Morphological Processes

Submitted by: ALI MUZAFFAR

Roll No.: 17063

Class: BS English-6B

Course: Grammar, Syntax, Semantics

Submitted to: Ma’am Sana

According to Bloomfield Morpheme is a linguistic form that bears no
partial phonetic – semantic resemblance to any other form. Morpheme
consists of phonemes and phonemes and morphemes of a language are
by segmenting and classifying actual language material. There are
complex relations between morphemes and phonemes and this creates
a hybrid field of study named Morpho – phonemics. Bloomfield himself
proposed the idea of phonemic alternates of single morpheme and
labeled them as Allomorph.

Morphological processing is basically a way of using and understanding

language by incorporating semantic and grammatical information both
in the word and sub word levels.

Two models of Grammatical Description

Hackett proposed that there are two essentially different approaches to
morphology. In his famous article” Two models of grammatical
description” he named them as
1. IA (Item and Arrangement) Approach.
2. IP (item and Process) Approach.

Item & Arrangement (IA)

It is a more restricted approach and does not allow most of the

examples of morphological change within a word such as took from
Take. IA allowed one type of process only, that of addition such as
ending – s to cat.
Item & Process (IP)

The Item and Process (IP) model works on the conception that word-
forms constitute paired features of structure and function, or rather
form and meaning, and that elements undergo a variety of
modifications, through transformations, to result in newer forms. This
approach thus takes into account all process involved in alternation and
incorporates the essentials of change as its basic feature. Morphology is
regarded as a set of derivational processes, acting on morphemes or
words, producing new word-forms.

Morphological Learning
Sandhi Rules
The word SANDHI is taken from the Indian grammarians and is defined
as the process whereby the form of a word changes as a result of its
position in an utterance (e.g. the change from a to an before a vowel).
When letters join according to grammatical rules new changes occur.
Different types of Sandhi are as follow
assimilation, regressive and progressive, Internal Sandhi and External
Sandhi.
Assimilation

The term comes from the Latin meaning, "make similar to”. It is a type
of change which involves assimilation of phonetic features of a word.
Assimilation is a general term in phonetics for the process by which a
speech sound becomes similar or identical to a neighboring sound.
Assimilation is of two types.
 1. Progressive Assimilation

2.Regressive Assimilation

Progressive Assimilation:

When a following sound changes its features under the influence of a

preceding sound, it is called progressive Assimilation. The English plural
is either /z/ or /s/ when it occurs after a non-sibilant sound. The voicing
feature is taken from the final consonant of the base.
"tape" pronounced as "tate"

Regression Assimilation:

This is a type of assimilation in which a preceding phoneme belonging

to a preceding morpheme changes itself under the influence of a
following phoneme belonging to a following morpheme.
For example, “Good night” when uttered fluently sounds like Gun
Night.

Automatic:

There is another important feature which is that if the assimilation had

not taken place, the resultant form would have been phonologically
impossible in Classical Greek. For that language does not permit voiced
plosives such as b and g to occur before s. The variation is, then, in a
sense, forced by the phonology of the language. Such variations are
known as Automatic. Automatic must not be confused with “Regular”

Internal Sindhi vs External Sindhi

1. Internal Sandhi:
Internal sandhi is found in the combination of a stem and a suffix. It
occurs within a word and such type of sandhi is found in derivation of
finished words such as nominal declension and verbal
conjugation. Sandhi operation, in general, takes place involving the
final letter of the starting word and the initial letter of the following
word.
It occurs at morpheme boundaries within words,
such as syn- + pathy: sympathy.
2.External Sandhi:
External sandhi is joining of two words occurring in continuous
utterance i.e. it occurs across the word boundary and is found in the
formation of compounds, phrases and sentences. In English, for
example, at word boundaries, such as the pronunciation "tem books"
for ten books in some dialects of English. The linking /r/ process of
some dialects of English ("I saw-r-a film" in British English) is a kind of
external sandhi.
Liaison /liˈeɪzn/:
The term ‘liaison’ refers to the phenomenon (specifically applied in
French) where a normally silent final consonant is pronounced when
the next word begins with a vowel. Make a liaison when you see that
the pronunciation of the last consonant sound of one word precedes
the beginning vowel of the next word. In such situation an ‘r’ in the
spelling is pronounced only before a vowel, but not before a consonant.

Elision:
In linguistics, elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds
(such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase.
Sometimes sounds are elided to make a word easier to pronounce. It
occurs when there are two pronounced vowel sounds: one at the end
of a word, and the other at the beginning of the next word.

him /hɪm/ /ɪm/

I don't know' /I duno/
Morphology of Derivation:
In linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing
word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness.
For example, unhappy and happiness derive from the root word happy.
It is differentiated from inflection, which is the modification of a word
to form different grammatical categories without changing its core
meaning: determines, determining, and determined are from the root
determine.
Some of the other examples includes
slow → slowness
red → reddish
glory → glorify

 To generate the adjectives in the above column there is first a rule

of diphthongization which adds y to give: serein diviyn

 There is a second rule of vowel shift to give: serlyn divreyn

change of y into the long vowel /i:/

 There is a third rule which is called laxing rule in which long

vowels becomes short /eɪ/ = /æ/, /i:/ = /e/ & /aɪ/ = i)

CONCLUSION:
The main purpose of all this study was to apply this to inflectional and
derivational patterns. But due to complexities and variations even the
great linguists like Noam Chomsky and Halle were unable to arrive at any
conclusion at this matter. As it is a complex study and students sometime
struggle with reading and writing in their academic years. So, we came
to the conclusion that Further research is needed to understand the
more detailed nature of relations among morphological awareness,
spelling, word reading, and sentence comprehension abilities. And the
future research should investigate the usefulness of this method for the
assessment of school, college or university students.

Why Morphological Patterns are so complicated yet important?

The Linguists like Hockett and Bloomfield gives brief analysis and
examples but fail to provide any explanation of why Morphological
patterns are so complex and varied in nature. And we as a foreign
language learner are often faced with a difficulty of how in some
languages there are different alternations which are very complex
because of abstract forms.

IMPORTANCE:
Morphological awareness is important because it helps us to improve
our reading abilities. Reading abilities contribute significantly to
comprehension because we sometime feel difficulty in understanding
new words. The ability to read the complex words easily is one of the
several characteristics of the morphological awareness. We should have
fully awareness about its other critical features as well because as it is
important to reading comprehension.