Chapter 4

Morphology

Morphology

•Morphology. This term, which literally means ‘the study of forms’ refers to the linguistic study of the different forms of a word, or word structure.

Classes of words

• Generally speaking, there are two types of words: content words (open class words) .They are the lexical items because we can add to them . (Also called free lexical morphemes)

• Grammatical or functional words (closed class words) are words that do only a grammatical functions (conjunctions-prepositions-pronouns). (Also called free functional morphemes)

morpheme

• We can recognize that English word forms such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one morpheme.

• element talk, and a number of other elements such as -s, -er, -ed and -ing. All these elements are described as morphemes.

• The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”. Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural.

Free and bound morphemes

• There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words, for example, open and tour.

• There are also bound morphemes, which are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s.

• The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.

• When they are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stems.

Examplesundressed

ed dress un-suffix stem prefix

(bound ) (free ) (bound )carelessness

-ness -less care

suffix suffix stem

bound bound free

Rules of Word Formation:Derivational and inflectional bound morphemes:

Derivational morphemes.

• We use these bound morphemes to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.

• For example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ness changes the adjective good to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjectives careful or careless by the addition of the derivational morphemes -ful or -less.

Rules of Word Formation:

• A list of derivational morphemes will include suffixes such as the -ish in foolish, -ly in quickly, and the -ment in payment. The list will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-, and many more. (See list P. 132).

Inflectional morphemes

• These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is a comparative or possessive form

Inflectional morphemes• English has only eight inflectional morphemes (or

‘inflections’), illustrated in the following sentences • Jim’s two sisters are really different.• One likes to have fun and is always laughing.• The other liked to read as a child and has always taken

things seriously.• One is the loudest person in the house and the other is

quieter than a mouse.– Noun + -’s, -s– Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en– Adjective + -est, -er

Morphs and allomorphs

• we can propose morphs as the actual forms used to realize morphemes. For example, the form cars consists of two morphs, car + -s, - (bus + -es), realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (‘plural’). So there are at least two morphs (-s and -es) used to realize the inflectional’.

Morphs and allomorphs

• However in some cases the change can be internal and can involve a total vowel change man-men; foot-feet

• We call this process Suppletion, forms that are not predictable by regular morphology.

The two processes above are studied under morphophonemics.

Processes of word formation of free lexical morphemes

Coinage• Older examples are aspirin,-nylon, -vaseline

; more recent examples are kleenex, teflon, tylenol and Xerox-a hoover- sandwich- jeans- fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit), volt (from the Italian, Alessandro Volta) and watt (from the Scot, James Watt).

Processes of word formation of free lexical

Compounding• It means joining of two separate words to

produce a single form. • bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn,

textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed.

• compound adjectives (good-looking, low-paid)

Processes of word formation of free lexical

Blending• Blending is typically accomplished by taking only

the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the

• bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel), telecast (television/broadcast) and the Chunnel (Channel/tunnel), connecting England and France

Processes of word formation of free lexical

Acronyms• Acronyms are new words formed from the initial

letters of a set of other words. • These can be forms such as CD (‘compact disk’)

or VCR (‘video cassette recorder’) • More typically, acronyms are pronounced as

new single words, as in NATO, NASA or UNESCO.

Processes of word formation of free lexical

Backformation• A very specialized type of reduction process is known

as backformation. Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb).

• television first came into use and then the verb televise.

• donate (from ‘donation’), emote (from ‘emotion’), enthuse (from ‘enthusiasm’), liaise (from ‘liaison’) and babysit (from ‘babysitter’).

Processes of word formation of free lexical

Abbreviation

• Abbreviations of longer words may be lexicalized as new word; Nark---narcotics ;Telly –television; math-gas-phone bus-gym-lab.