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LIN 1310
TOPIC 3
MORPHOLOGY
MORPHOLOGY
• Morphology is the study of the structure of
words
• Many words can be divided into meaningful
subparts
• These subparts are not necessarily words
by themselves
MORPHOLOGY
• For example, ‘friend’ can become:
‘friendly’ ‘unfriendly’ ‘friendliness’
‘friendship’ ‘friendless’ ‘friendlessness’
‘befriend’ ‘befriended’ ‘user-friendly’
‘friends’
MORPHOLOGY
• The sequences in blue added to the root
‘friend’ occur in lots of other words, where they
have a similar meaning and/or function
• For example:
‘likely’ ‘unlikely’ ‘loneliness’ ‘comradeship’
‘luckless’ ‘lucklessness’ ‘bewitch’
‘bewitched’
MORPHOLOGY
• Another example of a recurring sequence with
more or less the same meaning are the
following ‘phon’ words
• phone
phonetic
phonetician
phonetics
phonology
phonologist
phonological
phonic
phoneme
phonemic
allophone
telephone
telephonic
euphonious
• ‘Phon’ seems to refer in some manner to
speech
• Other parts of ‘phon’ words are found in other
words
telephone - telegraph - phonetics – cybernetics
Note also
-ing
in going, seeing, eating
mem-
in memory, memorize, memorial,
remember
un-
in unfamiliar, unclear, unrepentant,
undue
-s
in dogs, cats, chairs, telephones,
pens, shoes
• Notice that un- occurs at the beginning of the
words and -ing occurs at the end
• English does not permit such forms as
*ingeat *nesshappy *happyun *groupre
*orizemem *sdog
• Thus, there appear to be rules governing the
formation of words
• These rules make up the morphology of the
language
• The subparts of words are called morphemes
FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES
1. Morphemes are minimal units of meaning or
grammatical form in a language
2. Morphemes are not necessarily words on their
own
• Some words do consist of a single morpheme
• These are monomorphemic or simple words
(e.g. ‘dog’, ‘banana’)
• Some words consist of more than one morpheme
• These are polymorphemic words or complex
• (e.g. ‘dogs’ = 2 morphemes,
•
‘unhappiness’ = 3 morphemes)
FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES
3. Morphemes are not equivalent to syllables
There are:
one syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘dog’, ‘play’, ‘eat’)
two syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘onion’, ‘table’)
several syllable morphemes (e.g. ‘banana’)
A morpheme may even consist of:
a single sound segment
e.g. plural ‘s’ in ‘hats’, ‘coats’, ‘cats’ and
past tense ‘d’ in ‘played’, ‘dyed’, ‘dried’
FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES
4. A morpheme is a recurring sequence of
segments with a constant meaning and/or
function
• Identify which of the following words contain
the morpheme ‘un’ that reverses the
meaning of many adjectives and verbs such
as ‘undesirable’ or ‘undo’
•
•
•
•
•
‘blunder’
‘run’
‘under’
‘unhappy’
‘unsure’
FACTS ABOUT MORPHEMES
5. A morpheme may have more than one
pronunciation.
allomorphs: alternative pronunciations of a
morpheme
EXAMPLES:
The plural morpheme ‘s’ in English has three
alternative pronunciations or allomorphs:
[s] [z] [z]
The definite article is pronounced either
‘a’ or ‘an’.
Allomorphs
•
Allomorphs are alternative pronunciations of a
morpheme.
•
Spelling is irrelevant.
Allomorphs can share the same spelling, but still be
pronounced differently.
The three allomorphs of the English plural
[ s ] [ z ] [əz ] are all written using an ‘s’, yet two of
them are pronounced with ‘z’.
Spelling Variants
A morpheme can have two or more spellings in
English.
If the pronunciation remains the same, these are
not considered allomorphs of one another.
They are simply spelling variants of the same
one morpheme.
For example: hide and hid from ‘hiding’ are
spelling variants of the same morpheme.
CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES
• Distributionally, morphemes are of two general
types: Free or Bound Morphemes
Free morphemes
• free morphemes can stand alone as simple words
Example: ‘dog’, ‘house’, ‘run’, ‘banana’, ‘table’, ‘it’,
‘on’
• English has many free morphemes
• some languages have very few free morphemes
CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES
Bound morphemes
• bound morphemes cannot stand alone as
words
• they must be attached to at least one other
morpheme before they can occur in an actual
utterance
• Examples: -English plural ‘s’ and
-past tense ‘ed’
• Languages differ from one another in what
concepts they encode as free or bound.
Bound or Free?
• English marks the past tense of regular
verbs with the bound morpheme ‘ed’ as in
‘they wait’ (present) ‘they waited’ (past)
• Thai marks the past tense with a free
morpheme ‘lЄЄw’ :
• Boon thaan khaaw lЄЄw
• Boon eat
rice
• ‘Boon ate rice’
past
CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES
Affixes and Roots
• as parts of words, morphemes can be affixes or
roots
• Roots serve as the core of words
• Roots provide the primary meaning of words
• Affixes are added to roots (or bases) and
modify the meaning and/or function of a root
Roots and Bases
• The terms root and base are sometimes used
interchangeably
• However, their meanings are somewhat different.
• Base refers to a form that an affix is added to.
• Of course affixes can be added to roots. In such cases
the root and the base are the same.
• Affixes can also be added to a unit larger than a root.
• Thus a base may also consist of a root plus another affix
or affixes.
Roots and Bases
• In the word ‘lawful’, ‘law’ is both the root of
the word and the base to which the affix
‘ful’ is attached.
• We can diagram the structure of this word
using a tree structure as follows:
‘law’ as base and root for ‘lawful’
A
•
•
•
•
•
N
Af
law
ful
Roots and Bases
• When we create the word ‘unlawful’ from
‘lawful’, the root is still ‘law’
• ‘law’ is still the base that we added ‘ful’ to
• ‘lawful’ now serves as the base to which
we add ‘un’
• This is depicted in the following tree
diagram
‘lawful’ as base for ‘unlawful’
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A
A
Af
N
Af
un
law
ful
Labeling word trees
• Note that we label the nodes in tree
diagrams according to the parts of speech
of the root and the new words created by
adding affixes to the root.
• Thus ‘law’ is N for noun
• ‘lawful’ is A for adjective
• ‘unlawful’ is A for adjective
unlawful
• In the word ‘unlawful’, the root law
provides the core meaning of the word.
• ‘ful’ is an affix that changes ‘law’ from a
noun to an adjective
• ‘un’ is an affix which reverses the
meaning of ‘lawful’
• This gives us a hint as to the function of
some types of affixes.
Consider the following when
drawing a tree diagramming
‘blackened’:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is the root?
What part of speech is the root?
What affix is added to the root?
What word does this yield?
What is its part of speech?
Does it serve as the base for another affix?
What is the part of speech of the word resulting
from the addition of this other affix?
blackened
• The adjective ‘black’ is the root (and base)
to which we add the suffix ‘en’
• ‘black + en’ is a verb.
• The verb ‘blacken’ is the base to which we
add the suffix ‘ed’.
• ‘blackened’ is still a verb, as the suffix ‘ed’
does not change the part of speech of the
base.
Roots, bases and affixes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
V
V
A
Af
Af
black
-en
-ed
AFFIXES
• Positionally, there are four types of affixes:
1. Prefixes
2. Suffixes
3. Infixes (and Trilateral Roots)
4. Circumfixes
1. Prefixes are added before the root, as in
‘redo’
2. Suffixes are added after the root, as in
‘reader’
Load on the affixes
• In many languages, a word can have more
than one prefix or suffix.
• English example: ‘helplessness’
• Noun (N) base/root ‘help’ + suffix ‘less’ to
yield the adjective ‘helpless’
• ‘helpless’ serves as the base for the suffix
‘ness’ to yield the noun (N) ‘helplessness’
3. Infixes
• Infixes are inserted into the body of the root
• English does not have infixes
• Below are some examples of infixes in Bontoc, a
language spoken in the Philippines
Infixes – Trilateral Roots
• Trilateral roots consist of three consonants
to which other elements, mostly vowels, are
added or infixed
• Trilateral roots are found in several Semitic
languages, including Arabic
• Example:
Arabic root /k t b/
[ jiktib ] ‘he writes’
[ katab ] ‘he wrote’
Tiers
• The word structure of languages with
trilateral roots are sometimes depicted in
terms of tiers, rather than with tree
diagrams.
Tiers
Af
k
a
t
a
root (‘write’)
b
4. Circumfixes
• Circumfixes or discontinuous morphemes
are added both before and after the root
• Below are some examples of circumfixes in
Chickasaw, a Muskogean language
CIRCUMFIXES
German also has circumfixes or
discontinuous morphemes
lieb ‘love’ verb root
geliebt ‘loved’ or ‘be loved’
CATEGORIES OF MORPHEMES
• All affixes are, by definition, bound
• That is, they always occur attached to another
morpheme
• In many languages, most of the roots are bound as
well
• That is, the grammar requires attaching some type of
affix to them before they can be uttered as
grammatical words
• In English, most roots are also free morphemes or
stand-alone words
• English has a word-based morphology
BOUND ROOTS IN ENGLISH
• There are a few so-called bound roots in
English
They include:
‘ceive’ as in ‘deceive’, ‘receive’, ‘conceive’,
‘perceive’
‘tract’ as in ‘retract’, ‘detract’, ‘contract’
‘cest’ as in ‘incest’
‘pris’ as in ‘reprisal’, ‘enterprise’
‘gust’ as in ‘disgust’, ‘gustatory’ ‘gusto’
BOUND ROOTS IN ENGLISH or
MONOMORPHEMIC WORDS?
• In every case, these so-called bound roots
are attached to recognizable English affixes
• This leads SOME to the conclusion that they
are indeed roots
• Other linguists consider words such as
‘receive’ to be monomorphemic.
Oddball roots or
monomorphemic words?
• Consider that the meanings of all of the
‘bound’ roots in English are somewhat
opaque or unclear to us today
• Some of these words were borrowed
‘whole’ from Latin or Greek
• Some roots, such as ‘kempt’ which forms
the base in ‘unkempt’, have simply been
lost.
Oddball roots or monomorphemic
words?
• But the ‘ceive’ words are special.
• For example, they have unique ‘cept’
allomorphs as in:
• ‘receive’
‘reception’
• ‘deceive’
‘deception’
• So the jury is still out on this issue.
BOUND ROOTS CAN REBOUND
• Note the ambiguous status of the English bound
root ‘cran’
• This first morpheme in the compound word
‘cranberry’ has recently been used to form a
number of new words including ‘cranapple’ and
‘cranraspberry’
• So, is ‘cran’ bound or free?
• (A compound word is made up of two or more
roots.)
FUNCTIONS OF AFFIXES
• Affixes fulfill two main functions in virtually all
languages
• They are either derivational or inflectional
Derivational - Inflectional
• Derivational affixes form words that differ from
the base in meaning and/or function.
• Example: ‘un’ reverses the meaning of ‘happy’
• Inflectional affixes function to indicate
syntactic or semantic relations between
words in sentences
• Example: they may indicate agreements
between subject and verb : he eats
or noun and adjective : la chica es pequeña
‘the girl is small’
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
• Each language has obligatory
grammatical occasions that must be
marked by an appropriate inflection
• The following English and French examples
are ungrammatical because they are
missing inflections
* The girl wait at the station yesterday.
The girl waited at the station yesterday.
* The girl wait at the station every day.
The girl waits at the station every day.
* Nous mange du chocolat.
Nous mangeons du chocolat.
* My dog is big than your dog.
My dog is bigger than your dog.
Languages may inflect for:
• gender: male, female or neuter
• noun class or numeral classifiers
• number:
one, more than one
or one, two (or dual), more than two
• person
• case
• tense
• animacy
• truth versus hearsay
• definiteness versus indefiniteness
• habitualness
• comparative etc…
INFLECTION
• Old English had a dual inflection for two of
something
• Below are some examples of Old English
pronouns
CASE
• Case indicates the role of the noun (subject, direct
object, etc.) in a sentence
• Below are some examples of Latin noun case inflections
CASE
• Below are some examples of Old English noun
case inflections
• In Modern English, the only marked inflectional
case for nouns is genitive ‘The boy’s truck’
Modern English Case
• Modern English pronouns retain some
case marking.
• For example:
• I saw her (object case).
• She (subject case) is very tall.
• I was impressed by her (genitive case)
height.
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
Modern French inflects verbs for:
• number
• person
• tense, such as:
present (‘je mange’)
future (‘je mangerai’)
imperfect (‘je mangeais’)
conditional (‘je mangerais’)
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
• Some of the person inflections on French
verbs have disappeared in the spoken
language
• Example: ‘je mange’ and ‘tu manges’
• These two inflections sound identical
phonetically
[mž ] ‘mange’
[mž ] ‘manges’
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
• Languages with relatively few inflections fulfill the
functions expressed by inflections in other ways
Example:
• They use function words such as prepositions
(‘of’, ‘by’) and articles (‘the’, ‘a’)
• They use strict word order in sentences
• The canonical or most typical word order in English:
subject - verb - direct object and indirect object
The defenseman passed the puck to the forward.
• This order is quite strictly adhered to in active
declarative sentences, because English has so few
inflections
The inflectional affixes of English
Who-Whom
• Some linguists consider the ‘m’ on whom
to be an inflectional affix.
• Others treat the who-whom alternation to
be part of the pronoun case system (in
dialects where it still exists).
The inflectional affixes of English
• All of the inflections of English happen to be
suffixes
• Inflections can occur in other languages as
prefixes, infixes and circumfixes
• A number of English inflections have
alternative pronunciations or ‘allomorphs’
• These will be discussed in LIN 1320 under
the heading of morphophonology
Stems
• Some linguists use the term stem instead
of base in referring to the form that an
inflectional affix is added to.
• ‘reboot’ + ‘s’
• ‘reboot’ is either the base or the stem to
which the plural inflection ‘s’ is added.
Other ways of marking inflection
• Instead of simply adding an affix, some
languages employ other devices to inflect
roots. These are:
• Internal change
• Suppletion
• Reduplication
• Tone Placement
Internal change
•
•
•
•
•
‘sing’ (present)
‘sink’ (present)
‘drive’ (present)
‘foot’ (singular)
‘goose’ (singular)
‘sang’ (past)
‘sank’ (past)
‘drove’ (past)
‘feet’ (plural)
‘geese’ (plural)
Internal Change versus Infixing
• With internal change, the remaining parts of the
morpheme do not recur elsewhere in the
language.
• *‘s-ng’ remains when ‘i’ is replaced by ‘a’ in
‘sing’-‘sang’ in English.
• *‘s-ng’ is not a morpheme in English
• In Bontoc, ‘fikas’ ‘strong’ occurs independently in
the language, even though it can be ‘invaded’ by
the ‘um’ infix to produce ‘fumikas’
Internal Change versus Infixing
• With internal change, the inserted sounds do
not carry specific grammatical meaning
elsewhere in the language.
• However, the infixed ‘a’ vowels that are added
to the root ‘k-t-b’ ‘write’ in Arabic are added to
many verb stems to form the past.
• Constant meaning/function
• [ jiktib ] ‘he writes’
[ katab ] ‘he wrote’
Internal Change versus Infixing
• In contrast, the ‘a’ that replaces the ‘i’
in internally changed English ‘sing’‘sang’ does not function in this
manner except in a very few cases.
• ‘sing’-‘sang’ ‘ring’ – ‘rang’
• ?’bring’-’brang’
Lining them up
• The linear arrangement of
morphemes is referred to as
concatenative morphology
• Infixing and internal change are
examples of nonconcatenative
morphology.
Suppletion
• Inflect by entirely replacing the root
morpheme with another.
• English:
• ‘go’ (present) ‘went’ (past)
• ‘be’ ‘am’ ‘are’ (present)
• ‘be’ ‘was’ ‘were’ (past)
• French:
• ‘avoir’ ‘to have’ ‘eu’ ‘had’ (past)
Decisions!
• Is it internal change or suppletion?
• For example ‘think’-‘thought’.
• Some linguists use the term partial
suppletion to deal with these cases.
Storage of ‘Irregular Forms’
Morphological rules do not predict:
• Suppletive forms
• Forms produced through internal change
Thus, these forms must be stored as
separate items in the speaker’s mental
lexicon.
Reduplication
• Reduplication involves copying or
repeating a
• specified syllable of the root
=partial reduplication
• or the
• entire root
=full reduplication
Partial Reduplication in Ilocano
•
•
•
•
piђgan
talon
biag
ulo
‘dish’
‘field’
‘life’
‘head’
piђpiђgan ‘dishes’
taltalon
‘fields’
bibiag
‘lives’
ululo
‘heads’
Tone Placement
• In some tone languages, tone changes on
the syllable can be used to mark
grammatical (i.e. inflectional) contrasts
such as tense.
Mono-Bili
• dá ‘spanked’
dà ‘will spank’
• zí ‘ate’
zÌ ‘will eat’
ˊ denotes high tone ˋdenotes low tone
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
Key Point 1
Inflections never change the fundamental
meaning or part of speech of a word
Example:
‘dog’ and ‘dogs’ are both nouns
‘strong’, ‘stronger’ and ‘strongest’ are all
adjectives
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
Key point 2 - Productivity
• Despite some irregular forms (such as ‘gowent’), one inflection (with possible
allomorphs ) will usually fulfill a designated
grammatical function in the language.
• Think about how few exceptions there are
to adding some form of the plural affix ‘s’
to nouns.
• New words in English generally receive
the regular inflection.
INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
Key Point 3
• Inflections usually occur at the outer
margins of words, after the derivational
affixes have been added
• This is because obligatory grammatical
occasions are often dictated by sentence
structure, after a word has been
retrieved with its derivational affixes
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• Derivational affixes permit the
derivation of new words from existing
roots
• Derivational affixes may alter the
meaning and/or the part of the speech
of the original root
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
‘judge’
part of speech: verb
meaning: to decide questions of law, to estimate
verb root judge + derivational suffix -ment
derivation: ‘judgement’
part of speech: noun
new meaning: an opinion or fact-based decision
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
verb root act + derivational suffix -er
Derivation: ‘actor’
part of speech: noun
meaning: performer in a theatrical sense
• NB: ‘or’ and ‘er’ are alternate spellings of the
same morpheme
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
‘act’
part of speech: verb
meaning: perform, produce an effect
verb root act + derivational suffix -ive
Derivation: ‘active’
part of speech: adjective
meaning: energetic, busy
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
Deriv. prefix in- + adjective base active
Derivation: ‘inactive’
part of speech: adjective
meaning: inert, not active, lazy
(reverse of active)
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
adjective base active + derivational suffix -ate
Derivation: ‘activate’
part of speech: verb
meaning: put into service or motion
derivational prefix de- + verb base activate
Derivation: ‘deactivate’
part of speech: verb
meaning: put out of service, render inactive
(reverse of ‘activate’)
Derivational Affixes
verb base deactivate + deriv. suffix -ion
Derivation: ‘deactivation’
part of speech: noun
meaning: the act of putting out of service
or motion
Tree for derivation of
‘deactivation’
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• English has a very rich derivational morphology, with
many derivational prefixes and suffixes
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• There can be more than one derivational
affix in a word
• Words may seem to be derived in layers
• The placement and ordering of
derivational affixes is dictated by the rules
of morphology
• Thus, ‘usefulness’ but not ‘*usenessful’
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• A processing model accounts for why
inflectional affixes appear on the outside
boundaries of the word, after all
derivational affixes are in place
Processing model
• First derive words before placing them into
an utterance
• Utterance provides obligatory grammatical
occasions for inflections
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
Overlapping derivational affixes
• A language may have several derivational
affixes that perform the same function
• This is especially true of English
• It reflects the extensive borrowing of words
from French, Latin and Greek onto the
Germanic base of English
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• Normally, derivational affixes with overlapping
functions are restricted to particular subsets of
English roots
Example: ‘hood’
‘neighbour’
‘neighbourhood’
‘brother’
→
‘brotherhood’
‘sister’
‘sisterhood’
‘ship’
→
‘friend’
‘friendship’
‘kin’
‘kinship’
• Note that ‘*brothership’ and ‘*friendhood’ are not
possible forms in English
DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• Derivational affixes with the same function in
English may be limited to particular types of
roots
Example: the derivational prefix ‘un’ that
reverses the meaning of adjectives is more
productive with adjectives which themselves
are derived from verbs
‘unbelievable’
‘unacceptable’
‘unspeakable’
‘*unsad’ (‘sad’ is an adjective)
RESISTANT ROOTS
• Some roots seem resistant to derivation with affixes
Note the following derivations:
noun ‘hospital’
→
verb ‘hospitalize’
noun ‘seat’
→
verb ‘to seat’ and
verb ‘to unseat’
noun ‘chair’
→
verb ‘to chair’
(meaning ‘to preside’)
But there is no verb *‘chairize’ (meaning to put in a chair).
This derivation may be blocked by the existence of the verb
‘to seat’.
The verbs ‘to seat’ and ‘to chair’ are examples of zero
derivation (or derivation without any affix), which we will
discuss later.
PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL
AFFIXES
• Derivational affixes vary in their degree of
productivity
• This is the freedom with which speakers use
them to create new words
Particularly productive affixes are:
‘able’ that turns verbs into adjectives:
‘acceptable’ and ‘adaptable’
‘er’ that turns verbs into nouns:
‘reader’ and ‘hunter’
PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL
AFFIXES
Less productive affixes are:
‘en’ of ‘thicken’ and ‘darken’
‘th’ of ‘warmth’
but not ‘*thinnen’ and ‘*coolth’
• However, ‘coolness’ can be derived with the
productive suffix ‘ness’
• The derivational prefix ‘de’ is currently quite
productive
‘deplane’
‘defuse’
‘demystify’
‘deintensify’ ‘debug’
‘dethrone’
‘debunk’
PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
Note the varying degrees of productivity of the
following derivational affixes:
-ism idealism, realism, sadism
but not *nastism
-ity
sanity, vanity, practicality, scarcity, nicety
but not *nastity
-ness meanness, goodness, usefulness,
nastiness
‘-ness’ is more productive
‘-ity’ is no longer productive
‘-ism’ tends to change the meaning of the root in
unexpected ways as in ‘belief systems’
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
Models for retrieval
• Model 1: Individual morphemes that occur
in the language are stored as separate
entries
• Retrieve each morpheme in a word and
use rules of morphology to assemble each
word as you need it
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
• Model 2: Polymorphemic (complex) words
such as ‘unhappiness’ are stored as readymade wholes in our mental dictionaries
• However, individual morphemes, such as
‘un-’, are also stored as separate entries,
making them available to create new words
such as ‘unbirthday’
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
• Both model 1 and model 2 agree that the
individual morphemes are stored separately
and are available to create new words
• This is the crux of morphological theory
• The models differ on the issue of the storage
of whole polymorphemic (complex) words
which are ready to use right ‘off the shelf’
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
• There is strong evidence for the independent
storage of individual morphemes such as
‘ness’ and for the rules that allow them to be
combined with other morphemes
• Turn adjective ‘sprog’ into a noun
• ‘sprogness’
• Pluralize the noun ‘wug’
• ‘wugs’
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
• Sprogness and wugs could not have been stored in
your mental dictionaries
• They must be the product of the application of rules
combining the existing morphemes ‘ness’ and ‘s’
with the new roots
• Of course, this does not preclude the existence of
ready-made words such as ‘friendly’
• Psycholinguists conduct many experiments to
address this issue
PRODUCTIVITY OF DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
• Here are some cases where a prefix does not give
a very predictable meaning when combined with a
particular root
• These examples provide strong support for the
theory that derived words would have to be stored
in our lexicons
THE STORAGE AND
RETRIEVAL OF MORPHEMES
• Recall the ‘phon’ words from slide 5:
• phone
phonetic
phonetician
phonetics
phonology
phonologist
phonological
phonic
phoneme
phonemic
allophone
telephone
telephonic
euphonious
• ‘Phon’ seems to refer in some manner to
speech
THE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
OF MORPHEMES
• Are related words such as the ‘phon’
words connected in the mental dictionary?
• If so, how and when does this occur?
• Is it the same for all speakers?
• Is ‘holi’ the root of ‘holiday’ connected to
the free morpheme ‘holy’ for all speakers?
• This is another area of study in
psycholinguistics
OPEN AND CLOSED CLASS
ITEMS IN THE LEXICON
Open class items include nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs
• They carry the main semantic content of
utterances and are sometimes called content
words or content morphemes
Closed class items include pronouns,
prepositions, articles, conjunctions and other
grammatical or function morphemes
• Inflectional and derivational affixes are also
considered closed class morphemes
OPEN AND CLOSED CLASS ITEMS
IN THE LEXICON
• Open class items far outweigh the number
of closed class items
• Some aphasics (people with language
problems due to brain damage) show
differential impairment of closed and open
class lexical items
• This supports the view that the two classes
are processed differently in the brain
(Closed Class)
• Note that derivational and inflectional
affixes are also considered to be part of
the closed class of morphemes in a
language.
EXPANDING THE LEXICON
• We expand the lexicon by using the
derivational affixes to create new words
• We can also use other means to expand the
lexicon
• Only the open class of lexical items is
regularly expanded
• The closed class remains relatively stable
over time
• Changes to the closed class can and do occur
over the history of a language
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Compounding – combining two or more free, usually
open class, morphemes to create a new word
• The meaning of a compound may not be directly
discernible from the meanings of the individual
morphemes
Examples:
• ‘redcoat’
• ‘hotdog’
• ‘flatfoot’
• ‘mother-in-law’
Compounding
• Some compounds consist of or include
closed class morphemes
‘into’
‘onto’
‘unto’
‘upon’
‘mother-in-law’
Compounding
• English has special stress rules for
compounds
• adjective noun: hot dóg
• compound noun: hót dog
Compounding
• In English compounds, the rightmost
morpheme or head determines the part of
speech of the compound
• There are many possible combinations of
compounds in English
• For example (heads are in blue):
• adjective + noun = ‘hotdog’ (noun)
• noun + verb = steamroll (verb)
Longer Compounds
Identifying Compounds
•
•
•
•
•
Stress test
Adjective plus noun: hot dóg
compound noun:
hót dog
Inflection test
Inflections are normally added at the end of
entire compound
• He dropkicked the ball
not: *He droppedkick the ball.
Some exceptions relate to semantic issues:
mothers-in-law *mother-in-laws
Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds
• Endocentric: the compound denotes a
subtype of the concept denoted by the
head
• ‘fireman’ = type of man
• Exocentric: the meaning of the compound
is not easy to figure out from its parts
• ‘redneck’ is not a type of neck
Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds
• English endocentric compounds whose heads
have irregular plurals also pluralize irregularly
• tooth- teeth
• wisdom tooth – wisdom teeth
• English exocentric compounds whose heads
have irregular plurals use regular plurals
• leaf – leaves
• Maple Leafs
Cliticization
• Clitics: Free morphemes sometimes reduce to
forms that are no longer syllables and therefore
cannot stand alone
• But the full free morpheme still exists as well.
• Clitics bind to a host word
• Proclitics come before the host.
• Enclitics come after the host.
• They are going - They’re going (enclitic)
• *Je te aime – Je t’aime (proclitic)
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Borrowing from other languages
• ‘propaganda’ and ‘sputnik’ from Russian
• ‘junta’ from Spanish
• ‘coup’ from French
Invention
• transistor
• television
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Acronyms
• Laser = light amplified by stimulated
emission of radiation
• NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization
• Scuba = self-contained underwater
breathing apparatus
• Snafu = situation normal, all f……ed up
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Clipping Abbreviation
telly
TV
OJ
math
TNT
DDT
bike
U.S.
ID
• ‘piano’ from ‘pianoforte’
‘fan’ from ‘fanatic’
‘bus’ from ‘omnibus’
‘a.m.’ from ‘ante mere diem’
‘p.m.’ from ‘post mere diem’
VD
Acronym versus Abbreviation
• An abbreviation is pronounced as a series
of letters
OJ (for orange juice)
• An acronym is pronounced as a word
NATO (for North Atlantic Treaty
Organization)
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Back formation – subtracting what is
mistakenly thought to be an affix to create a
new word
‘pea’ from ‘pease’
‘fuse’ from ‘fusion’
‘to hawk’ from ‘hawker’
‘to swindle’ from ‘swindler’
‘to laze’ from ‘lazy’
‘monokini’ from ‘bikini’
‘flammable’ from ‘inflammable’
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Blending – combining parts of two or more
words to form a new word
Examples:
• ‘brunch’ from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’
• ‘motel’ from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’
• ‘smog’ from ‘smoke’ and ‘fog’
• ‘chortle’ from ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’
Zero Derivation
• Words formed without any obvious derivation or
sound change. For example:
• Conversion
• Semantic extension
• Semantic narrowing
• Semantic reversal
• Words from brand names
• Words from proper names
• Proper names from occupations
Conversion
• An existing word is assigned a new part of
speech
• ‘run’ (verb) converts to ‘run’ (noun)
• ‘dirty’ (adjective) converts ‘dirty’ (verb)
• The two forms co-exist in the language.
Semantic Extension
• Broadening the meaning of a word
Examples:
• ‘ship’ to ‘spacecraft’
• ‘dogge’ from a specific breed to a generic
term
• ‘bread’ to refer to money
• ‘cool’ to mean someone or something
praiseworthy
• ‘straight’ to refer to a heterosexual person
Semantic Narrowing
Narrowing the meaning of a word
Examples:
• ‘hund’ from a generic term for dog to a
specific breed (‘hound’)
• ‘meat’ from a term referring to the edible
parts of many items such as nuts, as in
‘nutmeats’ and ‘mincemeat pie’ to a term
referring only to animal flesh
Semantic reversal
Meaning of a word can change its connotation
over time
Examples:
• ‘square’ as in ‘square deal’ or ‘square meal’
in the 1930’s
to a dull conventional person or thing
in the 1950’s and 60’s
• ‘straight' an honest person before the 1960’s
to someone who was dull and
conventional in the 1960’s
Words from brand names
kleenex
fridgidaire
xerox
Words from proper names
sandwich
jumbo
denim
cesarean
Proper names from occupations
Miller
Taylor
Smith
Place names from common words
Portsmouth
Landsend
Onomatopoeia
• words formed as imitations of
environmental sounds
• influenced by the sound system of each
language
• English: ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’
• Japanese: ‘kokekokko’
• French: ‘cocorico’
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Idiom – a fixed phrase whose meaning cannot
be inferred from the meanings of the
individual words
Idioms cannot be syntactically manipulated
into questions or passives and still retain their
idiomatic meanings
Example: the idiom ‘to buy the farm’ does not
retain the meaning ‘to die’ in the passive
phrase ‘the farm was bought by him’
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
The following idioms all mean ‘to die’
•
•
•
•
•
•
‘to kick the bucket’
‘to cash in one’s chips’
‘to bite the dust’
‘to buy the farm’
‘to pass away’
‘to meet one’s maker’
EXPANDING THE LEXICON WITHOUT
DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Other idioms include
• ‘sell down the river’ meaning ‘to betray’
• ‘to let one’s hair down’ meaning ‘to relax’
• ‘to put one’s foot in one’s mouth’ meaning
‘to commit a social gaff’
• ‘to throw one’s weight around’ meaning ‘to
be pushy or bossy’
• ‘to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve’
meaning ‘to reveal one’s (romantic) feelings