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Words
A definition of morphology
• The area of grammar (the system dog red
that we are describing) dogs redd-ish
concerned with the structure of bulldog redden
words and with relationships redenned
between words involving the walk redder
constituents that compose them walks
• The constituents we call walked
morphemes. walking
Moonwalk
• Morphemes are the part of Read – Reads – Reader –
words that we recognize as being Readable – Readability –
meaningful or functional Reread – Reading –
Readableness
Hindi
Examples
Word structure is weird
• Anything that a language does with morphology, it
usually can also do more straightforwardly with
syntax; and there is always some other language
that does the same thing with syntax
• In most cases, in English we add /-s/ to indicate
plurality: dog ~ dog-s
• But we can also use syntax to construct a phrase
that has the same meaning:
– more than one dog
– one or more dogs (indefinite)
Chinese does it differently
• Modern Standard Chinese
(also known as "Mandarin"
or "Putonghua") makes
exactly the opposite choice:
there is no morphological
marking for plurality, so we
can be succinctly vague
about whether we mean
one or more of something,
while we need to be more
long-winded if we want to
be specific (in Pinyin
orthography)
So do Japanese and Indonesian
Indonesian:
Saiga makan dua buah semangka (se) tiap hari
I eat two fruit melon every day
‘I eat two melons every day.’
Japanese:
mainichi futatsu-no meron-o tabemasu
every.day two-gen melon-obj eat.imperf
‘I eat two melon every day.’
English: fish, shrimp, sheep
Quirks
Convert Nouns to Verbs
• iconify from icon and -ify, meaning “make into an
icon”
• Many languages lack any general way to turn a noun
X into a verb meaning "to make into (an) X", and so
must use the longer-winded mode of expression.
• Indeed, while there is a process in English, it is
rather erratic: we say
Noun vapour - vapour-ize but not *vapour-ify
*emulsion-ify but emuls-ify
terrify: cause to feel extreme fear
terrorize: strike terror in/into, fill with terror
Combinatoric irregularity -
morphology
• Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübe
rtragungsgesetz
rind+fleisch+etikettierung+s+über+wachung+s+aufga
ben+über+tragung+s+gesetz
• cattle+meat+labelling+/+over+seeing+/+duty+transf
er+/+law
Wall-mounted
toothbrush holder
toothbrush
Wall mounted
tooth brush
A morpheme must
• Also contribute in some way to
• Be identifiable the meaning of the whole word
from one word Squish-able
to another Eat-able
Attack Read-able
Stack Work-able
Tackle This extra meaning is not
necessarily equal in all cases,
Taxi (/tæksi/) e.g. readable, does not mean
‘can be read’ in a literal sense,
but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.
How can I recognise a
morpheme?
Morphemes must be identifiable from one word
to another: identifying affixes:
– un- : uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear, …
– -able: variable, changeable, solvable, …
– de- : deselect, dethrone, detoxify, …
– -al: cultural, federal, liberal, modal, …
– -ize: computerize, realize, …
Identifying the core element
• Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly; happier,
happiest
• Change: change-able, chang-er, un-chang-ed;
changes, chang-ing
• Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly; selects,
selected
• ?Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber-ty
• ?Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al
• Some morphemes express some general sort of
referential or informational content independent of
the grammatical system of a particular language
• Other morphemes are heavily tied to a grammatical
function, expressing syntactic relationships between
units in a sentence, or obligatorily-marked categories
such as number or tense.
Distinguishing between
morphemes
• Bound vs free morphemes
• Free morphemes can occur on their own:
– happy, change, select, green, house, …
• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are
attached to other morphemes:
– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)
– liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …
• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy,
materi-al
General tendency
• The core vocabulary of English is generally composed
of words of Anglo-Saxon origin
• There is a general tendency for core elements to be
free morphemes
• E.g. Hand
• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,
Bound morphemes as core
elements: from Latin
Circul- Circular Liber- Liberty
Circulati Liberatio
on n
Circulat Liberaliz
or e
Circulat Libertin
ory e
Problem case: Verbs of Latin
origin
receive deceive conceive perceive
revert convert pervert
relate collate translate
reduce deduce conduce
Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme?
Or prefix + bound morpheme?