323 Morphology

The Structure of Words

2. Basic Concepts

2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms

Words are not easy to define.
A preliminary definition is based on the English
orthographic system.
The spaces used in orthography represent words
(usually).
Most dictionaries list only one word of an inflected
set:
E.g. sing, sang, sung, singing, sings.
The form ‘sing’ is always chosen as a dictionary
entry.
The form is technically an infinitive.
In linguistics the term is lexeme represents the basic
or dictionary form of the word.
Lexemes are usually written in CAPS: SING
Lexemes are abstract representations, which presumably
are listed in the brain in a component called the
lexicon.
Each inflected form of a lexeme is called a word-form.
E.g. ‘sing, sang, sung, singing, sings’ are each a
word-form and each one belongs to the lexeme SING.
 2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms

By convention in each language, the dictionary

representation may be the infinitive form of the verb as
in Russian, the first person singular in Latin (which has
no infinitive), the third person singular in Arabic, or
perhaps by some other form. The entry form for nouns in
normally the singular nominative case form of the noun:
Latin, Russian, English, Czech, German.

A lexeme family, or less formally a word family, is a set

of lexemes that are related. They should share some
phonological properties and be related semantically. The
latter is easier said than determined.
E.g. print, printable, unprintable, printer,
printability, reprint.
This list is not necessarily complete.

Complex lexemes are lexemes formed with an affix (a

morpheme).
E.g. ‘able’, ‘un’, ‘er’, ‘ity’, ‘re’ in the above
list.
Complex lexemes must each be listed separately in a
dictionary as the meaning may differ.
The various word-forms of a given lexeme do not change
the meaning of the lexeme.
 2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms

Sometimes a lexeme with an affix occurs but the basic

form does not exist:
E.g. dis-gruntled but not *gruntled, in-cognito, but
not *cognito, un-gainly, but not*gainly.
Sometimes the expected affix does not occur but another
affix does:
E.g. natural-ness in place *natural-ity.
Or the expected affix occurs with another meaning:
E.g. cook, cook-er (an instrument for cooking, not a
person who cooks, which is simply the
noun ‘cook’.

Kinds of morphological relationship

inflection: the relationship between the word-forms of a
lexeme.
E. g. mask, masks; sit, sat, sitting, sits; blue,
bluer, bluest.
derivation: the relationship between lexemes of a
lexical family.
E. g. singer, singer; write, writer; cook V, cookN,
cooker.
Derivation usually implies forming one lexeme from another
lexeme in the same lexical family.
E.g. sing -> singer, write -> writer, cook V, cookN and
cooker.
 2.2 Morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest constituent with a function. I prefer
this distinction to ‘smallest constituent with meaning. There are
some forms that appears to be constituents but have no
discernable meaning, but have a function in terms of word
building:
E.g. doof-us, radi-us, cf. radi-al, radi-an.

Some inflectional morphemes have no true meaning, but they have a

grammatical function:
E.g. he, him; who, whom; they, them,
The suffix ‘-m’ marks the accusative (objective) Case. This is a
syntactic relation and no meaning can be associated with it.
The term function includes meaning.

To go one step further than H., the hierarchy for constituents

is:
Sentence -> phrase -> word -> morpheme.
Phrases are very important constituents in syntax.

Some grammatical categories cannot be expressed in terms of

morphemes. For example, note the following partial inflection of
the English verb sing and others similar to it:
E.g. sing, sang, sung.
The past tense is marked by a change of the root vowel. The
latter form marks two distinct grammatical functions — the
 2.3 Affixes, Bases and Roots
Affixes are morphemes that are adjoined to the left of the
base of a word or to the right of the base of a word:
A prefix is an affix that is adjoined to the left of the
base of a word.
E.g. ‘un-’ in un-happy, un-regulated; ‘re-’ re-do,
reheat, re-write, and so forth.
A suffix is an affix that is adjoined to the right of the
base of a word.
E.g. ‘s’ in book-s, cat-s; eat-s, smell-s;
linguistic-s.
An infix is an affix that is inserted into the base of
the word forming a non- contiguous base. There
are no infixes in English. Infixes occur in the Semitic
language.
E. g. “ktb” is the base for book and read and words
which refer to book/read in some
related sense. To form the noun in Arabic,
the infixes ‘I’ and ‘a’ are inserted into the base
between the firsts two consonants and the second two
consonants, respectively:
E.g. kitab.
A circumflex is an affix that occurs on both sides of the base.
(H.)
E. g. (per H) German ge-les-en.
English dialects: a-walk-ing, a-read-ing..
The English “a-” is etymologically related to the German
“ge-”.
 2.3 Affixes, Bases and Roots
Stem and Root
A root is a morpheme that cannot be broken down into further
morphemes.
A base is a contiguous strings of one or more morphemes which can
hold lexical meaning.
In English the word dog, for example, is a root since it cannot be
broken into further morphological units:
E. g. ‘do’ is not a morpheme of dog, it is basically a
verb. There is no morpheme ‘og’ that has any kind of
function.
Dog is also a base. It has lexical meaning.
The English word disgruntled consists of three morpheme dis-, gruntle,
and ed. ‘dis’ is a prefix, and ed’ is an inflectional affix
marking the past tense among other functions. The morpheme gruntle
is a root, since two affixes are adjoined to it. It is not a base,
since it has no lexical meaning (what does gruntle mean?) Once
both affixes are adjoined to it, then disgruntled, which is a
base, is a lexical stem since it does have meaning.
Technically, the prefix ‘dis-’ is adjoined first to gruntle to form
the base ‘disgruntle’. Apparently this form has no lexical
meaning and remains a base. Once the adjectival suffix ‘-ed’ is
added to disgruntle then the base receives lexical meaning and is a
stem.

English has several words usually considered compounds, where at least

one member of the compound doesn’t behave like a normal prefix or
affix.
E. g. tele-graph. Although graph may have lexical meaning, tele-
does not. It does not occur in isolation. The form is borrowed from
 2.4 Formal Operations
Some words such as derive imply a process. A true process is a
historical phenomenon and does not imply a process in terms of how
language is represented in the mind (the grammar of a language). For
some yet to be determined reason, H considers affixation and
compounding to be concatenative, but inflection and other
constructions he considers to be non-concatenative.

Another non-concatenative structure include word whose final consonant

becomes voiced, final consonant becomes palatalized, or gemination of
a root consonant.
E.g. Albanian: armik [-q] (Sg.), armiq [-c] (Pl.).
Note: [c] is not a palatalized consonant. The form came about
through palatalization, which is not
visible/hearable.
E.g. English: hoof [hƱf] (Sg.), hooves [hƱvz] (Pl.).
E.g. Arabic causative verbs: darasa (noncausative), darrasa
(causative). Gemination is the doubling of a consonant.
Reduplication is the copying of a syllable or part of a syllable:
1. Prereduplication:
E.g. Ponapean: duhp (nonprogressive), du-duhp (progressive) ‘(be)
diving.’
A weak syllable (no coda) is copied).
2. Postreduplication.
E.g. Mangap-Mbula: kuk (nonprogressive), kuk-uk )progressive)
‘(be) barking’
The rhyme of the syllable is copied.
3. Duplifixing is adding an affix and reduplicated part of the
stem:
 2.4 Formal Operations
E.g. Tsutujil: saq (Sg.) ‘’white’, saq-soj ’whitish’.
‘s’ is reduplicated from the initial consonant of the stem, and ‘oj’ is a nonvariable suffix.

Subtraction is the omission of one or more final segments of the base.

E.g. Murle: nyoon (Sg.), nyoo (Pl.) ‘lamb’
Strong suppletion is replacing one form with another form (allomorph) that is phonologically
unrelated to it the replacee.
E.g. the forms of the English verb be: ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was/were’.

Weak suppletion if replacing one form with another form (allomorph) which share some common
phonological forms, but not all phonological forms are common to both:
E.g. sing, sang (/I/, /æ/), foot, feet (/Ʊ/ /I/).

‘Base’ is redefined (H):

The base of a morphologically complex word is the element to which a morphological operation
applies.
This definition works a long as we assume a zero operation that may derive one form from
another forms is derived with no phonological change. We can say a base may be derived from
a root with a zero morphological operation.
E.g. the noun ‘push’ (he gave me a push) is derived from the verb ‘push’. The derivation is
a zero operation in that there is no overt sign marking this. We could represent this as:
[N[V PUSH]], probably in later chapters.
A morphological pattern refers to the various ways a particular grammatical or lexical feature can be
expressed. There are four morphological patterns of the past tense of the English verb:
E.g. the default suffix ’-ed’, the irregular suffix ‘-d’ (tell, told), ,the irregular suffix ‘-T (feel, felt),
and the vowel replacement system of strong verbs (sing, sang; drink, drank).
 2.5 Morphemes and Allomorphs
A morpheme is a set of allomorphs. Most linguists would agree with this
even if they are not familiar with set theory. The problem is how to
account the variation. For the past 45 years or so, the theory of
underlying representation. This theory states that there is an abstract
(usually) form from which the other allomorphs are derived. H refers to
these as a ’fictitious underlying representation’ (p.27). H does not
elaborate here.

The approach that I favour is set theory.To review Korean, there are two
allomorphs (members) of the set for the plural of nouns: {ul, lul} (also
written as {{ul}, {lul}}. The standard to write morphemes and allomorphs
with hyphens to show that the morpheme or allomorph is an affix. I is not
a theoretical divergence. As I mentioned before one of the allomorphs of
the plural morpheme is the default. The nondefault allomorph must be
marked with information indicating the contexts in which the allomorph
occurs. The default allomorph usually corresponds with the underlying
form. The default or underlying allomorph is normally determined, in
part, at least, by is distribution. There are fewer vowels than
consonants in Korean. If -ul, which follows consonants, is the default,
then the selection of -lul has a more constrained condition. The rule
writing form will be dealt with later.

In the Russian example on p. 27, H considers ZAMOK-I castles to be the

underlying form for the plural form. The suffix ‘-ok’ must be marked in
its grammatical entry (the grammaticon) to indicate that the vowel /o/ in
the suffix /ok/ is deleted if the inflectional affix begins with a vowel.
I, too, would consider the allomorph /ok/ as the default. And I would
marked the other allomorph with the same information indicating that /k/
is chosen if the suffix begins with a vowel.
 2.6 Some Problems in Morpheme Analysis

H mentions a problem arising from suppletion. The plural allomorphs ‘-s’ and
‘-en’ in English are related by suppletion. They share no exclusive
phonological properties. H raises the question whether the two suffixes are
manifestations of the same morpheme. H leans toward this view. So do I.

My view is determined by the claim that all morphemes must have a form, a
function and a sign. I will illustrate with the progressive participle
suffix ‘-ing’:

The program I am using to make graphics does not import unicode

phonetics. I am using here ‘ñ’ for engma, the nasal velar [ŋ].
[+Progressive] is the feature denoting the progressive aspect; the form
is a suffix which is adjoined to a noun host (base); and the sign is
/ɩŋ/.
There are plural signs for nouns in English: /z/ and /ɩn/. These two
allomorphs are strongly suppletive. They are shown in the following
grammeme (entry form for grammatical morphemes):
 2.6 Some Problems in Morpheme Analysis
Grammeme: [+Pl]

[+Plural, Noun] function

+Suffix
+Host form
+Noun

{/in/, / {CHILD, BROTHER, OX} ___}, sign

{/iz/, [default]}

The two allomorphs here form a ‘natural’ set, since they share
the same function. The fact that they are the same form supports
this claim. If they are in the same set, then they must be a
member of the [+Pl]. And if they are in the same set they must be
allomorphs.
A morpheme may consist of two or more features. For example, the
English verbal suffix ‘-s’ marks agreement with a third person
singular subject and it marks the present tense. The suffix in the
above figure contains two subfeatures [+Host] and [+Noun].
Agglutinating languages do not do this, with some minor
exceptions. This cumulative expression is also called fusion.

A zero expression ‘ø’ means that there is no overt affix to mark a

function. ‘ø’ has been the topic of notable debates. Until very
recently I was opposed to the notion of ‘ø’ until I started
learning set theory. Set theory permits empty sets often written
as ‘ø’. A zero expression grammeme is not entirely empty; the sign
 2.6 Some Problems in Morpheme Analysis
Grammeme: [-Pl, +Noun]
[-Plural, +Noun] function
ø form
ø sign

Only the function is not empty; it merely has no form and no

sign.

An empty morpheme is an affix that has no meaning, but has a

function: it forms a base to which certain meaningful affixes are
adjoined. This occurs in English when nouns are borrowed from
Greek and Latin and retain their plural form. The singular ending
occurs in English an empty (ø) morph:
E.g. radi-us (Sg.), radi-i (Pl.); agend-a (Sg.), agend-ae
(Pl.); phenomen-on (Sg.), phenomen-a (Pl.).
The plural form is adjoined to the base, respectively: ‘I’, ‘ae’,
‘a’. In English the Sg. form is morphologically null. The
suffixes in the above three examples are stem-enders, an empty
Grammeme:
morpheme required when there is no [stem extender]
suffix adjoined to the word.
This applies to derivatives as well: radi-al, phenomen-al, and
stem extender when function
so forth. The grammemical entry for ‘-us’ is:
there is no affix, 'us'
class
[+suffix] form
us sign

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