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Exploring Morphology: Understanding Words, Word-Forms, and Lexemes in Linguistics

In this week of our Linguistics course, we delve into the fascinating world of morphology, focusing on words, word-forms, and lexemes. We differentiate between function words and content words, exploring their roles and how they are classified. The lesson also touches on inflectional and derivational morphology, discussing how inflection changes grammatical endings without altering the word's class, while derivation creates new lexemes. We investigate roots and affixes, and delve into examples from various languages, including Latin, Tagalog, and Mandarin.

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Exploring Morphology: Understanding Words, Word-Forms, and Lexemes in Linguistics

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  1. Linguistics week 12 Morphology 2

  2. We looked at • Words, word-forms and lexemes • She’s a good cook, but I can cook better • Function words and content words

  3. Two kinds of words • Function words • Restricted in number • A closed class • Have a grammatical function • Usually just one morpheme (a grammatical morpheme) • Content words • An open class • New content words often come into use in every language • Which words on this slide …? Chinese examples?

  4. You think English is hard? • Ha! When I was at school I had to do Latin • See if you can find out what this is: amo amamus amas amatis amat amant • Or this dominus domini domine domini dominum dominos domini dominorum domino dominis domino dominis

  5. They were Latin inflections • The two lists each show the different word-forms, for a Latin noun or verb • dominus is the nominative (subject form) • domine is the vocative form (Oh Master!) • dominum is the accusative (object form) • domini is the genitive (the master’s, of the master) • domino is the dative (to or for the master) • domino is the ablative (in some words, this is different from the dative) (by, with or from the master) • English has a genitive form. What is it? • Does Chinese have one? • In some lexemes, English attests nominative, accusative and genitive forms • What are these lexemes?

  6. Inflectional morphology • In English, inflection includes things like • Number • Tense • Fromkin 101 gives a complete list • Although she doesn’t explain that -s and -es (for example) are two realizations (two allomorphs!) of the same morpheme • Also on p101: does the Italian verb inflection list seem familiar? • BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme • so sleepy is not an inflection of sleep • unkind is not an inflection of kind • artistic is not an inflection of artist (whichis not an inflection of art (Inflection and derivation task)

  7. Inflectional vs derivational morphology • Inflection does not change the word class (syntactic category, part-of-speech, 詞類) • Derivation may or may not change word class • Derivation makes a new lexeme • create creative • Inflection just changes the grammatical ending of the original lexeme • create  creates • Inflection is productive • You can add –s to any verb, to make it plural • Derivation is not necessarily productive • You cannot always add un- to an adjective, or -ive to a verb

  8. Roots and affixes • Unbelievable contains • One free morpheme • A root and two affixes • One prefix and one suffix • In English, there are derivational prefixes and suffixes • There are no inflectional prefixes • Suffixes are more common in the world’s languages • But Thai has only prefixes – no suffixes • Fromkin 78: plural in the Zapotec language is relized by a prefix, not a suffix

  9. Infixes • In Tagalog • sulat = write • sumulat = wrote • sinulat = was written • What is the root morpheme here? • What are the affixes? • Fromkin describes a kind of infix used in English • I don’t want to go to uni-bloody-versity • Is there any infixing in Mandarin, do you think?

  10. Reduplication • Afrikaans • dik = ‘thick’; dikdik = ‘very thick’ • Motu (Papua New Guinea) • mero = boy; memero = boys • meromero = little boy • How do you say ‘little boys’ in this language? • And – you guessed it – what uses does reduplication have in Mandarin?

  11. Hierarchical structure of words (Fromkin 84) • unbelievable and unsystematic have only one structural analysis each: • believe相信 + -able可相信 + un-不可相信 • Unlockable, Fromkin shows on 85-6, is morphologically ambiguous • It can be understood in two ways • Try to understand why, by looking at the trees

  12. Reading and exercises • 69 to 74 (or further if you like) • Ex 2, 3, 4, 5A, 6 • You will probably enjoy these! • You might like to take a look at my master’s thesis • It contains a short section on reduplication in Chinese • It has some ideas about compounding (for next week) • You will get an idea of the structure of a Western-style essay: study, especially, the way the references and bibliography work

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