Understanding Words and Their Parts in Morphology
Explore the world of words and their parts in morphology through exercises, classifications of word classes, differentiation between content words and function words, analysis of words beginning with "b," homonyms, polysemy, and verb inflection. Delve into the various aspects of linguistics to enhance your understanding of how language works.
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Words and their parts MORPHOLOGY
Exercise 1.1. 1. Make a list of word classes as you know them. 2. Now analyze the sentence: Criminologists, in order to uncover clues not visible to the eye, use specialized tools, such as luminal, a liquid that reacts with the hemoglobin in blood to illuminate previously invisible blood stains , 3. Assign each of the words to a word class
Content words Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs Refer to something in our experience (whether real or imagined)
Function words Allow us to connect different parts of phrases, clauses and sentences, or to convey another type of meaning, such as polarity ( yes or no polarity), prepositions, prepositional phrases, articles, discourse markers
How many words begin with b? List the different dictionary entries you would create 1. The bear attacked him. 2. I can t bear the sight of him. 3. People argue over the right to bear arms. 4. Bare feet are not allowed. 5. She bore up well under the strain. 6. He bears no malice towards those who did him this injustice. 7. I was born at 5 a.m. 8. In the village, there was a woman who bore twins four times. 9. He is such a bore. 10. With bared teeth, he uttered his horrifying threat.
Homonyms Words which sound the same but have different meanings Bear, bear, bare Bore, bore
Polysemy Words with different, but related senses Bear, bear (3. and 6.)
Verb inflection Example 6: He bears him no malice I bear him no malice Is bear and bears the same word?
Look at the list and decide if it is considered a word 1. hello 2. chair 3. the 4. friend 5. friendship 6. ly 7. friends 8. goodbye 9. ceive 10. un 11. gotcha 12. gonna 13. coffee cup 14. cran 15. blackboard 16. faked
Content words and function words Content words refer to concepts in the realm of experience (tangible or abstract, real or imaginary) Function words create connections or provide specification of how we are to interpret the content words
Content words Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs - an open class of words, as new content words are being created constantly
Function words Pronouns Determiners Prepositions Conjunctions - a closed class: fixed, relatively stable, and new ones are not inclined to be added
Make a list of several words which are new to your language For each word: 1. List its word class: adjective, adverb, noun, verb? 2. In what contexts have you heard the word 3. How recent is it? How did it enter the language? 4. Google the word. How many hits does it get? Look through some of the hits. Does the way the word is used match your understanding?
Neologisms: how are new words created? Acronyms: AIDS < acquired immunity deficiency syndrome Alphabetic abbreviations: CD< compact disk Clippings: prof < professor Blends: camcorder < camera + recorder Generified words: xerox (<the name of the corporation that produces photocopying machines) Proper nouns (guillotine named after its inventor, Dr. Joseph Guillotin)
Neologisms: how are new words created? Borrowings: Direct (avocado Aztec word) Borrowings: Indirect (grattacielo<skyscraper) Changing the meaning of words
What is a word? The task of any language learner, including young children acquiring their language, is to figure out how to segment and analyze the talking noise around them into meaningful units namely, words and their meaningful parts Webster s Unabridged Dictionary: word is the smallest independent unit of language, or one that can be separated from other such units in an utterance
What is a word? Words are usually separated by spaces in writing and distinguished phonologically, as by accent Chinese doesn t insert spaces between words in writing People who can t read and speakers of languages without writing systems know what words are in their languages
Morpheme Word difficult to delineate Morpheme the smallest unit of linguistic meaning that has clear delineation
Morphology Studies morphemes and the ways in which morphemes combine together into larger units of meaning
Determine the number of morphemes in each of the words below. How can you divide them into categories? 1. dogs 2. unpack 3. carrot 4. behead 5. repackage 6. redness 7. deactivate 8. classroom 9. paper 10. writer s
Morphemes Free Bound
Free and bound morphemes Free m. can stand alone as words (e.g. dog, carrot, head, red, class, room, paper, write) Bound m. must be attached to another morpheme (e.g. s, er, un, be, de, ate, ness, re, s)
Root morphemes The smallest units cannot be analyzed into smaller units (e.g. pack, write, act)
Stem Root morpheme + affixes E.g. write + er = writer + s = writers
Affixes Bound morphemes that attach to roots or stems in different ways
Affixes Prefixes: attach at the beginning of a root or stem morphemes: un-, re-, dis-, etc. Suffixes: attach at the end of root or stem morphemes: -s, , -ness, -ly, etc. Infixes: insert in the middle of root or stem morphemes (Croatian poku ati try > poku a-va-ti) Circumfixes: attach simultaneously at the beginning and at the end of a bound or stem morpheme (German: past participle ge-hab-t)
Bound morphemes Inflectional Derivational
Inflectional morphemes Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning of a word; they change the word because of constraints provided by the syntax of their surrounding phrase or sentence (e.g. I come, he comes)
Inflectional morphemes Provide information on: Case, gender, person, mood, tense, voice, aspect
Person Distinguishes entities referred to in an utterance 1st person: speaker 2nd person: addressee 3rd person: a default category that refers to everything else Person often combined with number
Number A grammatical property of nouns Singular plural (some languages also dual) Uncountable nouns cannot be pluralized (abstract nouns: carelessness, peace; non-individual material: milk, rice); a mass noun in one language may be countable in another: furniture meuble/meubles
Gender Genus kind, sort Masculine, feminine, neuter Sometimes: gender indicated on the noun itself: Sp. amigo amiga; forms of the indefinite article un/una and the adjective americano/a agree with the gender of the noun
Case One of the most important functions of morphology is to distinguish the roles played by the various participants in an event Case indicates a noun s relation to some other element in a clause or phrase Case marking the relation of the noun to the verb (as its subject, direct or indirect object) or to another noun (possessive or locational relation)
Tense All human languages have ways for locating situations in time Tense used to locate an event or state in relation to a point in time In simple tenses (past, present, future), the reference point is now , at the moment of speaking English 2 tenses: past and non-past
Aspect Encodes whether an action is (or was) completed (perfective), ongoing, repeated (iterative) or habitual (progressive): John is painting the kitchen. John was painting the kitchen. John painted the kitchen.
Mood A grammatical category that expresses the speaker s belief, opinion, or attitude about the content of an utterance
Mood Indicative - used for making declarative assertions Interrogative asking questions Imperative giving commands Subjunctive wishes, thoughts, hopes, doubts etc. Conditional expresses what one would or should do
English inflectional morphemes Word class Nouns i. morpheme s s er est s ed ed ing function plural possessive comparative superlative 3rd person sg. Past tense Past participle Present participle examples dogs John s faster fastest walks walked cooked walking Adjectives Verbs
Inflection and derivation in English Inflectional morphemes are few in English, but derivational morphemes are many Inflectional morpheme does not change the grammatical class or the underlying meaning of a word, a derivational morpheme changes one or the other
English derivational morphemes -ness, -ly: change the grammatical class of a word: friend (noun) > friend-ly (adverb); Friendly (adverb) > friendliness (noun)
English derivational morphemes Some derivational morphemes change or add to the meaning of the root or stem, but do not change the grammatical class unhappily impossible intolerant mistreat friendship blueish
Morphonematics Impossible inflexible: allomorphs of the same morpheme
Allomorphy A Clicks /kliks/ clips plates myths B Pigs /pigz/ beds caves pans C Flaws /floz/ days knees plows D Kisses /kisiz/ judges sashes churches
Allomorphy Different pronunciations of the plural morpheme depend on the surrounding phonetic context A: unvoiced consonant B: voliced consonant C: words ending in vowels D: vowel epenthesis
Can you identify the morphemes? The musicians reconsidered their director s unusual proposal.
The meaning of complex words readable - well written, good style A bill is payable doesn t mean that it can be paid but it must be payed If a theory is questionable, it doesn t mean that it can be questioned but that it is dubious and suspect Meanings of many complex words not merely composites of the meanings of their parts (semantic drift)
Compounding Concatenation of two or more lexemes to form a new lexeme English: greenhouse, moonlight, download
Compounding: writing conventions Often, the hyphen is used when a compound has been recently created (black-board) When it has gained a certain currency or permanence, spelled without a hyphen (black board) Spelled as one word (blackboard)
Summary Derivational morphology creates new lexemes from existing ones, with a change in a word s lexical category or meaning Inflectional morphology adds grammatical information to a lexeme: person, number, gender, case, tense, aspect, mood
