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Chapter 3
Morphology
(The study of the internal
structure of words)
English
Morphology
Word-formation
(Lexical morphology)
(Deals with the creation
of new words)
Inflection
(Inflectional morphology)
(Deals with the grammatical
forms of the same word
Plugs, unplug, pluggable &
sparking-plug
‡ Plug
plug
pluggable
plug
-able
unplug
un-
sparking plug
plug
sparking
spark
plug
plugs
plug
-s
-ing
and plugs are different
grammatical words belonging to the
same lexical word. They share an
entry in a dictionary and the plural is
formed by a regular inflectional rule.
‡ Plug, unplug, pluggable, and
sparking-plug are lexical words and
appear as different entries in the
dictionary.
infamous
Morpheme, morph, allomorph
‡ The
basic unit of morphological
description is the morpheme, the
smallest unit for grammatical and
lexical analysis.
‡ Morphemes are abstract units,
established for the analysis of word
structure.
‡ When a word segment represents one
morpheme in sound or writing, the
segment is a morph.
in-
fam(e)
harmful
harm
-ful
-ous
house
house
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‡A
morpheme may be represented by
more than one morph: incompetent,
illegal, impatient, irremovable;
peace/pacifist, long/length,
omit/omission, appear/apparent.
‡ Variant
members of a set of morphs
are ALLOMORPHS of the same
morpheme: in-, im-, il-, and ir- are
allomorphs of a particular prefix
morpheme.
‡ Morphemes are distinguished by
being placed in braces: {and},
{fame}, {in1}.
Conditioning of allomorphs
‡ An
inflectional morpheme
corresponds to a grammatical
category:
The inflectional suffix in students
represents the plural morpheme,
which is also found with different
allomorphs in churches and oxen.
Phonetic
conditioning
Progressive
assimilation
Regressive
assimilation
Conditioning
of allomorphs
Phonetic
(Phonological)
Lexical
(Morphological)
inalienable
incapable
innumerable
insufficient
illegal
illegible
illiterate
illogical
Grammatical
immobile
immodest
immoral
immovable
impatient
impenetrable
imperfect
impolite
impossible
Stylistic
irrational
irreconcilable
irregular
irrelevant
irremovable
irreplaceable
irresistible
irresponsible
irreversible
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Lexical conditioning
Grammatical conditioning
regular irregular
walk
past
see
walked saw
participle walked seen
take
put
sing
took
put
sang
taken
put
sung
Stylistic conditioning
‡ she
is → she’s
‡ they will → they’ll
‡ do not → don’t
‡ do you → d’you
Special
morphs
Portmanteau
morph
Empty
morph
Portmanteau morph
Empty morph
‡A
‡ In
portmanteau morph corresponds to
a bundle of morphemes. The word am
is a portmanteau morph:
‡ it contains the morphemes {be},
{present}, {1st person}, and
{singular}, but it cannot be
segmented into morphs. Similarly,
men consists of the morphemes {man}
and {plural}, and took of the
morphemes {take} and {past}.
Suppletive
morph
Zero
morph
contrast, some morphs have been
said to have no meaning. The to
used to introduce infinitives is an
empty morph. It is generally
obligatory in certain types of
infinitival constructions;
‡ for example: I want to be your friend;
We asked her to represent us; To
open the door, insert your
identification card.
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‡ Where
in a relatively few cases to is
optional, it seems to make no
difference to meaning whether or not
it is present: I helped him (to) fill in
the form.
‡ Another empty morph is the -ofound in combining forms: AngloFrench, psychology, pseudoElizabethan.
‡ It
has been claimed that it in cleft
sentences (It was on Monday that I
last saw her) and there in existential
sentences (There is somebody asking
for your signature) are empty
morphs, since it and there are
introduced in constructions that
rearrange basic structures (I last saw
her on Monday; Somebody is asking
for your signature).
Suppletive morph
‡ The
it that is used as subject in
sentences denoting time, weather,
and distance has been called ‘prop it’,
‘empty it’, and ‘expletive it’, all
indications that it has been analysed
as serving simply to fill the
obligatory function of subject in an
independent clause when there is no
other candidate for that function.
‡A
‡ The
‡ The
verb be is composed of words
that come from three distinct roots,
all of them present in Old English: be,
been, being; is, am, are; was, were.
‡ Go has a suppletive past tense form
went, which joined the paradigm
from the verb wend during the
Middle English period.
suppletive (or suppletive morph) is
a form from a different root that is
used in a paradigm, a grammatically
related set of forms.
‡ Suppletion is postulated for only a
few morphemes in English, but they
occur in highly frequent words.
comparatives and superlatives of
four highly frequent adjectives are
suppletives in Modern English as
they were in Old English:
good
better, best
bad
worse, worst
much
more, most
little
less, least
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Zero morph
‡ The
same suppletives are used for
the adverbs well, badly, much, little.
‡ Some
‡ The
‡a
plural of sheep is identical with
the singular sheep, though the plural
of cow is cows; the plural noun
sheep has been said to have a zero
morph.
‡ More controversially, a zero article
has been postulated for plural nouns
and for non-count nouns (e.g. sugar)
to fill the paradigm of indefinite and
definite articles:
linguists recognize a zero
morph where a morpheme is
expected in the grammatical system
but no morph is there. The absence
of a relative pronoun in a letter I
wrote (compare a letter that I wrote)
is noted by postulating a zero
relative pronoun.
garden
‡ the garden
gardens
the gardens
sugar
the sugar
Morphemes: Free and Bound
‡A
Morph
Free
Free
morph
Free
root
morph
Bound
Bound
morph
Bound
root
morph
free morph can occur by itself as a
word, whereas a bound morph is
always combined with another morph.
‡ Affixes are always attached to a base
and are therefore bound morphs: the
prefix en- in enjoy, the suffix -ity in
activity, and the inflectional suffix -s
in tasks.
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‡ Roots
may be free morphs: tidy in
untidy, move in movement, own in
owner.
‡ However, roots are often bound
morphs. The classic example of a
bound root morph is cran- in
cranberry, a unique morph found
nowhere else in the language.
‡ Other examples are twi- (twilight) and
leng- (an allomorph of long in length,
lengthen, lengthy).
‡ Bound
‡ Another
example is -pel- in compel,
dispel, expel, impel, repel, and the
allomorphic variant in compulsory,
expulsion, impulse, repulse.
‡ We can acknowledge that pairs of
words such as admit/admission share
the same root morpheme even if we
do not know what meaning to assign
to the morpheme without looking up
the etymology of the words.
‡ In
‡ Some
‡ The
affixes were originally free root
morphs.
‡ In Old English these are words as
well as suffixes: dōm, hād, lic.
‡ From them derive the present-day
suffixes in freedom, kingdom;
childhood, falsehood; friendly,
heavenly.
root morphs typically appear
in words borrowed directly or
ultimately from Latin and Greek. It is
easy to recognize the bound root
morph -mit- in admit, commit, omit,
permit, submit, transmit, and the
allomorphic variant in the
corresponding suffixed words
admission, commission, omission,
permission, submission, transmission.
any event, meanings may have
changed for some or all the words
from their meanings in the source
languages: edify and edification have
an etymology in common with edifice
but the words diverged considerably
in meaning.
reverse may also happen. Some
affixes have also become words: ex
(former spouse or lover), isms,
ologies, pseud(s), minis, macros,
micros.
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Paradigm, conjugation, declension
‡ Paradigm:
a set of grammatically
related forms of a word, can be
established in English for verbs,
nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.
‡ There is a paradigm for adjectives
that are inflected for comparison: old,
older, oldest.
‡ There are also some adjectives that
are irregularly inflected; for example:
good, better, best.
‡A
relatively few adverbs are also
inflected for comparison: (work) hard,
harder, hardest; badly, worse, worst.
‡ Paradigms of pronouns, particularly
personal pronouns: I, me, my.
French conjugations
‡ Conjugations:
paradigms for verbs.
E.g.
‡ play, plays, playing, played;
‡ drive, drives, driving, drove, driven.
‡ avoir
‡ avoir
‡ Présent
‡ Futur
‡ j’
ai
‡ tu
as
‡ il, elle
a
‡ nous
avons
‡ vous
avez
‡ ils, elles ont
simple
‡ j’
aurai
‡ tu
auras
‡ il, elle
aura
‡ nous
aurons
‡ vous
aurez
‡ ils, elles auront
Italian conjugations
‡ avere
‡ avere
‡ Presente
‡ Futuro
‡ io
‡ io
ho
‡ tu
hai
‡ egli/ella ha
‡ noi
abbiamo
‡ voi
avete
‡ essi/esse hanno
avro
‡ tu
avrai
‡ egli/ella avra
‡ noi
avremo
‡ voi
avrete
‡ essi/esse avranno
‡ Declension:
paradigms for nouns.
E.g. girl, girl’s, girls, girls’.
‡ These are useful in highly
inflectional languages and are not
usually applied to present-day
English grammar.
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