Morphemes, morpheme classification, inflectional

and derivational morphology

June 5, 2014

What is a word??https://twitter.com/nixicon

morphology: subfield of linguistics that studies…• words, their structure, and how they are put together out of their

composing parts• rules that determine how words are put together using these component

parts• how meaning of a complex word is related to the meaning of its parts• how individual words of a language are related to other words of the

language in terms of their morphological structure

morphophonology: study of the interaction between morphology and phonology. More on morphophonology is coming up next week!

Morphology

In general, a word’s meaning or usage cannot be predicted from the speech segments that make up the word, e.g.:

But there are types of words in which sound and meaning are more closely tied, e.g. onomatopoeia: word that (supposedly) imitates natural sounds

bam! fizz woof a-choo!

English [dag]Polish [pjɛs]French [ʃj ]ɛ̃�Japanese [inu]

Sound and meaning

Sound and meaning

Look at the two shapes. How would you pair these shapes with the following words?

Bouba Kiki

sound symbolism: the idea that vocal sounds carry meaning in and of themselves: slip slide, slurp, slither, slime, slug… but slave, slit, slowlittle, teeny, cutey, Johnny, sweety… but bleed, grip, zombie

Sound and meaning

But once we know the meanings of certain words, we CAN predict the meanings of other words, because word meaning is often compositional, e.g.:

rapid rapidly drink drinkableblue blueish bride, Godzilla bridezilla

And yet, the meanings of many phrases and expressions are NOT compositional:• idioms: to kick a bucket, to be a party pooper• collocations: white wine/noise/man• proverbs: It’s no use crying over spilled milk.

*It’s no use crying over a broken plate.

“Jennifer is a Party Pooper”http://youtu.be/gjwofYhUJEM

Sound and meaning

morpheme: smallest meaningful unit of language and a building block of words (cf. phoneme). Also, a morpheme is identifiable from one word to another.

peg and beg are two morphemes with distinct meanings, differentiated by the phonological feature [+/ voice] and contrastive phonemes /p/ and /b/.‐

But /p/ and /b/ on their own do NOT carry any meaning!

Anybody want a peanut?Anybody want some peanuts?

Anybody want some peanuts? *Anybody want some –s?

Word vs. phoneme

In order for something to be a word, it must:• have meaning• have at least one morpheme• be able to move relatively freely in a sentence (a word is a free morpheme)• usually be inserted between two other words, but not inside of another word• have one primary stress

Morphemes that canNOT freely occur in a sentence (and that attach to another word) are bound morphemes, ex. –s, – er, –im. Bound morphemes are also called affixes.

free morphemesEnglish: a, sweet, camel, librarySpanish: y, casa, cucaracha

bound morphemes-dis, -ish, -ness, -zilla, pre-in- (inútil), -s (casas), o (puedo)

Word vs. phoneme

(a) read able ‐ (b) leg ible‐hear ing ‐ audi ence‐en large ‐ magn ify‐perform ance ‐ rend ition‐white ness ‐ clar ity‐dark en ‐ obfusc‐ateseek er ‐ applic ant‐

What about words like…? cranberry huckleberry loganberry raspberry

There are no words like cran, huckle, logan, and rasp, or at least not with the relevant meaning. Words like cranberry are compounds: complex words consisting of two roots, one of which is bound! Morphemes like cran and logan are often called cranberry morphemes.

The meaning of the words in (b) and (a) are similar, but roots in (a) are free morphemes,

while roots in (b) are bound morphemes!

Morpheme classification

Words that consist of a single morpheme are classified as simple words.

berrydramawithswimrestaurantcrycuteofwombat

Words that consist of more than one morpheme are classified as complex words.

berry-sover-drama-tichouse-keep-erswim-errestaurantcry-ingcute-ishanti-dis-establish-mentwombat-s

Morpheme classification

root: morpheme (usually free) that plays a central role, to which all other morphemes attach. Roots usually contribute the greatest meaning component to the resulting word, e.g.:

jump + able = jumpable (can be jumped)liquid + ify = liquify (to turn into liquid)dog + s = dogs (more than one dog)

affix: bound morpheme that attaches itself to a root. Affixes are further subdivided into:

overdramatic

prefix root suffix

base: that to which the affix is attaching; can be a bare root or an already affixed form

stem: the bare root that never changes

Morpheme classification

With a partner, complete exercise 1 on the exercise sheet.

Practice!

infix: morpheme that gets inserted INSIDE the root instead of going to its left or right edge!

Kharia (India)bhore ‘be full’ bhobre ‘fill’tNʃuwe ‘leak’ tNʃubwe ‘cause to leak’

Bontoc (Austronesian, Philippines)fikas ‘strong’ fumikas ‘he is becoming strong’bato ‘stone’ bumato ‘it is becoming a stone’

Englishun-freaking-believable

Morpheme classification

circumfixes: two part morphemes that go AROUND the root simultaneously!‐

Chickasow (Oklahoma)lakna ‘it is yellow’ iklakno ‘it isn’t yellow’palli ‘it is hot’ ikpallo ‘it isn’t hot’

GermanLieb ‘love’ geliebt ‘loved’glaub ‘believe’ geglaubt ‘believed’

Morpheme classification

There are other types of morphological processes that are not limited to prefixation and suffixation, e.g. reduplication (root or part of root is repeated).

Agta (Austronesian, The Philippines)ma wakay ‘lost’ ‐ ma wak‐ wakay ‘many things lost’takki ‘leg’ taktakki ‘legs’mag saddu ‘leak’ ‐ mag sad‐ saddu ‘leak in many places’

Ilokano (Austronesian, The Philippines)pusa ‘cat’ puspusa ‘cats’jojo ‘yoyo’ joj jojo ‘yoyos’‐

English?chit chat ‐ lovie dovie see saw ‐ teeny weenycriss cross knock knock bow wow cray cray‘I don’t like him. I like like him!”

Reduplication is often used iconically: repetition of thephonological material stands for repetition of the events ofthings (to mean repetitive action or plurality).

Morpheme classification

Stress change: per’mit (V.) ‘permit (N.)Final consonant change: prove (V.) proof (N.) defend (V.) defense (N.)Vowel change: sing (V.) song (N.)

sit (V.) seat (N.)

English words can also change lexical class through:

Another non-suffixal processes is zero affixation/conversion: morphological change (usually of lexical class) without any explicit phonological material, e.g. in English:

N V V Na telephone to telephone to look a looka friend to friend to run a runa Xerox to Xerox to like a like

In English these are exceptional, but some languages use them extensively, e.g.: Hebrew, Arabic use vowel change to signal derivational morphological relationships:

Hebrew:sapar ‘barber’saper verbal root ‘to get a

haircut’

Morpheme classification

lexical (content) morphemesexpress general informational content, a meaning that is essentially independent of the grammatical system of a particular language; open class

Nouns: London, app, loveVerbs: swim, devour, sleepAdjectives: squishy, tiny, mehAdverbs: often, nicely, very

Personal: I, he, theyReflexive: yourself, themselvesPossessive: my, hers, itsDemonstrative: this, these, thoseIndefinite: each, somebody, bothRelative: that, which, what, whoInterrogative: where, when, whether

functional (grammatical) morphemestied to a grammatical function, expressing syntactic relationships between words in a sentence or obligatorily marked categories, such as number or tense; closed class

Prepositions: to, by, from, withArticles: the, a, an

Pronouns:

Auxiliaries: has, did, will, mightConjunctions: and, but, howeverInterjections: well, hi, gah!Affixes: re-, -ness, -ly, -ed, -s

Word classes / lexical categories

Tie elements together grammatically: hit by a truck apples and bananas

Express grammatical features, e.g. definiteness, gender, number, tense: She found a/the table vs. *She found table. She found many tables vs. *She found many

table. She fixed it yesterday vs. *She fix it yesterday.

Give me a second, II need to get my story straightMy friends are in the bathroomGetting higher than the Empire StateMy lover, she is waiting for meJust across the barMy seat’s been taken by some sunglassesAsking 'bout a scar fun. “We are young”

Word classes / lexical categories

With a partner, complete exercise 2 on the exercise sheet.

Practice!

Inflectional morphology creates new grammatical forms of the same word, but the core meaning remains the same. Also, inflectional morphology NEVER changes the word’s syntactic/lexical category, e.g.:

key (N.) keys (N.)cute (Adj.) cuter (Adj.)

Derivational morphology creates new words from old ones. The core meaning might change significantly, and the syntactic category of the word may change too. Also, the new word will require additional inflectional morphology required by the grammar, e.g.:

happy (Adj.) unhappy (Adj).blend (V.) blender (N.) blenders

Inflectional vs. derivational morphology

derivation inflection

Inflectional morphology marks grammatical features of words, like plurality or tense. This morphological marking is required by syntax of the language. For example, in English, there are contexts where a verb must carry a 3rd-person singular marker:

He goes to school vs. *He go to school

Inflections do NOT create new words but rather mark the existing ones for grammar. The meaning of the inflected word is always compositional, or predictable from the meaning of its parts, e.g.:

piano (musical instrument) + s (plural) = pianos (more than 1 musical instrument)sweet (sugary flavor) + est (superlative) = sweetest (the most sweet)

different inflectional variants of the same abstract word (lexeme): PAINT

paintpaints

paintedpainting

Inflectional morphology

tense on verbsaspect on verbsnumber and person on verbs

number on nounsnumber on pronounscase on pronouns

comparative degree on adjectivessuperlative degree on adjectives

play vs. playedcough vs. coughingshe knits

book vs. booksI vs. we, this vs. thesethey vs. them

white vs. whiterloud vs. loudest

All English inflections are suffixes!

English inflectional morphology

Are these all different allomorphs of the plural morpheme –s and past tense morpheme -ed?• If we use meaning as the basis of our analysis, then YES.• But because of their phonological divergence from –s and –ed, these are usually NOT

considered allomorphs. Also, many of the changes involve the word root, not the affix. The phenomenon in which a single lexeme has more than one root is suppletion.

English inflectional morphology

Some English inflections are irregular, e.g.:tooth teeth go went man men ox oxendive dove or dived child children drink drank cactus cacti

But what are the plural forms of nouns like…?

scissorspantsbutterfurnitureknowledgeinformationsheep

a pair ofa pair ofa piece/stick ofa piece ofsome/a lot ofa piece ofa flock of

periphrasis (periphrastic form): use of one or more free morphemes (instead of inflections or derivations) to denote grammatical meaning. Also:

more/most intelligentEnglish: of a dog vs. Japanese: いぬの Latin: stēllae

English inflectional morphology

Some languages have richer inflectional systems than English.

Italian: gender Il sole ‘sun’ (masc.) la luna ‘moon’ (fem.)

Russian: gender[stul] ‘chair’ (masc.)[taburetka] ‘stool’ (fem.)[sidenje] ‘seat’ (neut.)

Inflectional morphology

Inuktitut: numberIglu ‘a house’Igluk ‘two houses’ (DUAL)Iglut ‘more than two houses’

Polish: casejeż ‘hedgehog’ NOMINATIVEjeża ‘of a hedgehog’ GENITIVEjeżowi ‘to a hedgehog’ DATIVEjeża ‘hedgehog (dir. ob.)’ ACCUSATIVEjeżem ‘with a hedgehog’INSTRUMENTALjeżu ‘about a hedgehog’ LOCATIVEjeżu ‘you hedgehog’ VOCATIVE