Understanding Morphology in Linguistics
Morphology in linguistics involves the study of word structure, formation, and morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units in language. Words can be broken down into morphemes, with some being monomorphemic (e.g., "pig") and others polymorphemic (e.g., "foolishness"). The concept of morphemes includes homonyms, types of morphemes such as free morphemes, and the distinction between content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and function words in language.
Download Presentation
Please find below an Image/Link to download the presentation.
The content on the website is provided AS IS for your information and personal use only. It may not be sold, licensed, or shared on other websites without obtaining consent from the author. Download presentation by click this link. If you encounter any issues during the download, it is possible that the publisher has removed the file from their server.
E N D
Presentation Transcript
WHAT'S MORPHOLOGY? a) Morphology is the study of the structure of words. -Paradoxically, however, the concept of word itself defies simple definition. In English, for example, words tend to be smaller than the sentence, and we combine words to form sentences. One tricky thing, however, is that in many languages, a single word can have "sentence" meaning
SUMMING UP THE TOPICS : Morphology is the study of word structure and word formation. Words, though impossible to define in absolute terms, can be thought of as the units that are combined to form sentences in a language such as English. Just as sentences can be broken down into smaller units (words), we can break words down into smaller, meaningful parts. The smallest meaningful part of a word is called a morpheme. Note: not all words have more than one morpheme. Words that have only one morpheme are also called monomorphemic words (e.g. pig). Words with more than one morpheme are called polymorphemic words, as in foolishness (fool + ish + ness).
MORPHEMES: minimal unit in which there is an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning (lexical meaning or grammatical function).
A morpheme: may be represented by a single sound ( a in amoral ) : may be represented by a single syllable ( child ish ) : may be represented by more than one syllable 2 syllables: (camel ,lady , water) 3 syllables: (crocodile) 4 syllables: (elevator)
MORPHEMES Homonyms (a.k.a Homophones) Homograph One of two or more words spelled identically but differ in meaning or pronunciation Example: Bow and arrow Bow of a violin Bow of a ship Bow a tie Japanese bow one of two or more words pronounced alike but differ in meaning or spelling. Example: to too two
TYPES OF MORPHEMES Free Morphemes : is a morpheme that by itself can function as a word in a language Examples : Boy , desire , gentle , man.
CONTENT VERSUS FUNCTION WORDS Content Words Function Words Content Words: The nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that constitute the major part of the vocabulary. Content words are referred to as OPEN CLASS words because we can add new words to these classes Function Words: A word that does not have clear lexical meaning but has a grammatical function. Function words include: conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, complementizers, and pronouns. Function words are referred to as CLOSED CLASS words because we can not add new words to these classes.
Bound Morpheme: is a morpheme that cannot stand by itself to form a word; it must be joined to other morphemes It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word. Examples : -ish -ness Free morpheme : bad Bound morpheme : ly Word : badly -ly dis- trans-
AFFIXES Affix: is a bound morpheme that occurs before (prefix), after (suffix), in the middle of (infix), and around (circumfix) stems (root morphemes) Prefix: un-, pre-, bi- Suffix: -ing, -er, -ist, -ly Infix: un-freaking-believable Morphemes that are inserted between other morphemes Circumfix: Morphemes that are attached to another morpheme both initially and finally. Also known as: discontinuous morphemes
ROOTS & STEMS Root : is a non-affix lexical morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. Roots may or may not stand alone as a word Examples : Paint (paint-er) Read (re-read) Ceive (con-ceive) Stem : is that part of a word to which grammatical/ inflectional affixes are added. It may consist amongst others a). Solely single root morpheme such as e.g. (Simple stem such as dog)
b). Two root morphemes e.g. ( compound stem as in blackbird) c). A root morpheme plus a derivational suffix e.g. (a complex stem as in unscrew) a) cats: single root morpheme: cat + inflectional suffix s b) crowbar: two root morphemes (crow + bar) ) + inflectional suffix s c) inventions: : root morpheme invent + lexical suffix -ion+ inflectional suffix -s
WORD FORMATION (WORD COINAGE) In linguistics, the ways in which new words are made on the basis of other words or morphemes.
COMMON TYPES OF WORD FORMATION Coinages Nonce words Borrowing Calquing Clipping
COINAGES Coinage is the word formation process in which a new word is created either deliberately or accidentally without using the other word formation processes and often from seemingly nothing .For example, the following list of words provides some common coinages found in everyday English: Aspirin Escalator heroin Band-aid Factoid Frisbee Google linoluem
NONCE WORDS Nonce words are new words formed through any number of word formation processes with the resulting word meeting a lexical need that is not expected to recur. Nonce words are created for a single occasion. For example, the following list of words provide some nonce words with definitions as identified in the Oxford English Dictionary Cotton-wool: to stuff or close ears with cotton wool. Twi-thought: an indistinct or vague thought
BORROWING ARE ALSO REFERRED TO AS LOANWORDS Borrowing is the word formation process in which a word from one language is borrowed directly into another language. For example, the following common English words are borrowed from foreign languages: algebra Arabic bagel Yiddish cherub Hebrew chow mein Chinese fjord Norwegian galore Irish haiku Japanese kielbasa Polish murder French near Sanskrit paprika Hungarian pizza Italian smorgasbord Swedish tamale Spanish yo-yo Tagalog
CALQUING Calquing is the word formation process in which a borrowed word or phrase is translated from one language to another. For example, the following common English words are calqued from foreign languages: beer garden German Biergarten blue-blood Spanish sangre azul commonplace Latin locus comm nis flea market French march aux puces free verse French vers libre loanword German Lehnwort long time no see Chinese h o ji bu ji n pineapple Dutch pijnappel scapegoat Hebrew ez ozel wisdom tooth Latin d ns sapientiae Calques are also referred to as root-for-root or word-for- word translations
CLIPPING Clipping is the word formation process in which a word is reduced or shortened without changing the meaning of the word. Clipping differs from back- formation in that the new word retains the meaning of the original word. For example: advertisement ad alligator gator examination exam gasoline gas gymnasium gym influenza flu laboratory lab mathematics math
memorandum memo photograph photo public house pub raccoon coon reputation rep situation comedy sitcom telephone phone The four types of clipping are back clipping, fore- clipping, middle clipping, and complex clipping. Back clipping is removing the end of a word as in gas from gasoline. Fore-clipping is removing the beginning of a word as in gator from alligator. Middle clipping is retaining only the middle of a word as in flu from influenza. Complex clipping is removing multiple parts from multiple words as in sitcom from situation comedy
IDENTIFYING MORPHEMES 1. Segmentation of words into minimal sound- meaning constituents basic strategy comparing and contrasting forms that are partially similar in sound and meaning associating shared sound with shared meaning continuing to do so until forms cannot be broken into smaller sound-meaning units
EXAMPLES 1. segmenting repayment into its constituent morphemes: comparing contrasting 1. repayment : payment 2. payment : pay pay-ment re- pay-ment prefix+root+suffix 2. segmenting instructions into its constituent morphemes: comparing contrasting isolating re- payment isolating
1. instructions : instruction 2. instruction : instruct instruct-ion 3. instruct : construct in-struct in-struct-ion-s prefix+root+suffix+suffix 3. segmenting inconsistent into its constituent morphemes: comparing contrasting 1. inconsistent : consistent 2. consistent : consist in-consist-ent 3. consist : desist, insist, persist con-sist instruction-s isolating in- consistent
in- con-sist ent prefix+prefix+root+suffix identifying the meaning of the various forms the meaning of re-pay-ment = the meaning of re- + the meaning of pay- + the meaning of -ment the meaning of in-struct-ion-s = the meaning of in- + the meaning of -struct + the meaning of -ion + the meaning of s the meaning of in-con-sist-ent = the meaning of in- + the meaning of con- + the meaning of -sist + the meaning of -ent
2. Bound roots in segmenting a word into its constituent morphemes, not all morphemes obvious some of the segmentations, or breaks, are less obvious compare: -sist in consist re- in rewrite -er in writer some root morphemes never occur alone in modern English, morphemes such as - ceive, -mit, -fer have lost their independent meaning their meaning depends on the entire word in which they occur
