What is morphology?

1. What is morphology? The study of internal structure of words The rules for combining morphemes into words

2. What do you know when you know a word? “bagonize” “to wait anxiously for your bag at the airport carousel” • Pairing sounds with meaning • Information in our mental dictionary (lexicon) for each word: • Pronunciation—[bægәnayz] • Meaning

3. Grammatical category (noun, verb, adjective , adverb, preposition etc.) • He bagonized for a long time. • *The bagonize is gone

4. What is a morpheme? • The smallest meaningful unit of language • It cannot be further analyzed into smaller meaningful parts • It has a relatively stable meaning

5. Examples: Talk Talks = talk + s Talked = talk + ed Talking = talk + ing Teach Teachers = teach + er + s Teaches = teach + es Teaching = teach + ing

6. Different types of morphemes Types of morphemes: Free morphemes: Mouse car book man girl

7. Bound morphemes: re- in remove -ive in active -ous in famous pre- in premature

8. Root/stem: the basic or the core form in a word with more than one morpheme demoralize de + moral + ize Moral is a root/stem

9. Affixes: bound morphemes that are not a root/stem Prefixes: affixes that precede a root de- in demoralize in- in incurable

10. Isthmus Zapotec, a language spoken in Mexico: zigi “chin” kazigi “chins” zike “shoulder” kazike “shoulder” diaga “ear” kadiaga “ears” ka + zigi ka- (a prefix)

11. Suffixes: affixes that follow a root -ize in demoralize -ed in walked

12. Turkish: dur “to stop” durak “stopping place” bat “to sink” batak “sinking place” (swamp) dur + ak -ak (a suffix)

13. Infixes: affixes inserted inside the root Tagalog, one of the languages spoken in the Phillipines: • basa “to read” bumasa “Read!” • tawag “to call” tumawag “Call!” • sulat “to write” sumulat “Write!”

14. Circumfixes (discontinuous) : affixes placed around the root

15. Inflectional: affixes that mark general grammatical meanings (plural, tense, gender, comparison) Derivational: affixes that often change category (part of speech)

16. Content and function morphemes Content morphemes: • express informational content • Independent of the grammatical system of a language • Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs Cups, red, jump, slowly

17. Open-class morphemes • New morphemes can be easily added to this class Nuke, dork, jerk,

18. Function morphemes • express syntactic relationships between elements in a sentence

19. Prepositions: on, in, at, with, from Pronouns: he, she, her, him, my Articles: the, a, an Conjunctions: and, but, because, unless Jumped off a wall John and Mary They love their cats John likesa woman John like a woman John likes woman

20. Closed-class morphemes—essentially closed to new members

21. Lewis carroll’s “Jabberwocky” ‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

22. Inflectional morphology: Creates the forms of the same word Generally productive Generally regular Provides grammatical information (person, number, gender, case, tense)

23. Talk remove blog Talks removes blogs Talked removed blogged Talking removing blogging  

24. Talk eat go am Talks eats goes is Talked ate went was Talked eaten gone been Talking eating going being

25. Derivational affixes: Creates new words but retain the syntactic category -hood added to a noun creates a noun child, childhood woman, womanhood priest, priesthood

26. -ster added to a noun creates a noun gang, gangster prank, prankster

27. Derivational affixes change lexical (syntactic) category change: solid solidify adjective  verb govern government verb  noun sublime sublimity adjective  noun fame famous noun  adjective

28. Some derivational affixes in English: -ive added to a verb to give an adjective act active sedate sedative re- added to a verb to give a verb move remove do redo

29. -al added to a noun to give an adjective universe universal institution institutional -en added to an adjective to make a verb red redden light lighten dark darken

30. de- added to a verb to make verb moralize demoralize toxify detoxify

31. Irregular: ate and gone are irregular forms—some relation to the basic sounds of the root. Suppletion: a special kind of irregularity—no relation between the root and the irregular form Went and am, is, was Good, better, best Bad worse

32. Person:  Present tense: Person Singular Plural 1 ‘I eat’ ‘We eat’ 2 ‘you (sg.) eat’ ‘you (pl.) eat’ 3 ‘he, she eats’ ‘they eat’

33. Number: Nepali: manche ‘man’ mancheharu ‘men’ keta ‘boy’ ketaharu ‘boys’

34. Gender: Spanish: un amigo americano ‘An American friend (male)’ una amiga americana ‘an American friend (female)”

35. Nepali: ramro keta beautiful boy “a beautiful boy” ramri keti beautiful girl “a beautiful girl”

36. Case: Indicates noun’s relation to verbs (subject, direct object, indirect object) John gave Mary his sister’s old bicycle. jonle merilai usko didiko purano saikal diyo

37. ramle harilai kitab diyo ram-sub hari-obj book gave Ram gave a book to Hari.

38. guma ‘man’ singular plural subject guma guman possessive guman gumena indirect object guman gumum direct object guman guman

39. Tense: usle bhat khancha He-subj rice eat-third person present tense ‘He eats rice.’ usle bhat khayo eat-third person past tense ‘He ate rice.’

40. usle bhat khanecha eat-third person future tense ‘He will eat rice.’

41. Hierarchy of morphemes in the formation of words: •  Words are constructed hierarchically • One affix is attached to the root first • Derivational morphemes attach before inflectional ones • *highesness • highnesses

42. unusable unlockable uncontrollably recyclable multigenerationally

43. How do we identify the lexical categories of words? Three criteria: • Morphological • Syntactic • Meaning

44. Morphological criterion: What inflectional affixes can a word take? Noun? boy boy + s -s  ‘plural’ diamond + s disappears + s -s  ‘third person singular’ *beautifuls

45. Syntactic criterion: the boy a boy my boy My beautiful boy *my beautiful *my quickly

46. Meaning criterion: Person, place or thing

47. Verbs? Morphological criterion: jump + ing jump + s *desking

48. Syntactic criterion: will jump may jump Jump! *may desk *Desk!

49. Meaning criterion: Names an action

50. Adjectives? Morphological criterion? tall + er tall + est *jumpest *deskest *desker