Morphology (2)

Dr. Ansa Hameed

Previously….

•Morphology•Word•Morpheme•Word and Morpheme•Phoneme and Morpheme•Lexeme and Morpheme

Today’s Lecture

• Morpheme• Free and Bound Morpheme• Types of Free Morpheme: Lexical and

Functional• Types of Bound Morphemes: Inflectional and

Derivational• Item and Arrangement Morphological Analysis

and Problems• Morphs and Allomorphs• Aspects of Morphology

Types of Morphemes

Morphemes are of two types:•Free Morpheme: Morphemes that can

occur on their own are free morphemes•The basic or core morpheme in such cases

is referred to as the stem, root, or base•Bound Morpheme: Morphemes that

cannot occur on their own are bound morphemes

•Referred as the add-ons or affixes

Types of Morphemes

Tourists

Tour ist s (free) (bound) (bound)

Types of Morphemes

truthfulness

truth ful ness (free) (bound)

(bound)

Types of Morphemes

Unknowingly

Un know ing ly(Bound) (Free) (Bound)

(Bound)

Types of Morphemes

• Bound and free morphemes:

• Free morphemes can occur on their own:▫Root words: happy, change, select, green,

house, …

• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to other morphemes:▫Affixes : un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …

Types of Morphemes

Morpheme

Free Bound(root) (affix)

Types of Morphemes

•Free Morphemes•Roots and Stems•A root is a lexical content morpheme that

cannot be analyzed in to smaller parts• Read in reread, ling in linguist, paint in painter…

•When a root word is combined with an affix, it forms a stem

• Believe (root): Believe + able (stem)• System (root): system + atic (stem)

Types of Morphemes• Roots and Stems for Semitic Languages:

• Semitic languages (Hebrew & Arabic) have a unique morphological system. Nouns and verbs are built on foundation of three consonants and one derives related words by varying the pattern of vowels and syllables.

• Example: root word for ‘write’ is ‘ktb’katab ‘he wrote’kaatib ‘writer’Kitaab ‘book’kutub ‘books’

Types of Morphemes• Bound Morpheme• Affix

• Bound morphemes or affixes are always part of other words and don not stand alone.

• Affixes are the add ons.

• Affixes can be divided in to sub categories:• Prefixes• Suffixes• Infixes (found in few languages)• Circumfixes (found in few languages)

Types of Morphemes

•Types of Bound Morphemes (Affixes):

1. Prefixes: Affixes that precede the stem are prefixese.g. rewrite, illegal, uneducated, bipolar

2. Suffixes: while those affixes that follow the stem are suffixes e.g. played, player, older, knitting

Types of Morphemes• Types of Bound Morphemes (Affixes):

3. Infixes: Morphemes can also be infixes, which are inserted within another form. English doesn't really have any infixes, except perhaps for certain expletives in expressions like un-effing-believable.

• Some languages of the world often have infixes like Bontoc (a language in Philippines)

Example: Nouns/Adj Verbsfikas (strong) fumikas (to be strong)kilad (red) kumilad (to be red)fusul (enemy) fumusul (to be an enemy)

Types of Morphemes• Types of Bound Morphemes (Affixes):• 4. Circumfixes: Morphemes that can be

attached to a base morpheme both initially and finally.

• Some languages have cirumfixes as well.• Example: Muskogean language (spoken in

Oklahoma): Negative is formed with both prefix (ik) and suffix (o)

Affirmative Negative▫Chokma (he is good) ik+chokm+o (he isn’t good)▫Lakna (it is yellow) ik+lakn+o (it isn’t yellow)▫Palli (it is hot) ik+pall+o (it isn’t hot)

Morphemes: Some problems• Huckles and Ceives • A morpheme was defined as the basic element of

meaning, a phonological form that is arbitrarily united with particular meaning and that cannot be analyzed into simpler elements.

• This definition holds true for majority of morphemes but problematic with few ones

• Example: Cranberry, huckleberry and boseynberry• Berry part is ok but huckle and boseyn occur only with

berry and do not stand alone.• Such words like huckle, boseyn require a redfinition on

the concept of morpheme.

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,

Morphemes: Further Sub Types

Morpheme

Free Bound(root) (affix)

Lexical functional Derivational

inflectional

Types of Free MorphemeFree morphemes fall into two categories:• Lexical Morpheme: set of ordinary nouns,

adjectives and verbs (almost same as content words as they carry the content of message we convey)

• Examples: sincere, open, follow, boy, sad

• Functional Morphemes: set of conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns(almost same as functional words)

• Examples: near, in, the, that, and, but

Types of Bound Morphemes

•What is the difference between these two sets of complex words????

Fair-lyFast-erSing-ingOpen-edCar-sWrite-sBig-gest

Treat-mentRude-nessUn-kindFam-ousUse-lessHelp-fulIr-regularRed-dish

Types of Bound Morphemes

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

Types of Bound Morphemes

Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dishFam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular

These affixes mostly 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

Types of Bound MorphemesBound morphemes are of two types: • Derivational Morpheme: used to make words

of different grammatical category• deals with morphemes that change the lexical

category of the word they are added to.• Inflectional Morpheme: used to indicate

aspects of grammatical function of a word• deals with changes that don’t affect the lexical

category of a the word they apply to (e.g., pluralization, tense on verbs, noun case, and adjectival comparison).

Derivational vs. Inflectional• Example:

wicked (adj.) + -er = wickeder (adj.)speak (v.) + -er = speaker (n.)

• Though the suffix has the same sound, it’s performing two different functions in these two examples.

i. ‘er’ that keeps the class same (adj to adj) is inflectional

ii. ‘er’ that changes the class (v to n) is derivational

Morphological Description

• The girl-s want-ed party.

Functional lexical inflectional lexical inflectional lexical

Item & Arrangement Morphology•This traditional view of morphology

presented thus far is known as Item and Arrangement Morphology (IA).

•The basic idea behind IA is that meaning is achieved by stringing morphemes together, and combining their meanings.

in- escape -able -ity = “inescapability”

A question to think about: Is language really this simple?

Item and Arrangement Morphology: Problems

•For the time being, let’s pretend that language is that simple.

•Meaning in language is nothing more than the combination of meaningful bits (i.e., morphemes) and the meanings associated with those bits.

Item and Arrangement Morphology: Problems

•First, there are some theoretical problems…

“fish” = FISH, singular“fish” = FISH, plural

•Where’s the plural morpheme?

“fish”-Ø, where “-Ø” = plural.

•How do we know it’s a suffix?

Item and Arrangement Morphology: Problems

• And further theoretical problems…

“take” = present tense“took” = past tense

• How do you add something to “take” to cause its vowel to change?

“took” = “take”-Ø (where “-Ø” also causes the vowel to change from [e] to [])

Item and Arrangement Morphology: Problems

•And even more theoretical problems…

“berry” = a free morpheme“blueberry” = a compound“cranberry” = ?

• If we accept that “cranberry” is “cran-” plus “berry”, what does “cran-” mean? “Rasp-”? “Boysen-”? “Huckle-”?

Item and Arrangement Morphology: Problems•These problems are unresolved, some

alternative ideas are presented (WP and Conlanging*, Morphophonemic Alternations**)

*In WP, there are just a few patterns to state, and the conlanger only needs to decide which nouns are going to fall into which classes.** For details read Hockett, Charles, “A course in Modern Linguistics’”, Mac Millian, 1958

Morphs & AllomorphsMorphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes

(just like phones of phonemes)• Example:• The form ‘cat’ has one morph• The form ‘cats’ has two morphs ‘cat’ (lexical) and ‘s’

(inflectional)

Allomorphs: (related most often to oral language) a single morpheme with more than one phonological realization. say/sez. a/an.

• Play/playz (z of sound)• Test/testid (id of sound)• Sheep + 0 morph= sheep

Aspects of Morphology

•Morphology has 3 aspects:•Inflectional (discussed earlier)•Derivational (discussed earlier)•Compounding

When two are more words are joined together to make a compound wordFor example: Sociolinguistics, bedroom, book review, playground etc.

Recap

•Morpheme•Free and Bound Morpheme•Types of Free Morpheme: Lexical and

Functional•Types of Bound Morphemes: Inflectional

and Derivational•Item and Arrangement Morphological

Analysis and Problems•Morphs and Allomorphs•Aspects of Morphology

References• Bybee, Joan. 1985. Morphology: a study of the relation

between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.• Falk, Julia. Linguistics and Language. 1978.• Fromkin, Rodman & Hymas. 2007. Language: Nature,

Psychology and Grammatical Aspects. Us: Wadsworth.• Parsad, Tarni, A Course in Linguistics, 2012, New Dehli: PHI • Rajimwale, Sharad, Elements of General Linguistics, 2006. • Strang, Barbara. Modern English Structure. Edward Arnold.

1968.• Ouhalla, Jamal. Introducing Transformational Grammar.

1999.• Parsad, Tarni. A Course in Linguistics. 2012.• Yule, George. The Study of Language. 1996.