skills

Morphology: The Words of Language

Conversation _ sentences _ words

Lexicon : mental listing of the words in a language, including information

about their meaning, grammatical function, pronunciation, etc. ;

a speaker’s mental dictionary

Languages make an important distinction between two kinds of words :

Content words : The nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that constitute the

major part of the vocabulary. They are also called the open

class words because we can and regularly do add new words

to tFunction words : Words that do not have clear lexical meaning but has a

grammatical function, e.g. conjunctions, prepositions,

articles, auxiliaries, pronouns. They are also called closed

class words.

Morphology

The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words

are formed. E. g.

comfort__ comfort-able__ un-comfort-able

morpheme : smallest linguistic unit that can have a meaning or grammatical

function, e.g. the word uncomfortable has three morphemes: un, comfort, ablehese classes.

- free morphemes v.s. bound morphemes

free morphemes : morphemes that can stand alone as a word, e.g. comfort

bound morphemes : morphemes that always attaches to other morphemes,

never existing as a word itself, e.g. un, able

- root, stem and affix

root : A lexical content morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts,

e.g. paint in painter, ceive in conceive, comfort in uncomfortable. A

root may or may not stand alone as a word.

stem : a root morpheme combined with an affix. It may or may not be a

word, e.g. painter is both a word and a stem; -ceive + er is only a

stem.

affix : bound morpheme attached to a stem or root, e.g. -er in painter, conin

conceive.

1. prefix : an affix that is attached to the beginning of a morpheme or stem, e.

g. un- in uncomfortable

2. suffix : an affix that is attached to the end of a morpheme or stem, e.g.

-able in uncomfortable

3. infix : a bound morpheme that is inserted in the middle of a word or stem,

e.g. -mi- in Bontoc (spoken in the Philippines) fumikas “to be

strong”

4. circumfix : bound morpheme, parts of which occur in a word both before

and after the root, e. g. ge…t in German geliebt “loved”

An English word = (prefix) + root + (suffix)

- derivational morpheme v.s. inflectional morpheme

derivational morpheme : morpheme added to a stem or root to form a new

stem or word, possibly, but not necessarily,

resulting in a change in syntactic category, e.g. –er

added to a verb like read to give the noun reader.

inflectional morpheme : bound grammatical morpheme that is affixed to a

word according to rules of syntax, e.g. third-person

siThe Hierarchical Structure of Words

The groupings and subgroupings of morphemes in a word, e.g. uncomfortable

[[[un] [[comfort][able]]

morphological rules : rules for combining morphemes to form stems and

words. For example:

1. Noun + able _ Adj

2. un + Adj _ Adj

3. Adj + al _ Adj

4. Adj + ly _ Adv

5. Adj + ify _ Verb

6. Verb + (a)tion _ Noun

Some words are ambiguous, that is, they have more than one meaning. Their

structure may be analyzed in more than one way. Consider, for example, the

word unlockab

   ‘not able to be locked’ 

  [[un[lockable]

   ‘able to be unlocked’   

  [[unlock]able]]

Word Coinage

- Derived words : the form that results from the addition of a derivational

morpheme, e.g. firm + ly = firmly.

- Compounds : a word composed of two or more words. They are variously

spelled with dashes, spaces, or nothing between the

individual words, e.g. girlfriend, paper clip, e-mail.

noun + noun _ noun homework

adj + adj _ adj icy-cold

noun + adj _ adj lifelong

verb + noun _ noun pickpocket

verb + verb _ verb sleepwalk

The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the

meanings of its parts. Many compounds are idiomatic.

- Acronyms : word composed of the initials of several words, e.g, UNESCO

(United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural

Organization), FAQ (frequently asked questions)

- Back-formations : creation of a new word by removing an affix from an old

word, e.g. donate from donation; or by removing what is

mistakenly considered an affix, e.g. edit from editor.

- Abbreviations : shortened form of a word, e.g. prof from professor, ad from

advertisement.

- Eponyms : words taken from proper names, e.g. sandwich, robot, paparazzi

- Blends : words composed of the parts of more than one word, e.g. smog

from smoke + foga