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Lecture 3 - Morphology (Undergraduate)
Lecture 3 - Morphology (Undergraduate)
Lecture 3 - Morphology (Undergraduate)
Morphology
A morpheme that can stand as a word is a free morpheme, while a morpheme that cannot is a bound
morpheme.
E.g.
homelessness home
English
linguist ling-
gilingan giling
Ilokano
“grinder” “grind”
Roots that only occur in combination with some other bound morpheme are called bound roots.
E.g. circul- (in circulate, circulation, circular); simul- (in simulant, simulate, simulation).
2.3. Affix
Affix: a bound morpheme that can be added to another morpheme or a group of morphemes to express a
grammatical contrast or form a new word.
▪ Circumfix (discontinuous morphemes): a set of affixes that wrap around other morphemes.
▪ Derivational affix: an affix that changes the lexical meaning of the morpheme(s) and usually but not
always changes the part of speech of the morpheme(s) to which it is added, creating a derivative.
▪ Inflectional affix: an affix that signals grammatical relationships without changing the part of speech of
the morpheme(s) to which it is added.
E.g.
rely → root;
unreliability → word (der. prefix un- + root + der. suffix –able + der. suffix –ity).
→ All roots are bases but not all bases are roots.
2.5. Allomorph
Allomorph: any of the different forms of a morpheme.
E.g.
1. English
▪ [ɪz], [s], and [z] are allomorphs of the inflectional suffixes –s/-es to form the plural form of a noun.
▪ [ɪd], [t], and [d] are allomorphs of the inflectional suffix –ed/-d to form the past tense of a verb.
2. Ilokano (Mithun, 2014)
Root Stem
sakmol “inside of mouth” isakmol “put st into the mouth”
ruar “outside” iruar “take st outside”
ditoy “here” iditoy “put st here”
ngato “high, up” ingato “put st up”
baba “down, below” ibaba “put st down”
abut “hole” yabut “put st in a hole”
uneg “inside” yuneg “put st inside”
abay “side” yabay “place beside, compare”
→ Hypothesis:
▪ Prefix i- turns words into verbs;
▪ i- has two allomorphs: i- before consonants and y- [j] before vowels.
E.g.
▪ [liːf] in leaf and [liːv] in leaves are two allomorphic variations of the root leaf.
▪ [prɪˈfɜː] in prefer and [ˈprɛfə] in preferable are two allomorphic variations of the root prefer.
2.6. Lexeme, word form, and grammatical word
Lexeme: a minimal distinctive unit in the semantic system of a language.
E.g. love, loves, loved, loving are four different word forms of the lexeme LOVE.
Lexemes are the units that are conventionally listed in dictionaries as separate entries.
If two distinct grammatical meanings are expressed with one word form, each meaning is expressed
with a grammatical word or morphosyntactic word.
E.g. The single word form loved corresponds to two grammatical words – (1) the past tense form of
LOVE and (2) the past participle form of LOVE.
3. Morphological analysis
Morphological analysis (MA) is done to identify the morphological structure (roots, stems,
morphemes, affixes and how they interact) of a language.
MA is usually done by comparing sets of words; if two similar words differ in only a particular
part, it can be hypothesized that the part in question is a morpheme and has a particular meaning.
nokali “my house” – nokalimes “my houses” – mokali “your house” – ikali “his house”
→ Hypothesis:
Subscript labels are used to indicate the type of constituent and larger unit.
Tree diagrams can be used to represent the morphological structure of a word; it is more widely
adopted than labelled bracketing.
E.g.
1. V 3. A 4. N
A
A
rely
V A
2. A
un rely able V
V
rely able
un rely able ity
5. Morphological processes
Morphological processes include:
Different languages make use of different methods for inflection and word-formation.
5.1. Inflection
Inflection refers to how words (lexemes) are modified to express a grammatical contrast (in terms
of tense, aspect, voice, case, person, etc.).
World languages use different methods for inflection, including affixation (the most common
one), reduplication, internal sound change, suprasegmental variation and suppletion.
The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, while the inflection of other word classes is referred
to as declension.
5.1.1. Affixation
Affixation: the process that involves the use of affixes to indicate a grammatical contrast.
Languages that add inflectional morphemes to words are called inflectional languages.
E.g.
parlo “I speak”
parli “you speak”
parla “he/she speaks” suffixes -o, -i, -a, -iamo, -ate and
Italian parlare parliamo “we speak” –ano are used to indicate person,
parlate “you speak” number and tense
parlano “they speak”
5.1.2. Internal change
Internal change: a process that substitutes one nonmorphemic segment for another to mark a
grammatical contrast.
E.g.
Suppletion: a process that replaces a morpheme with an entirely different morpheme to indicate a
grammatical contrast.
E.g.
go went
English
bring brought partial suppletion
5.1.4. Reduplication
Reduplication: a process in which all or part of the base is repeated to mark a grammatical
contrast.
E.g.
Suprasegmental variation: a process that involves changes in suprasegmental features (most often
tone) to indicate a grammatical contrast.
E.g.
Different languages use different methods to form new words, but the most common ones are affixation
and compounding.
The general term for a newly created lexeme is a coinage. The coinage may be just a nonce word – a
lexeme created for temporary use and afterwards used little or not at all, or may become a neologism – a
newly coined lexeme adopted by the community.
5.2.1. Affixation
Affixation: a process in which derivational affixes are added to a base to form a new word.
E.g.
Compounding: a process in which two or more lexemes (either a root or a word) are used to form a
new word.
E.g.
Reduplication: a process in which a process in which all or part of the base is repeated to form a
new word.
E.g.
Conversion (or Functional shift): a process in which a form changes its word class without the
addition of an affix or other alteration in the word form such as changes in vowel, vowel length or
tone.
E.g.
về (V) về (Adv)
Vietnamese
ra (V) ra (Adv)
Blending: a process in which a word (blend) is formed by blending the first part of one word and
the last part of another.
E.g.
E.g.
Suprasegmental variation: a process that involves changes in suprasegmental features (most often
tone) to form new words.
E.g.
ma – mà – mả – mã – má – mạ
no – nỏ – nó – nọ
Clipping: a process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables.
E.g.
complex clipping
cable telegram cablegram
(clipping compound)
5.2.8.2. Acronym
Acronym: a word formed by taking the initial letters of (some or all) the words in a phrase or title
and pronouncing them as a word.
E.g.
Language Original phrase Acronym
United Nations International Children’s
UNICEF
Emergency Fund
Initialism: similar to acronym in the formation process but the initials are pronounced as a series of
letters rather than a word.
E.g.
Language Original phrase Acronym
District of Columbia DC
Compact disc CD
5.2.9. Sound imitation (Onomatopoeia)
Onomatopoeia: a word which imitates or echoes the sound produced by some process or creature.
E.g.
English rustle
leaves moving in the wind
Russian shurshat
5.2.10. Eponym
E.g.
Borrowing: the process in which one language takes lexical items (loan words or borrowings) from
another.
E.g.
Language Loan word Language of origin
feng shui Chinese
pizza Italian
English
pho Vietnamese
kiwi New Zealand
laptop English
Vietnamese sếp French (chef)
Xô-Viết Russian (Совет)
hotel English
Italian
computer English
5.2.12. Clitic
Clitic: a grammatical form that is neither a clearly a word nor clearly an affix (Brown & Miller, 2013).
E.g.
Language Clitic
Clitics that appear before the host are called proclitics, while those that appear after the host are enclitics.
E.g. John’s book; the man who John met’s book; the girl I’m speaking to’s hat.
References
Aronoff, M., & Rees-Miller, J. (Eds.). (2017). The handbook of linguistics (2nd ed.). John Wiley &
Sons Ltd.
Brown, K., & Miller, J. (2013). The Cambridge dictionary of linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
Mithun, M. (2014). Morphology: what’s in a word?. In Genetti (Ed.), How languages work – an
introduction to language and linguistics (pp. 71-99). Cambridge University Press.
Nghieu, V. D., & Hiep, N. V. (2009). Dẫn luận ngôn ngữ học. National University Press.
Radford, A., Atkinson, M., Britain, D., Clahsen, H., & Spencer, A. (2009). Linguistics: an
Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Rowe, B. M., & Levine, D. P. (2018). A concise introduction to linguistics (5th ed.). Routledge.
Yule, G. (2020). The study of language (7th ed.). Cambridge University Press.