Phonology and Morphology

Major Branches of Linguistics

This diagram below outlines the various subfields of linguistics, the study of language. These include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. And
today we are going to talk about phonology and morphology.
Phonology
• Phonology is a branch of linguistics that
studies how languages or dialects
systematically organize their sounds (or
constituent parts of signs, in sign
languages). The term also refers to the
sound or sign system of any particular
language variety. At one time, the study of
phonology only related to the study of the
systems of phonemes in spoken
languages.
• Every language has an organized sound
system. Phonology is concerned with
processes in the mind, determining
the rules of a language and how we
organize, study and form sounds in
speech.
Phonology
• The word 'phonology' can refer both to the field of study and to
the phonological system (sound or sign system) of a given
language (Bloomfield Leonard). This is one of the fundamental
systems which a language is considered to comprise, like its
syntax, its morphology and its vocabulary. The
word phonology comes from Ancient Greek φωνή, phōnḗ,
"voice, sound," and the suffix -logy (which is from
Greek λόγος, lógos, "word, speech, subject of discussion").
History of phonology

The history of phonology could actually be

traced back to the 4th Century BC when a
grammar of the ancient Indian language
"Sanskrit" was composed. This was one of the
first steps into phonological research, but
there were many more developments to come
before linguists reached the stage that we are
at today.
Phonology
Phonology deals with sound structure in individual
languages: the way distinctions in sound are used to
differentiate linguistic items, and the ways in which the
sound structure of the ‘same’ element varies as a
function of the other sounds in its context. Phonology
and phonetics both involve sound in natural language,
but differ in that phonetics deals with sounds from a
language-independent point of view, while phonology
studies the ways in which they are distributed and
deployed within particular languages.
Phonology
Phonology originated with the insight that
much observable phonetic detail is irrelevant
or predictable within the system of a given
language. This led to the positing
of phonemes as minimal contrastive sound
units in language, each composed (according
to many writers) of a collection of distinctive
features of contrast. Later work showed that a
focus on surface contrast ultimately was
misguided, and generative phonology replaced
this with a conception of phonology as an
aspect of speakers' knowledge of
linguistic structure.
Phonology refers to the sound system of a
language.
In a real speech we pronounce a great variety of sounds, some of the
sounds help to differentiate words because they are different phonologically.
Phonology refers to the sound system of a language. In general, the basic
unit of phonology is the phoneme, which is an individual speech sound (such
as /p/) that can often be represented by a single grapheme, or letter (such
as the letter p). There are, however, exceptions, such as the sound /sh/,
which is represented by two graphemes (sh). Each natural language has a
different set of possible sounds that can be combined to create words.
Phonological analysis
• Phonetics …Phonology … is the basis for phonological
analysis. It is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax,
discourse, and orthography design. It analyzes the production
of all human speech sounds, regardless of language. It also
deals with the sound patterns of a particular language by
determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and
explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native
speaker.
How many phonems are there in the English
language?
• 44
Generative Phonology
• Generative phonology was discussed in several essays since
the late 1950s and found its systematic presentation
in Chomsky and Halle (1968). The starting point of generative
phonology is that phonology is ‘not-autonomous’ from syntax:
some phonological processes depend on morphological and
syntactic structure.
What is Morphology?

• Morphology – the internal structure of words

• Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a
core part of linguistic study today.

• The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning

‘shape, form’, and -ology which means ‘the study of something’.
• Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first
time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the
term for the study of the form of words.
• What is a word?
• Smallest independent units of language.
Morphology definition/meaning

And Morphology is an important aspects of

linguistics analysis. Morphology which studies the
word, its creation, its origin and its uses in different
form. In simple word, morphology is a scientific
study of words and word forms. Morphology deals
with how words are added in language by different
processes or by various ways
Morphology definition/meaning
• As phonology studies smallest distinctive
elements of sounds in language. In the
same way morphology studies the smallest
distinctive and meaningful word elements
in a language. Which is not only the
synchronic study of word forms, but also of
the development of word forms. Thus, it is
both the synchronic and diachronic study
of word forms.
Synchronic and diachronic studies
• Diachronic linguistics is the historical study of language,
whereas synchronic linguistics is the geographic study of
language. Diachronic linguistics refers to the study of how a
language evolves over a period of time.
• Tracing the development of English from the Old English period
to the twentieth century is a diachronic study. A synchronic
study of language is a comparison of languages or dialects—
various spoken differences of the same language—used within
some defined spatial region and during the same period of time.
A morpheme
• A morpheme may described as a sequence of
sounds un a meaningful combination. Any
word or parts of a word in the language which
has a meaning of its own and which cannot
be further split into a smaller meaningful units
is a morpheme. “a morpheme is a minimal/
smallest meaningful unit of a word.”
Morpheme also sometime refer as a minimal,
meaningful linguistic sign. Morphemes are
also referred as monem in a French
language.
Types: free morpheme and bound morpheme
1. Free morpheme

Free morphemes are the morpheme which have independent

meaning without being combined with others. They can occur
alone and they ,have separate meaning and can be used freely in
sentences. That is why its called free morpheme. For example:
boy, bird, cat etc. are free morpheme. These morphemes are
word categories such as ‘lexical morphemes’ and grammatical
morpheme ‘. Lexical morpheme is the word category which
includes verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.For example:
lexical morphemes such as boy, girls, chair, clever, john, nice, etc.
And grammatical morpheme is the word category which includes
grammatical items like pronouns, conjunctions, articles,
prepositions, etc.
Lexical morpheme:
lexical morphemes carry the content
or meaning of the messages that we
convey. Those morphemes are
having meaning by themselves. For
example: follow, strange, ;look, fine,
current, etc.
Grammatical morpheme

Grammatical morphemes specify a

relationship between other morphemes.
But the difference is not all that well
defined. These are the morpheme that
do not carry the content of the message,
but rather help the grammar of the
sentence function. For example: of the
grammatical morpheme : and when,
ahead , on, that, if, them, near etc.
Bound morpheme

• Bound morpheme is the another category of morphemes.

These are the morpheme which can not occur alone and do not
have meaning in isolation. And if they added to the bases they
get meaning. Bound morphemes or depended morphemes
which depend on free morphemes for having their own
meaning. All suffixes and prefixes are bound morphemes.
Bound morphemes are considerered to be two types:
• a.Inflectional morpheme
• b.Derivational morpheme
Inflectional morpheme
Inflectional morphemes are bound morpheme which change
class aspect of the words. Inflectional morpheme like –ing – ed, -
es, are inflectional morphemes. Because they inflect the word
classes tense aspects. As for example: played, taken, sleeping,
makes, etc.
Derivational morpheme

Derivational morpheme are the morphemes which brings a

change in the word and add a new word in a language.
Derivational morphemes derived different words into the English
language.
• There are two types of derivational morphemes which are –
1.Class changing derivational
2.And class maintaining derivational
 class changing derivational morphemes
1.Class changing derivational are the morphemes (suffixes) after
added to the base change the word category.The Class
changing derivational morphemes like –or, -er, -ly, etc. change
category of the word after addition.
• -or -act = actor
• -er -play= player
• -ly -slow= slowly.
class maintaining derivational morphemes

Class maintaining derivational, these are the

morpheme of suffixes by which after addition
of these morphemes to the base form of the
word, the word does not change its
category/class such morphemes are called
class maintaining derivational. In simple word
words there are some bound morphemes if we
added the to the base form of the word , the
base word does not change class, they remain
the same such morphemes are called the
class maintaining derivational morphemes.
Conclusion

Morphology is the study of the smallest units of grammatical

combination. That are interpreted in form (sound) and meaning. It
covers the study of etymology of the words. ie. known formation
as word formatiom in linguistical language. It covers too, the
smallest to largest aspects of the words in language. The study of
morphology takes all these aspects to linguistical study in total.
Example of phoneme and morpheme in one sentence.
Let´s take an example from Latin language where in the same sentence
we can see the phoneme and morpheme.
Ео rus (I go to the village) — I! (Go!).
In English language : Oh!!
Quizz.
• 1) Give the definition of phonology
• 2) When was it mentioned the first time?
• 3)What is phonological analysis?
• 4) How many phonems are there in the English language?
• 5) What is morphology?
• 6) What is the smallest unit in the human language?
• 7) Give your own example of phomene and morpheme in one
sentence.