Name: Margilah D.

Buisan

Instructor Name: Ma’am Lorelei Bama Enar

Schedule: MWF 8:30 -9:30

Subject: Linguistic 101

1. Discuss morphology.

Morphology is the study of the minimal meaningful units of language. It studies the structure of
words, however from a semantic viewpoint rather than from the viewpoint of sound.
Morphology is intimately related to syntax. For everything that is larger than a word is the
domain of syntax. Thus within morphology one considers the structure of words only, and
everything else is left to syntax. The first to notice is that words come in different classes. For
example, there are verbs (/to imagine/) and there are nouns (/a car/), there are adverbs
(/slowly/) and adjectives (/red/). Intuitively, one is inclined to divide them according to their
meaning: verbs denote activities, nouns denote things adverbs denote ways of performing an
activities and adjectives denote properties. However, language has its own mind. The noun
/trip/ denotes an activity, yet it is a noun. Thus, the semantic criterion is misleading. From a
morphological point of view, the three are distinct in the following way. Verbs take the
endings /s/, /ed/, and /ing/, nouns only take the ending /s/. Adjectives and adverbs on the other
hand do not change. (They can be distinguished by other criteria, though.)

(104) We imagine.

(105) He imagines.

(106) We are imagining.

(107) He imagined.

Thus we may propose the following criterion: a word w is a verb if and only if we can add [z]
(/s/), [d] (/ed/) and [ıŋ] (/ing/ and nothing else; w is a noun if and only if we can add [s] (/s/) and
nothing else.

This distinction is made solely on the basis of the possibility of changing the form alone. The
criterion is at times not so easy to use. Several problems must be noted. The first is that a given
word may belong to several classes; the test using morphology alone would class anything that
is both a noun and a verb, for example /fear/ as a verb, since the plural (/fears/), is identical to
the third singular. Changing the wording to replace ‘if and only if’ to ‘if’ does not help either. For
then any verb would also be classed as a noun. A second problem is that there can be false
positives; the word /rise/ [ aız] cannot be taken as the plural of /rye/ [ aı]. And third, there some
words do not use the same formation rules. There are verbs that form their past tense not in the
 way discussed earlier, by adding [d]. For example, the verb /run/ has no form ∗/runned/. Still,
we classify it as a verb. For example, the English nouns take a subset of the endings that the
verb takes. The word /veto/ is both a noun and a verb, but this analysis predicts that it is a verb.
Therefore, more criteria must be used. One is that of taking a context and looking which words
fit into it.

2. What is morpheme?

Morphemes are the smallest parts that have meaning. Words may consist of one or several
morphemes in much the same way as they consist of one or more syllables. However, the two
concepts, that of a morpheme and that of a syllable, are radically different.

3. What is phoneme?

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech.  When we teach reading we

teach children which letters represent those sounds.  For example – the word
‘hat’ has 3 phonemes – ‘h’ ‘a’ and ‘t’.

4. Discuss the rules of word formation.

Definition
In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted
with semantic change, which is a change in a single word’s meaning. The boundary between word
formation and semantic change can be difficult to define as a new use of an old word can be seen as a
new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form.

Word Formation Process (also called Morphological Process) is a means by which new words

are produced either by modification of existing words or by complete innovation, which in turn
become a part of the language.

Morphological Formation / Process

Words are formed from simpler words, using various processes. This makes it possible to create very large
words. Those words or parts thereof that are not composed and must therefore be drawn from the lexicon
are called roots. Roots are ‘main’ words, those that carry meaning. (This is a somewhat hazy definition. It
becomes clearer only through examples.) Affixes are not roots. Inflectional endings are also not roots. An
example of a root is /cat/, which is form identical with the singular. However, the latter also has a word
boundary marker at the right and (so it looks more like (/cat#/, but this detail is often generously ignored). In
other languages, roots are clearly distinct from every form you get to see on paper. Latin /deus/ ‘god’ has
two parts: the root /de/, and the nominative ending /us/. This can be clearly seen if we add the other forms
as well: genitive /dei/, dative /deo/, accusative /deum/, and so on. However, dictionaries avoid using roots.
Instead, you find the words by their citation form, which in Latin is the nominative singular. So, you find the
root in the dictionary under /deus/ not under /de/. (Just an aside: verbs are cited in their infinitival form; this
need not be so. Hungarian dictionaries often list them in their 3rd singular form. This is because the 3rd
singular reveals more about the inflection than the infinitive. This saves memory!)

Types of Word Formation Processes

Different types of word formation processes are employed to create new words. However, all
word formation processes basically bring either inflectional or derivational changes. Therefore,
inflection (also called inflexion) and derivation are the two core processes of word formation.
Inflection differs from derivation to the following extent:

Inflection
Produces grammatical variants of the
same word.
Modifies a word to express different
grammatical categories such as tense,
mood, voice, aspect, person, number,
gender and case.
Does not change the meaning of a
word. For example: determine→
determines, determining, determined.
Derivation
Produces a new word on the basis of
an existing word.
Changes the word class (also called
parts of speech; form class; lexical
class; syntactic category).
Modifies the meaning of the root. For
example: modern → modernize (to
make modern).

The major word formation processes include but are not limited to the following:

Affixation
It is a word formation process wherein an affix is attached to a root (also called stem; base) to
form a new word. A root is a free morpheme (also called unbound morpheme) that can appear
alone. On the other hand, an Affix is a bound morpheme which never occurs by itself, but is
always attached to some free morpheme and can be either inflectional or derivational. An
Inflectional affix modifies the form/grammatical category of a word, i.e., tense, person, number,
gender, case, etc. For example: rat  →  rats.  Contrariwise, a derivational affix modifies the parts
of speech of the root, while leaving the grammatical category unchanged. In this way, there is a
change of meaning of the root.  For example:  write → writer.

In English there are two types of affixations:

1. Prefixation: In this morphological process words are formed by adding an affix to

the front of a root. The type of affix used in this process is referred to as prefix. For
example:  un + tidy  →  untidy
2. Suffixation: In this morphological process words are formed by adding an affix to
the end of a root. The type of affix used in this process is referred to as suffix. For
example:  fear + less  →  fearless
Conversion
This refers to the change of function or parts of speech of a word without adding an affix.
Conversion is also called zero derivation or null derivation  since the functional change is brought
about by supplementing an invisible affix. Sometimes it is also called functional shift. Typically
conversion is made from “noun to verb” and from “verb to noun”. Less frequently, conversion is
also done from “adjective to verb” and “adjective to noun”. For instance:

 Noun to Verb:  

 access
 email
 film
 name
 shape

Verb to Noun:

 attack
 alert
 hope
 increase
 visit
 cover

Adjective to Verb:

 brown
 black
 slow

Adjective to Noun:

 crazy
 nasty

Back-formation
Back-formation is a morphological process in which new word is created by extracting affixes
from another word. In this way, it is the reverse of affixation, in which affixes are added. Back-
formation is also different from clipping since it brings a change in the parts of speech or the
word's meaning. For example: the noun insertion has been back-formed into verb insert by
removing the suffix ion.
Clipping
As the name suggests, clipping is the word formation process in which a word is reduced to a
shorter form. With a sharp contrast to back-formation, clipping keeps the original word
meaning intact. These words are very common in everyday speech. For instance: lab is the
clipped form of laboratory. . There are four types of clippings:

1. Back clipping: (also called final clipping; apocope) it involves the truncation of end of

a word as in ad from advertisement.
2. Fore-clipping: (also called initial clipping; apheresis) it is the removal of the beginning
of a word as in phone from telephone.
3. Middle clipping: (also medial clipping; syncope) it is the extraction of the beginning
and end of a word as in flu from influenza.
4. Complex clipping: is removing multiple parts from multiple words as
in cablegram from cabletelegram.

Compounding
Also called composition, by this process two or more than two words are combined together to
create a single word, having a single idea and function. In English, there are compound nouns,
compound adjectives, and compound verbs. Customarily compound words are spelt as a single
word, or as two or more hyphenated words, and even as two or more separate words. For
example:

 life + style →  lifestyle

 mother + in + law →  mother-in-law
 shopping + mall →  shopping mall

There are no specific rules for hyphenated compounds. Generally, some new and original
compound nouns are hyphenated, but the hyphen is ignored when they become more familiar.
However, there are some compound adjectives that are always hyphenated. For instance: state-
of-the-art. The hyphen is often retained when two vowels come together, such as: Co-
operation. Hyphens are often used to tell the ages of people and things, for example: 10-year-
old. The general rule is that words are combined with hyphens to avoid confusion.

Borrowing
This refers to the words adopted from other languages. There are two types of borrowings:

1. Loan-word: By this process, a word is borrowed from another language without

translating it into the target language. For example: the phrase tour-de-force is
borrowed directly from French, which means a masterly or brilliant feat.
 2. Loan-translation: Also known as calque, a morphological process wherein a word or
phrase from another language is borrowed by literally translating it into the target
language. For example: the phrase point of view has been translated into English
from the French phrase point de vue.

Coinage
Also called invention, is a morphological process by which new words are invented. Sometimes
popular trademark names of various products are adopted by people so extensively that they
ultimately become the everyday words of language. For example:

 Heroin
 Aspirin
 Escalator
 Xerox
 Kerosene
 Nylon
 Band-Aid
 Vaseline
 Margarine
 Videotape

Again, some words are being invented due to rapid cultural changes and the spread of
information technology, mass media, internet, etc. For example:

 Google
 Blog
 Hotspot
 Netbook
 Tablet
 Tweet
 Emoticon
 Smartphone

Blending
Blending (also called portmanteau) is a morphological process in which the parts of two or more
words are combined together to form a new word. Usually, the parts consist of the beginning of
one word and the end of the other word(s). Typically, the meaning of the blended word
reverberates with the meanings of the original words. For example:

 breakfast + lunch → brunch

 motor+hotel → motel
However, blending should not be confused with compounding, which combines two words
without truncation of parts of the roots of the blended words.

Acronyms
These words are formed with the initial letters or each of the major parts of a word or a longer
phrase. With a few exceptions, acronyms are usually capitalized. Some linguists confuse
acronyms with initialisms, which are also abbreviations formed in the similar manner as the
former. In essence, there is a sharp difference between the two. In language, an acronym is
pronounced as a single word rather than just a sequence of individual letters, which is
characteristic of initialisms. For example:
Acronyms:

 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization → UNESCO

 Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation → Laser
 International Criminal Police Organization → Interpol

Initialisms:

 Personal Computer → PC
 Asian Development Bank → ADB
 Liquid Crystal Display → LCD

Reduplication
Reduplication (also called cloning; doubling; duplication; repetition; tautonym) is a word formation
process in which a new word is created by repeating all or part of a root or a stem, often with a
change of vowel or initial consonant. Reduplication is not a major means of creating lexemes in
English, but it is perhaps the most unusual one. Based on their usage, the techniques of
reduplication could be classified in the following manner:

1. Repetition without Change: bye-bye, tick-tick

2. Rhyming Reduplication: ding-dong, super-duper, bow-wow
3. Repetition with Change of Vowel: tiptop, chitchat, flip-flop, ping-pong, dilly-dally,
wishy-washy
4. Repetition with Change of Initial Consonant: teeny-weeny