circulatory Libertine
Problem case: Verbs of Latin origin
receive deceive conceive perceive
revert convert pervert
relate collate translate
reduce deduce conduce
Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme? Or prefix + bound morpheme?
General tendency
• The core vocabulary of English is generally composed of words of Anglo-Saxon origin
• There is a general tendency for core elements to be free morphemes
• E.g. Hand
• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,
What is the difference between these two sets of complex words
Fair-ly
Fast-er
Sing-ing
Open-ed
Car-s
Write-s
Big-gest
Treat-ment
Rude-ness
Un-kind
Fam-ous
Use-less
Help-ful
Ir-regular
Red-dish
Fast-er, Sing-ing, Open-ed,
Car-s, Write-s, Big-gest
• These affixes do not change the word class, but rather contribute to meeting grammatical constraints. These are called:
Inflectional morphemes
Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dish
Fam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular
These affixes do not necessarily change the class of the word, but this is normally the case, e.g. fame (n.)> famous (adj.)
• Furthermore, the semantic element is notably higher. These morphemes are called:
Derivational morphemes
-ful/less Only -ful Only -less
Age, Bag, Care, Cease, Cheer, Child, Colour, Cup, Defence, Delight, Effort, End, Fate, Friend, Help, Hope, Penny, Play, Spoon, Tact , Taste , Use,
Derivation with –ful and –less
• Which words can be derived by adding the following suffixes