Download ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY - ASSIGNMENT 1

FEEDBACK TUTORIAL LETTER
1ST SEMESTER 2017
ASSIGNMENT 1
ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
EMP511S
COURSE:
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ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
EMP511S
ASSIGNMENT 1
100%
MS. MW CLOETE
Dear Students
I have finished marking assignment 1 and am pleased to report that all of you passed. Your
assignments are neat and are rounded off well. Very few spelling mistakes indicate that you
have spent time editing your assignments. Thank you!.
All of you, but one provided references. I really appreciated it.
A few observations:
Kindly always rephrase. You have done well with in text citations, however it is
recommended that you try and rephrase. If one rephrases into one’s own words it helps
remembering, especially during exams.
You have to consult other resources. The Study Guide is a good directive, but employing
other sources will help you building deeper and wider insight.
Please use this feedback letter as a directive and enrich further with you own examples,
probably those from your own assignment that are correct.
See you during the Vocational School sessions.
Regards,
Ina Cloete
ASSIGNMENT 1
Question 1
English experienced tremendous growth and standardisation in the 15th century. This was to
a large extent as a result of the introduction of the printing press. Education also became
accessible to the middle and lower classes. Trade and commerce also contributed to the
spread of English. In the Modern English period, the continued growth and the wealth of
vocabulary made English a vehicle for one of the richest and most extensive literatures.
The 16th century is known as the Renaissance Period. It is also known as the period for rebirth, reappearance or renewal. Efforts were made to stabilise and dignify the English
language. Sir Thomas Elyot, Roger Ascham advocated for the use of English in scholarly
writing. Thomas Wilson’s work on English composition titled The Arte of Rhetorique
criticized obscure borrowing from other languages especially Latin or Greek. John Heart set
out to establish writing on phonetic principles. He contributed two books: An Orthographic
(1569) and A Method of Comfortable Beginning of All Unlearned Whereby They May Be
Taught to Read English (1570). Contributions by Richard Mulcaster was aimed at making
spelling more phonetic. His effort to stabilise spelling led to a printed list of approximately
7000 words and is regarded as the first recognised dictionary on orthographic principle while
Samuel Johnson’s work was recognised as the first on etymological principle.
One of the characteristics is the increase in loan words from other languages English came
into contact with. Loan words were referred to as inkhorn terms. Some loan words were:
From Greek:
Anachorism, atmosphere, autograph, dexterity and chronology.
Italian:
Balcony, algebra, pizza, granite, design, frotto.
Spanish and Portuguese:
Bravado, banana, embargo, hurricane, negro
These new words created the need for dictionaries.
The 18th century was characterised by efforts to reduce the language to rules and set up
standards for correct usage, refinement and attention to form. The rules of English were set
on Latin and attempts were made to purify it. There were objections to the use of slang and
clippings and abbreviations. New words were added as a result of travel and science. Words
of African languages also made it into English e.g. voodoo, gorilla, albino, yam.
The 19th century was characterised by further stabilisation, addition of new words through
travel, commerce and science. Specialised words for medicine, Chemistry, Psychology and
cinema came into existence. English was also further enriched by compound words from
Greek and Latin. Greek also provided prefixes such as hypo-, meta-, and suffixes such as
-mania. Endings of Latin(ant, antis) are present in words such as militant.
Compound words were also produced through slang terms such as crack-down, make-shift,
wishy-washy and out-and-out.
Another development was structural changes in verbs. The loss of inflections which started
during the Middle English Period continued. Verbs started developing complex ways of
expressing what inflections did such as the ability to combine with other words especially
modal auxiliaries to express difficult and divergent shades of meaning. This brought about
the development of phrasal verbs.
I.
Question 2
A morpheme is identified as the smallest meaningful unit of a language. It is the most
elemental unit of grammatical forms and mainly made up of short sequences of phonemes.
It is a unit consisting of phonemes. The four characteristics are:
A morpheme is indivisible
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. It cannot be subdivided and still have the same
meaning. Example: morpheme manage. It is a free morpheme that cannot be broken down
into a smaller morpheme. Sounds have to be put together in the right order to be
meaningful.
Morphemes add to meaning
Words are made up of morphemes. Every morpheme in a word has meaning even if it is just
one sound.
Example: cats
The word has two morphemes namely; cat and s
S is just one sound, but it has the meaning of more than one and therefore denotes plurality
It is recursive
Some morphemes occur over and over in many different words.
E.G. The morpheme –ion which is a suffix appearing in words of Latin origin, denoting action
or condition. It occurs in words such as progression, expression. The recursive nature of
morphemes can be found in morphemes that act as grammatical markers.
It can have a number of syllables
Syllable is a unit of sound. It is the smallest pronounceable unit of a word. A morpheme is a
unit of meaning. A morpheme may be made up of many syllables.
QUESTION 3
a) Lexical words are also called content words. It can also be described as free
morphemes. Lexical words have dictionary meaning. They also possess synonyms or
near synonyms. They can be classified into four large groups namely; nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs. They can be arranged in open-classes – their constituent
members are large and limitless. New words can be added to them all the time. For
example facebook, blog, twit. Lexical words can be used independently – it can be
used in isolation because of its independent existence phonologically,
morphologically and syntactically. A free morpheme can be referred to as a word. It
can constitute the base, root and sometimes the stem of words.
Grammatical words are also called functional words.
These are words that are almost generally empty of lexical meaning. Grammatical
words are used to give the notion of grammaticalness to sentences. Examples are:
prepositions, determiners, conjunctions, pronouns and participles. Functional words
are arranged in close classes. We know how many pronouns, prepositions and
conjunctions there are in the English language. Functional or grammatical words are
used to point to the role of speakers or hearers and less to refer to objects in the
real world.
b) Clipping is the process by which the form of a word is reduced without changing its
meaning. Some syllables are removed from the word without changing the concept
which the word names. Clipping refers to the process whereby a polysyllabic word is
shortened in a more or less arbitrary way. In this way a new, shorter word is created
with the same meaning as the original word. Popular in fields of public relations and
the media. Clipping can occur at the beginning of a word, at the end of a word or at
both ends. Examples:
Back clipping:
Mag for magazine
Exam for examination
Fore clipping:
Phone for telephone
Plane for aeroplane
Middle clipping:
Flu for influenza
Complex clipping:
Removing multiple parts from multiple words.
Sitcom for situation comedy
Clipping occurs mostly in informal situations.
Blending occurs when syllables of one word are strung together with syllables of
another word to form a new word and a completely new concept. It is a process of
word coinage in which phonetic fragments of two or more words are joined to form
a new single lexeme. The meaning of the new word is often a combination of the
meaning of the original words. Examples: smog from smoke and fog.
c) English spread to Australia and Canada as a result of colonisation. Australian English
is influenced by loan words from Aboriginal languages. Words such as kangaroo and
boomerang are the result. Canadian English is influenced by both British English and
American English. It is further influenced by French that is spoken in some parts of
the country.
Question 4
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Its sub-branches are Phonetics and Phonology,
Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics. (Your question concerned the first four)
Phonology- determines the selection of speech sounds and governs sound patterns.
Phonetics – concerns physical sounds and investigates how sounds and meaning are
connected. Phonetics deals with phones – units of sounds. Deals with aspects such as
contrassive nature. E.G. pig and big –these two words differ only with respect to the initial
consonant sounds [p] and [b]. Yet that aspect contains change in meaning. Phonetics is
concerned with the nature and typology of speech sounds and phonology is the study of the
functioning of sound patterns of human language. Sounds serve as the input for forming
words at the morphological level.
Morphology can be defined as the level of language analysis that deals with the formation of
words or the internal structure of words. Words are strung together in a structured and
ordered pattern to form sentences. Words assist to express tense, gender, number and
possession. Words that are formed at morphological level thus serve as basis for sentences
that are constructed at syntactic level. Words are joined in phrases, clauses and sentences to
carry information from speaker or writer to listener or reader.
There is also a relationship between semantics and morphology, which is the study of the
structure of words based on morpheme-the smallest meaning bearing units of a language
and how they’re combined into words. This relationship is obviously demonstrated by
inflectional, derivational processes and compounding. These three processes involve
meanings and change in meanings. So for instance, the inflection of regular nouns by the
addition of the plural suffix {-s} changes the meaning of word to indicate the verb to indicate
past tense. In addition, the affixation of the more than one, just as the addition of the past
tense {-ed} to regular verbs changes the form of suffix{-ity} changes an adjective to a noun
while the addition of the suffix {-ly} changes most adjectives to an adverb. These and other
changes that occur in the process of prefixation and suffixation and how two words can
combine to form and mean new words demonstrate how meaning in language changes
through different morphological processes.
Please study continuously and diligently
Kind regards,
MW Cloete