Morphology

1. Naseem Akhtar

2. Knowledge of Words
To know a word means to know aspects of
a word: sound, meaning, spelling,
grammatical properties, collocations,
connotations, context, etymology, etc.
But what is crucial is to segment from a
string of sounds a basic unit of meaning,
like Isleptfortenhoursyesterday.
☞To know a word thus means the ability to
map a string of sounds with a particular
meaning and specific grammatical
properties.
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3. Simple forms: Words that are
unable to be analyzed further into
smaller, meaningful segments. e.g.
an, the, that, boy, happy, take, dog,
but, etc.
Complex forms: Words that have
more than one morpheme. e.g.
Unhappy, replacement, readability, etc.
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Two forms of Words

4. Open-Class Words
lexical categories
Major parts of speech > content words,
e.g. nouns, adjectives, verbs, and
adverbs
They are changeable from one part of
speech to another
The open classes are open to
affixations
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5. Closed-Class Words
They belong to grammatical or
functional classes > function words
They are not derivable.
They are closed to affixations. e.g.
auxiliaries, conjunctions, pronouns,
determiners, prepositions, and
interjections.
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6. What is Morphology?
The study of the internal structure and
form of words in language.
Morphology is the study of systematic
formation of meaningful words.
Morphology is the study of the
combination of morphemes to yield
words.
The study of words and the rules for
word formation in (a) language.
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7. Morph-ology
Inflection
Word formation
DerivationCompounding
AffixationOther 1or2 free roots
prefix suffix infix
redup. conversion
+/- class-changing
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8. Morph+eme
Smallest unit of language that carries
information about meaning or function.
e.g. build; build-er; house; houses.
The smallest meaningful constituent of
words that can be identified. e.g.
break-ing hope-less re-write, ear-plug-s,
Morpheme
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9. A meaningful linguistic unit, minimal,
unable to be further divided or broken into
smaller meaningful parts. e.g.
readable = read+able >2 morphemes
unplayful = un+play+ful>3 morphemes
The smallest part of a word with
independent meaning.
Morpheme
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10. Productivity
one morpheme: taste
two morphemes: taste+ful
three morphemes: dis+taste+ful
four morphemes: dis+taste+ful+ly
Morpheme
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Types of Morphemes

12. A) Free morphemes: Morphemes that
can occur as an independent words.
e.g.
careless, lesser, lesson
probable,
They are of two types:
1.Lexical Morpheme: Content words or
Open class words.
2.Function Morpheme: Function words
or closed class words.
Types of Morphemes
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13. B) Bound morphemes: Morphemes that
cannot stand alone. They are dependent
and must be attached to other morphemes.
They can be further classified according to:
1). where they attach,
Prefixation: occur at the beginning of a word Un-, pre-, dis-
in+ability dis+abilityun+able
Suffixation: occur at the end of a word -ly, -er, -s, -es
judg+ment brief+ly clock+wise
Infix: occurs in the middle of a word
Circumfix: occurs both initially and finally, Special – especially
Types of Morphemes
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14. Types of Morphemes
☞Prefixes change the semantic content But
Suffixes change the grammatical category of the
word.
2). what function they perform,
Derivational (change the part of
speech and attach to a root)
Inflectional (modify the grammatical
form and attach to a stem)
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15. Root and Stem
Root, Stem, or base: The free morpheme
to which an affix is attached.
Stem (Base):
A stem or base is the root or roots of a word,
together with any of derivational affixes, to
which inflectional affixes are added.
tie and untie both are stem
Inflectional –s may be added to the stem to form
ties and unties
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16. Root and Stem
Root:
Non-affix lexical content morpheme that can not
be analyzed into smaller parts
Common to set of derived or inflected forms,
when all affixes are removed
Cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. e.g.
system, clean, boy, Chomsky
Carries the principle portion of meaning. e.g.
Disestablish , Establishment, Establishments
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17. Branches of Morphology
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Morphology
Inflectional Derivational

18. Inflectional Morphology
Inflectional morphology is the combination of
a word stem with a grammatical morpheme,
usually resulting in a word in the same class.
Adds: Tense, number, person, mood, aspect
Word class doesn’t change
Word serves new grammatical role
Five verb forms in English
Other languages have (lots more)
Concerns with the changes in the form and
meaning of words.
It does change the form and meaning but
does not change the word class.
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19. Derivational Morphology
Derivational morphology is the combination of a
word stem with a grammatical morpheme, usually
resulting in a word of different class.
Nominalization: computerization, appointee, killer,
fuzziness
Formation of adjectives: computational, clueless,
embraceable
Concerns with the derivation of new words from
older ones and essentially changes the word class.
Deals with the relationship between morphologically
simple forms -- roots -- and more complex forms
which are distinct lexemes.
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20. English word-formation
1.Affixation
2.Conversion
3.Compounding
4.Reduplication
5.Clipping
6.Acronyms
7.Blending.
8.Inventions
9.Borrowing
10.Onomatopoeia/
Echoism
11.Backformation
12.Eponymy
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21. English word-formation
1)Affixation
a: Use of Prefixes
Negative: im+possible impossible
Number: bi+lingual bilingual
Time/order:re+examine re-examine
Location: inter+class interclass
Degree/size:mini+bus minibus
Attitude: anti+social antisocial
Class Changingen+able enable
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22. English word-formation
b: Use of Suffixes
a) Class maintaining
boy-hoodboyhood
b) Class changing
Noun to Adjective: india-ianindian
Adjective to Noun: brave-rybravery
Noun to Verb: length-enlengthen
Verb to Noun: drive-erdriver
Verb to Adverb: sleep-ilysleepily
Adjective to Adverb: nice-lynicely
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23. 2) Conversion:
a)Change of function (without Affixes)
Noun:Switch on the light.
Verb:Light the lamp.
b)Change of accent
Noun: 'present
Verb: pre'sent
c) Final voiced consonant
Noun: Advice/ house /s/
verb: Advise/ house /z/
English word-formation
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24. 3)Compounding:
Open : paper knife
Hyphenated : paper-knife
Solid : paperknife
a)Noun+Noun: gold+fishgoldfish
b)Noun+Adjective:duty+freedutyfree
c)Adjective+Noun:red+lightredlight
d) Compounds with Verbs/adverbials/verbal Nouns
sight-seeing, easy-going, brain-washing
English word-formation
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25. 4)Reduplication: Words formed by identical
or slightly different elements. e.g.
criss-cross, pooh-pooh, tip-top, see-saw
5)Clipping: Words shortened by subtracting
one or more syllables at the beginning or
at the end. e.g.
photograph photo
influenza flu
mathematics maths
English word-formation
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26. 6)Acronyms: Words formed by joining
together the initial letter(s) of each of the
successive parts or major parts of
compound terms and are pronounced as
words. e.g.
radar radio detecting and ranging
Laser light amplification (by) stimulated
emission of radiation
RAM Random Access Memory
English word-formation
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27. 7)Blending: Two words are clipped and the
clippings are joined. e.g.
brunch=breakfast + lunch
nor = not + or
smog =smoke + fog
8)Inventions/ Coinage: New words have to
be given to new inventions. They are
arbitrary but, come to stay as apart of the
language with time course. e.g. astronaut,
x-ray, aspirin, nylon, modem.
English word-formation
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28. 9)Borrowing: Two words are clipped and
the clippings are joined. e.g.
Samosafrom Urdu
Admiralfrom Arabic
Dame from French
10)Onomatopoeia/ Echoism: Words formed
by mimic, imitative, or suggestive sounds.
e.g. meow, bow-wow, bang, splash, crash.
English word-formation
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29. 11)Backformation: A process where
pseudosuffixes such as –or, -er, and –ar
are dropped to arrive at new words. e.g.
beggar>to beg
pedlar>to peddle
12)Eponymy / Proper Names: Names and
brand names that are used to refer to as
generic terms of other things that belong
to the same kind. e.g. Kleenex, Walkman
English word-formation
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30. References
Jindal, D.V. (2007) An Introduction to
Linguistics (Prentice Hall of India) New
Dehli.
Radford, Andrew. (1999) Linguistics: An
Introduction (Cambridge University
Press)
Yule, George. (1985) The Study of
Language (2
nd
ed.). (Cambridge
University Press)
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