What is a word?
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Transcript What is a word?
Lec. 1
What is Morphology?
Word Structure
What is morphology?
The study of the internal structure of
words / the study of word formation,
In the 19th century, morphology & the
reconstruction of Indo-European (LatinSanskrit-Persian- Germanic)
Sound system & word-formation patterns
A synchronic discipline
What is a word?
native speakers have intuitive knowledge
of how to form new words.
E.g. ‘splinch’ = to step on broken glass
E.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v)
E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode?
redie?
What is a word?
A person
a word is stretch of
letters that occurs
between blank
spaces.
a word is something
small that means
something.
A linguist
a morpheme is the
smallest unit of
language that has its
own meaning.
E.g. giraffe, red, re-,
-ize, etc.
1. What is a word?
A word is one or two morphemes that
can stand alone in a language.
Simple words & Complex words
Simple words
giraffe
sit
pistachio
Michael
oops
just
Complex words
opposition
prewashed
blackboard
inseparable
orphanage
Exercise
While reading, an English book, you come
across the word ‘pockled’? What would you
do?
‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ?
Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items
pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles,
وردة
أورد – تورد –وردتين – وردتان- ورود – وردات
1.1.The Lexeme
We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of
the abstract vocabulary item using the
term lexeme. The forms eats, eating &
eater are all different realisations/
representations/ manifestations of the
lexeme EAT.
1.1.The Lexeme
Lexemes share a core meaning although
they are being spelled & pronounced
differently.
Lexemes are the words listed in the
dictionary
Exercise
Group words that belong to the same
lexeme:
sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes
– seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy –
boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman –
sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller –
catching – jumping – sees - women
1.2.The word-form
We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a
particular physical realisation of a specific
lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a
particular word-form.
1.2. Word-form
The physical
word-form
The realisation of
the lexeme
see – sees- seeing –
saw – seen
sleep, sleeping,
sleeper, slept, sleeps
catch, catches,
catching, caught,
SEE
SLEEP
CATCH
1.3.The grammatical word
The word is a representation of a lexeme
that is associated with certain
morphosyntactic properties
(morphological + syntactic), such as noun,
adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.
Exercise
Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words
represented by the word cut:
Usually I cut the bread on the table
Yesterday, I cut the bread in the sink
* Jane has a cut on her finger
Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest units of
meaning.
Morphology is the study of wordstructure.
E.g.
unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under
Morphemes
The term morpheme is used to refer to
the smallest, indivisible units of semantic
content or grammatical function from
which words are made up.
A morpheme cannot be decomposed into
smaller meaningful units, or units that
mark a grammatical function.
Exercise
-er
player / caller / pretender
-ness
Kindness / cleanliness / goodness
ex ex-wife / ex-minister
pre Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school
Morphemes & meaning
It is possible to combine several
morphemes together to form more
complex words.
E.g.
uncleanliness
unfaithfulness
reincarnation
Morphemes & meaning
Meaning & morphemes:
speakers may have different mental
lexicons, based on their personal
experience
helicopter – pteropus - diptera
(pter=wings)
Bible – bibliography – bibliophile
(bibl=book)
Identification of morphemes
What is true of science in general is also
true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957)
It is not possible to establish mechanical
techniques for the identification of
morphemes
But, there are a number of reasonably
reliable & widely accepted techniques
proposed
by
linguists
working
in
morphology
2.1. the principle of Contrast
We contrast forms (words) that differ in :
1. phonological shape
/e/ vs. /i/
ten & tin / six & sex
2. meaning (meaning & grammatical)
The girl plays vs. the boy plays
The girl plays vs. the girl played
2.2 morphemes & morphs
Morphemes are the smallest difference
in the shape of a word that correlates
with the smallest difference in word or
sentence meaning or in grammatical
structure.
2.1. morphemes & morphs
The analysis of morphemes begins with
the isolation of morphs.
A morph is a physical form representing
some morpheme in a language. It is a
recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme)
or sequence of sounds (phonemes).
morphemes & morphs
morpheme
By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find
that they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person
singular), work + ed (a marker for past tense), work + er (a
marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work +
house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two
meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful
unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these
morphemes is called morphology.
morph
Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker,
workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of
an element, a segment, which is not yet classified.
Source:
http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/New
words.pdf
Exercise
Identify the morphs:
I parked the car
We parked the car
I parked the car
He parks the car
She parked the car
She parks the car
We park the car
He parked the car
The morphs are:
Exercise
Identify the morphs which represent the
past tense morpheme in English:
1. /d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/
clean, weigh, enjoy, burb…
2.
/t/
the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/
park, miss, watch, …
3.
/id/
the verb ends with /t/ or /d/
mend, paint, hand, wait, …
Allomorphs
If different morphs represent the same
morpheme, they are grouped together
and they are called allomorphs
Sometimes the difference in form is not
associated with a difference in meaning
/d/, /t/, & /id/
/s/, /z/, & /iz/
morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs
Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in
English
Morpheme
‘past tense’
morph
/id/
morph
/d/
morph
/t/
Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English
Morphemes
‘plural’
morph
/s/
morph
/z/
morph
/iz/
Identification of morphemes
The central technique used in the
identification of morphemes is based on
the notion of distribution; the total set
of contexts in which a particular linguistic
form occurs.
Classification of morphs
We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs
of the same morpheme if they are in
complementary distribution:
If morphs:
1. represent the same meaning or serve
the same grammatical function, and
2. are never found in identical contexts
The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in
English are in complementary distribution
Morpheme
‘past tense’
morph
/id/
morph
/d/
morph
/t/
Exercise
Identify the allomorphs of the negative
morpheme
1. impossible, impatient, immovable
1.
intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive,
inelegance
1.
incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude
Notes
If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the
choice of allomorphs used in a given
context is phonologically conditioned
(assimilation).
Spelling is a very poor guide to
pronunciation in many languages (e. g.
English)