Transcript General Morphology Thoughts - The Bases Produced Home Page

Morphology, Part 4:
Word-Formation Processes
+ Allomorphy
October 4, 2010
The Master Plan
1. Discussion of word-formation processes.
2. Talk about allomorphy.
3. Wednesday: work on some more morphology
problem sets.
Word-Formation Processes
•
So far we’ve discussed:
1. Affixation
•
“Concatenation” of an affix and a root/base
•
/re-/ + /cycle/ = recycle
•
prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes…
2. Compounding
•
Concatenation of two or more free morphemes
•
baseball, blackboard, light bulb, etc.
3. Back Formations
•
Extraction of a word out of a larger word…
Back Formations
• Back formations: removal of an (incorrectly perceived)
affix to form a new word
• Ex: “edit”
• “editor” perceived as /edit/ + /-er/
• Other examples:
peddle (from peddler) swindle (from swindler)
burgle (from burglar)
pea (from pease)
laze (from lazy)
liaise (from liaison)
• A “reverse” backformation:
Chinese (from Chinee + /-s/)
A Sipid Story of Requited Love
“It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I
was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled
and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella...when I
saw her...She was a descript person...Her hair was kempt,
her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.”
--from “How I Met My Wife”, by Jack Winter
• Check out more at:
http://www.matefl.org/_mgxroot/page_10679.html
• Or consider:
Reduplication
• Reduplication: repetition of all or part of the stem
• Indonesian: (total reduplication)
rumah
‘house’
rumahrumah
‘houses’
ibu
‘mother’
ibuibu
‘mothers’
lalat
‘fly’
lalatlalat
‘flies’
• Tagalog: (partial reduplication)
bili
‘buy’
bibili
‘will buy’
kain
‘eat’
kakain
‘will eat’
pasok
‘enter’
papasok
‘will enter’
Reduplication in English?
• There are a few examples of reduplication in English.
• Can you think of any?
• Individual words/phrases: “bling bling”, “very very”, “teeny
weeny”…
• There is also one reduplicative process in English…
• schm- reduplication:
fancy schmancy
tired schmired
football schmootball
Nobel Prize schmobel prize
...etc.
Internal Change
• A (slightly) more common word-formation process in
English is internal change.
• = changing sounds inside a root creates a new word.
• Also known as alternations
sing
~
sang
present/past
drive
~
drove
present/past
foot
~
feet
singular/plural
mouse
~
mice
singular/plural
import
~
import
noun/verb
present
~
present
noun/verb
By the way...
• Some internal change processes have (limited)
productivity in English
• What’s the past tense of “sing”?
sang
sung
• ring?
rang
rung
• bring?
brang?
brung?
brought?
brought?
Internal Change Quick Write
•
72 total responses.
1. Did you bive? Yes, I….
•
bave (1); bove (1)
2. Did you vake? Yes, I…
•
voke (5)
3. Did you slike? Yes, I…
•
sloke (4); slike (1)
4. Did you neak? Yes, I…
•
nuck (2); neak (2); noke (1)
Internal Change Quick Write
5. Did you mide? Yes, I…
• mode (13); mid (4); mide (1); mit (1)
6. Did you strink? Yes, I…
• strunk (16); strank (10); stronk (3)
7. Did you lun? Yes, I…
• lan (9); lone (2)
• Internal changes are made for the new forms to the extent
that they resemble phonologically similar forms already in
the language. (ride, drink, run)
Roots and Patterns
• An extreme form of “internal change” is found in Semitic
languages, like Arabic and Hebrew
• “Root and pattern morphology”
• Arabic: /k-t-b/ root “write”
kitaab
alkitaab
maktab
kataba
kaataba
ifkataba
kuttaab
‘a book’
‘the book’
‘office’
‘to write’
‘to correspond’
’to make a copy’
‘Koranic school’
kutub
kaatib
maktaba
kattaba
?uktaba
kutubii
miktaab
‘books’
‘author’
‘library’
‘to make write’
‘to dictate’
‘bookseller’
‘typewriter’
Just So You Know
• Note: if a word does not change form when you’d expect
a particular inflectional affix to attach to it…
• It is said to be formed with a null morpheme.
• (also called a zero morpheme)
• Examples:
• moose (singular)
moose (plural)
• sheep (singular)
sheep (plural)
• hit (present tense V)
hit (past tense V)
Conversion
• Conversion = usage of an existing word in a new lexical
category.
• English makes use of this process a lot.
• Examples:
• to butter
to nail
(N  V)
• a report
a call
(V  N)
• to right (a wrong)
to total (a car)
(A  V)
Awkwardizations?
• Football Announcer-ese:
• “Sanders defensed the pass.”
(noun to verb)
• “Urlacher lost weakside contain.”
(verb to noun)
• Corporate speak?
• During Hurricane Katrina:
• "We heard that there was a gentleman who was
stuck in his boat just downstream from us so we are
efforting to help rescue agencies to find him".
Conversion
• Just to be clear:
• Conversion is a type of derivation
• A null morpheme is a type of inflection
Suppletion
• Suppletion occurs when inflected forms of a word have
different roots.
• In English, this is rare:
• go ~ went
• be ~ were
• compare with: walk ~ walked; cook ~ cooked
• Portuguese:
• ir
“to go”
comer
“to eat”
• vou
“I go”
como
“I eat”
• fui
“I went”
comi
“I ate”
• ia
“I was going”
comia
“I was eating”
Child Verb Morphology
• Patterns like the following are frequently found in child
language acquisition:
Present Past
Stage 1:
go
went
Stage 2:
go
goed
Stage 3:
go
went
• What’s going on here?
• What is the child doing, as a language learner?
Clipping
• Clipping = shortening of an existing word.
• demo
from “demonstration”
• condo
from “condominium”
• fax
from “facsimile”
• deli
from “delicatessen”
• lab
from “laboratory”
• blog
from “web log”
• taxicab
from “taximeter cabriolet”
• (cabriolet = horse-drawn carriage)
Blends
• Blending = melding together parts of two different
words.
• brunch
from breakfast and lunch
• smog
from smoke and fog
• spam
from spiced and ham
• telethon
from television and marathon
• chortle
from chuckle and snort
• motel
from motor and hotel
• chillax
from chill and relax
• bankster
from banker and gangster
• bricked
from brilliant and wicked
The Remainders
• Coinage
• = completely making a new word up.
• Example: nylon, vaseline, xerox, (dog), (chap)
• Eponyms
• = naming words after people
• ex: boycott, sandwich, jumbo, crapper, sideburns
• Acronyms
• Creating a word out of an abbreviation.
• ex: scuba, radar, laser
Last but not least
• Sometimes an affix changes form, depending on what kind
of root it attaches to.
• Consider English /in-/
• combines with adjectives to form adjectives
• means “the opposite of”
• Examples:
/in-/ + accurate =
inaccurate
/in-/ + tolerant
=
intolerant
/in-/ + direct
=
indirect
Allomorphy
• What’s going on in these cases?
/in-/ + legible
=
illegible
/in-/ + regular
=
irregular
/in-/ + legal
=
illegal
• There are two new forms of the affix: /il-/ and /ir-/
• These are called allomorphs.
• Allomorphs = “different forms”
Allomorphy
• What’s going on here?
/in-/ + probable =
improbable
/in-/ + mobile
=
immobile
/in-/ + possible
=
impossible
• /in-/ changes to /im-/ before both /p/ and /m/.
• /p/ and /m/ are both produced with the lips.
To explain patterns like this, we’re going to need to know
something about how we actually produce the sounds of
English.
We have to study Phonetics!
Allomorphy
• Another English example:
a dog
an owl
a noise
an orange
a strawberry
an apple
• Here’s another:
• walked
invited
• sprayed
needed
• stopped
hated
• fired
landed
• What’s the pattern?
Allomorphy
• One last pattern:
• cats
matches
• judges
dogs
• chairs
passes
• When do we add an extra syllable?
• How does the pattern compare to the formation of third
person singular verbs?
• waits, loves, shows, finds…
• watches, hatches, kisses, spazzes…
• The pattern is based entirely on the sounds involved;
• not on the meaning of the morphemes.
Allomorphy
• Italian Quick Write
• Finally: Morphology homework due on Friday!