Download Morphemes Free morphemes

LIN200H1S
Feb 10, 2003
NOTE: Extended office hours before the midterm:
Monday, Feb 23, 2-5 pm,
Tuesday, February 24, 2-5 pm
HANDOUT 5
Morphology, Words and Sentences
Morphemes
Words are not simple creatures. They are usually formed of smaller units, the morphemes.
Morphemes are the smallest units that carry meaning.
Free morphemes
They can occur by themselves as single words.
In other words, words can be single morphemes. But not every single morpheme is a word (see
bound morphemes). When free morphemes are combined with bound morphemes, they are
called stems.
They can be classified as lexical morphemes and functional morphemes. Free lexical
morphemes like adjectives: green, old, tired; verbs: read, listen, freeze; adverbs: fast, fluently;
and nouns: box, lamp, paper are carrying meaningful content. New ones are added continuously;
they belong to an open class of morphemes.
The functional morphemes like prepositions: under, of, above, in; conjunctions: and, but, while;
pronouns: he, her, they, us; and articles: the, a have functional “meaning.” Usually, no new
ones are added to a language; therefore they belong to a closed class of morphemes.
Bound Morphemes
They cannot stand alone but must be attached to a free morpheme and/or to another bound
morpheme.
Bound morphemes are affixes, which can be further classified according to where they attach to
another morpheme.
Suffixes attach to the end of a stem or another suffix: care-less-ness, stalk-er, walk-s
Prefixes attach to the beginning (the left) of another prefix or stem: re-analyze, un-done
Infixes are inserted into a stem: SingaBLOODYpore! (note: bloody is not a bound morpheme)
Circumfixes are affixes that consist of two units and attach to the right and the left of a word: no
examples in English
Affixes can have different FUNCTIONS and can be classified accordingly:
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LIN200H1S
Feb 10, 2003
Derivational Affixes
Derivational affixes MAY change the grammatical category of a word.
Adjective Æ Noun
pretty-ness
Verbs Æ N
derive derivation
VÆAÆN
acceptability
N
A
V
Af
accept
-able
AÆV
-ity
real-ize
Affixes can be classified also according to the category they can attach to:
dismemberment, unbelievable
Is ship in hardship a bound or a free morpheme?
Compare: important and impossible. How many morphemes are there in each word?
Inflectional Affixes
Inflectional affixes NEVER change the grammatical category of the word. English has only 9
inflectional morphemes:
Nouns:
plural
/s/
possessive:
books, bushes, cats
/s/
Mary’s book
Pronouns:
Objective: /m/
To whom did you give the book?, him, them
Verbs:
3rd person singular present: /s/: she digs classical music, he walks the dog, he hisses
Past tense –ed walked , lifted, listened
Past Participle: -en, -ed: spoken, been, walked, filled
Present participle: -ing: she is singing
Adjectives and Adverbs:
Comparative: higher, faster
Superlative: loudest, bravest
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LIN200H1S
Feb 10, 2003
Morphs, allomorphs, morphemes
In Phonology, we have already encountered the concept of abstract representations and their
realization. We can use the same concept in morphology, especially inflectional morphology.
Take, for instance, the morpheme plural. In English it has several phonetic realizations,
depending on phonological environment. In this case, we speak of the phonetic realization of the
phoneme /s/. We also speak of the allomorphs of the morpheme plural: [s, z, \s]
If we consider the plural as in sheep we say, the plural morpheme has a zero realization, or a null
suffix.
However, if we consider men, the plural is realized as a modification of the stem vowel.
Grammatical Categories
We have identified phonemes and analyzed words into their components, the morphemes. Now,
we go one step further, we start to analyze the area outside of the word.
Parts of Speech
We have already encountered the various parts of speech of English. Imagine you are not a
speaker of English, but a linguist trying to describe the parts of speech in this language. You have
a native speaker to help you but that native speaker has no knowledge of grammatical
categories.
You can use the semantic classification given in Yule. In addition, you can use formal tests.
Nouns: If you can put an article in front of them, you have found a noun; assuming you know what
an article is in that language and the language has articles.
Verbs: There are different tests. If you can attach –ing to form a present participle, you could
attach –ed. It is in second position in main clauses. There are modal verbs like can, may, must,
and auxiliaries such as have and be. Auxiliaries and modals require a main verb in the sentence.
Verbs can either be
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intransitive. He arrived.
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transitive: He kissed the girl.
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ditransitive: He gave us a book.
Adjectives: They can appear at the end of sentences like My father is _____., then they are in
predicative use. They can appear in front of nouns and can be deleted without making the
sentences ungrammatical. In this case they function as modifiers of nouns and are in attributive
use.
My green house.
Adverbs: Many adverbs in English have a suffix –ly, They often appear in the vicinity of verbs.
They modify verbs. Im walking fast. He is highly regarded.
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Feb 10, 2003
Prepositions: In English, they precede a noun phrase: On, in, of, behind, after….
Conjunctions: if they connect events, sentences, and other things: but, and, or
Personal Pronouns: they stand for nouns; therefore, they can be replaced by nouns: he, him, we,
us
Other pronouns: this, there, our
Other grammatical categories
Depending on the language, grammatical categories are marked on the words in different ways.
Very often, different categories are marked with morpheme. These are called portmanteau
morphemes.
Verbal categories:
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person: 1, 2, 3
English: 3rd person singular present: he leave-s
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number: singular, dual, plural.
German:
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Er geh-t.
he walk-3rd person singular present.
‘he walks’
sie geh-en.
they walk-3rd person plural present.
‘they walk’
tense: future, past, present. Languages differ in what tenses they express grammatically.
Dyirbal:
bani-µ
bani-µu
‘will come’
‘came, is coming’
Lithuanian:
Dirb’au
Dirb-u
Dirb-siu.
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‘I worked.’
‘I work.’
‘I will work.’
aspect: progressive, conditional, ….
English:
He is going to school.
He goes to school every day.
If he went to school every day, his grades were better.
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voice: passive, active
active:
He kissed the girl.
passive:
The girl was kissed (by him)
Nominal categories:
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gender: masculine, feminine, neuter. Note: grammatical gender is NOT natural gender:
Russian:
masculine: ø
feminine: -a
neuter:
-o
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dom
ulits-a
tßuvstv-o
‘house’
‘street’
‘sensation’
number: singular, dual, plural. Very often, singular is less complex than the other numbers.
English: singular: dog
plural: dog-s
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Feb 10, 2003
case: English has no overt case marking on nouns except in the Genitive:
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father’s hat
nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ergative, relative, ablative, vocative, instrumental…
Words, Phrases, and Sentences
Every sentence is a string of words but not every string of words is a sentence.
Words are ordered in phrases. These phrases are ordered to form a sentence.
We have different kinds of phrases:
VerbPhrase VP: contains minimally a verb; can also be [buys a new dog]VP
Noun Phrase NP: contains minimally a noun/pronoun: [he]NP, [my mother’s birthday]NP , [the ugly
dog]NP
PrepositionalPhrase PP: contains minimally a preposition: [under the bridge]PP , [about a boy]PP
S: a sentence is also a phrase containing a NP and a VP:
[[
[We]N
]
NP
[[dismissed]
V
[[the]ART
]
]. s
[petition]N ]NP
VP
Another umbrella term for phrases is constituents. Every phrase is a constituent and every
constituent contains at least one phrase.
To identify constituents, we can use the following tests:
Substitution Test
A constituent that can be replaced by an element such as: such, a pronoun, or do so is a
constituent. [The children] will [stop [at the corner].
They will do so. They will stop there.
Movement Test
Units that can be moved to a different position in a sentence are constituents.
They stopped [at the corner.]
[At the corner], they stopped.
Problematic for English.
Question Test
If you can ask for it, it can be a constituent.
He went to the store.
Where did he go? To the store.
Who went? He.
What did he do? He went to the store. Note: Asking for the VP gives you usually the whole
sentence.
These tests are best for immediate constituents. Immediate constituents are the largest
constituents you can find in a sentence except for the sentence itself.
Reading assignment: chapter 8 and pages 86-90
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