Morphology

Dr. Jessie Grace U. RubricoFacilitator

word structure Rootword - car, beauty, write, near

Root + Affixes – cars, written, nearly, beautifully

parts: car + s; write + -en

near + ly; beauty + ful + ly

each part has meaning : morpheme

PBET 1101 TESL Program Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya Dr. Jessie Grace U Rubrico/260810

morphemes –parts of words that carry meaning

- smallest unit of meaning orgrammatical function

rootword - one morpheme-word; - word cannot be divided


Polysyllabic Words Rootword Prefix Suffix Morphemes

1. careless care -less 2

2. misleading lead mis- -ing 3

3. disloyalty loyal dis- -ty 3

4. disrespectfully respect dis- -ful; -ly 4

5. untruthfulness

6. previewer

7. shortenedPBET 1101 TESL Program Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya Dr. Jessie Grace U Rubrico/260810

morphemes that can stand alone

content/lexical words

– nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

function words – pronouns, prepositions,determiners, conjunctions


affixes: prefixes, suffixes

derivational - make new words orchange their categories

inflectional – changes the form of the word but not its meaning

-indicates grammatical functionsingular/plural ; tense; comparatives; possessive


make new words or change their categories

Noun > Adjcare care+ -ful > careful

care+ -less > careless Adj > Noun

good good + -ness > goodness lovely lovely + -ness > loveliness


Base Suffix

Noun +-ful Adj beauty + -ful

Verb + -ment Noun establish + -ment

Verb + -er Noun do + -er; work + -er

Verb + -ive Adj prohibit + -ive

Noun + -en Verb light + -enAdjective + -en Verb short + -en

Adjective + -ness Noun good +-nessAdjective + -ly Adv beautiful + -ly


inflectional – changes the form of the word but not its meaning

-indicates grammatical function

number : plural or singular – boys, books possession : ownership –attached to nouns tense : past or present tense

– dances, danced


bound to nouns [Noun +] -–‘s / s’ (possessive) : Mary’s, the childrens’ - s (plural), books, boys

bound to verbs [Verb +] -s (3rd person, singular) – dances, watches-ing (present participle) – dancing, watching-ed (past tense) – danced, watched-en/-ed (past participle) - they’ve done it

bound to adjectives [Adj +] –er : darker-est : darkest


/indefiniteness/ - a before a consonant - a boyan before a vowel - an apple

▪ /plural/ ▪ cat + /plural/ -[s] after voiceless segment: [kæts] ▪ dog + /plural/- [z] after voiced segment : [dɔgz]

[dɒgz]▪ judge + /plural/-[әz] after voiced segment

sheep + /plural/ - sheep + Ø : sheep man + /plural/ - æ > ε : men

(suppletion)


morpheme

free

content/lexical

function

boundderivational

inflectional


storage of words in a language; dictionarycontents:

phonological information/pronunciation

meaning, related words, sentence use

spelling

etymology (historical development) > not contain in the mental lexicon


phonological information

sounds and phonotactics

semantic information– meaning

morphological information –formation of relations in word: past tense (V), plural (N)

syntactic information -category (noun or verb) and usage


Content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

lexical morphemes denote concepts like objects, actions,

attributes, ideas, etc.

semantic content (meaning)

open class words – add new words: download, byte, email


Function words : determiners/ articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions

grammatical function- connect words to other words or phrases

closed class-articles a/an and the – marks definiteness/indef of nouns

preposition of -marks possession, etc.


NounsAdjectivesVerbs-Adverbs – modify verbs,

adjectives, and other adverbs –


pronouns Personal pronouns – person- first, second, third Demonstrative – this, these; that, those Interrogative pronouns – who, what, etc. Relative pronouns –who, that, which, whose,

whom –related to the preceding NP Indefinite pronouns – someone, anyone,

everyone, somebody, etc pronouns: used independently, not as modifiers

of other words


Determiners – precede nouns: def/indef articles– a, the demonstratives : this, that, these, those possessives : my, our, your, her, his, their interrogatives: which what, whose

Prepositions- typically precede nouns; give information about time, place, etc.

Conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions –and, but, or – conjoin words of the same category - subordinating conjunctions – that, whenever,

while, becausePBET 1101 TESL Program Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya Dr. Jessie Grace U Rubrico/260810

Lexical/grammatical categories1. words with parallel book –books ; dog - dogs nouns

forms belong to tall- taller-tallest adjectives

the same category small-smaller-smallest verbs

walk – walks, walked

play-plays-played

2. co-occurrence-

Nouns preceded by a determiner the cat, my car, an egg

take plural forms

regular book-books

irregular tooth – teeth, sheep-sheep


Lexicalcategories

Verbs preceded by modals will, can, may, might, etc

Adjectives take very, or too; more, the most

3. relying on the meaning or function

nouns name persons, places, things, etc.

adjectives name qualities or properties of nouns

verbs -describe action

transitive – requires a noun phrase after it (object)

Intransitive – does not require a noun after it

adverbs – modifying adjectives swiftly, sweetly, courageously, usually, quickly; very/too tall

modifying verbs often; here, soon, now

modifying adverbs very soon, really incredible


grammatical categories

pronouns personal person- first, second, third

demonstrative this, these; that, those

interrogative who, what, etc.

relative- relates to the preceding NP

who, that, which, whose, whom–

indefinite someone, anyone, somebody determiners:precede nouns

def/indef articles the, a, an

demonstratives this, that, these, thosepossessives my, our, your, herinterrogatives which what, whose

prepositions -typically precede a nounconjunctions-conjunctions coordinating conjunctions and, but, or

-conjoin words of the same category-subordinators subordinating conjunctions that, whenever, while,

because


McGregor, William B. 2009. Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

O'Grady, William D., Archibald, John, [eds.] (2009). Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction, 6th edition. Ontario: Pearson Education Canada.

Yule G. 2006. The study of language. Cambridge: CUP.
