Immediate Immediate

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MORPHOLOGYMORPHOLOGY

2012 2012 –– Term Term 1 1

Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar1

By:

Dr. Shadia Y. Banjar

http://SBANJAR.kau.edu.sa/

http://wwwdrshadiabanjar.blogspot.com

Immediate Immediate

ConstituentsConstituents 5

• A word of one morpheme, like blaze, has, of course, just one unitary part.

• A word of two morphemes, like

cheerful, is obviously composed of two parts, with the division between them:

Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar2

parts, with the division between them:

cheer ful

• a word of three or more morphemes is not made up of a string of individual

parts;

• it is built with a hierarchy of twosomes.

•As an illustration lets us examine the formation of gentlemanly, a word of

three morphemes.

• gentle and man were put together to give gentleman.

• we see that the meaning of gentleman is a composite of these of its two

constituents.

•Now we add –ly, meaning “like”, and get gentlemanly, like a gentleman.

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•Now we add –ly, meaning “like”, and get gentlemanly, like a gentleman.

• Now when we analyze a word we show this process but in reverse.

•We usually divide a word into two parts of which it seems to have been

composed.

• words are formed in steps, they have a

special type of structure characterized as

hierarchical.

•This hierarchical structure can be

schematically represented by means of tree

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schematically represented by means of tree

diagrams that indicate the steps involved

the formation of the word.

Immediate ConstituentsImmediate Constituents

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•In doing word diagrams like those above to show

layers of structure, we make successive divisions into

two parts,

• each of which is called an Immediate Constituent,

abbreviated as IC.

•The process is continued until all component

morphemes of a word, the ultimate constituents, have

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morphemes of a word, the ultimate constituents, have

been isolated.

IC

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Here are three recommendations on IC division:

1. If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first

cut is between the suffix and the rest of the

word.

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word.

2. One of the ICs should be, if possible, a free

form.

3. The meaning of the ICs should be related to

meaning of the word.

• some words are ambiguous in that they have more than

one meaning.

•When we examine their internal structure, we find out that

they may be analyzed in more than one way.

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X

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