Transcript 8-Morphology II - Bases Produced

Morphology, Part 2
September 26, 2012
Quick Write Thoughts
• Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary
inside his head?
Quick Write Thoughts
Quick Write Thoughts
Quick Write Thoughts
In Our Last Episode
• Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”)
• Free and bound morphemes
• Simple and complex words
• Affixes and roots
• Word-formation rules
• Affixes attach to a root (or base) of a particular
lexical category…
• and create a new word.
Layers of Words
• Words that are formed through the addition of multiple
affixes have a layered, or hierarchical structure.
• One (ugly) way to represent this structure is through
bracket notation:
• [root]
[construct]
• [[affix] + [root]]
[[re-] + [construct]]
• [[base] + [affix]]
[[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]]
• WORD
reconstruction
(=base)
Tree Structures
• In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to
represent word structure.
• (because they look better and are easier to read)
re
construct
ion
un
desire
• Tree terminology: branches
• nodes: where two branches meet
• nodes represent constituents of the word
able
Building the Perfect Beasts
• To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation…
• tree structures should represent the lexical categories
of all constituents at each node in the tree.
Noun
Adj
Verb
Adj
Aff
Verb
Aff
Aff
Verb
Aff
[re-]
[construct]
[-ion]
[un-] [desire] [-able]
Test Case
• What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like?
3. reassignment
Noun
2. reassign
Verb
Aff
Verb
Aff
[re-]
[assign]
[-ment]
1. assign
Another Test Case
• How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”?
4. miscategorization
Noun
3. miscategorize
Verb
2. categorize
Verb
*miscategory
Aff
Noun
[mis-] [category]
Aff
Aff
[-ize]
[-ation] 1. category
Ambiguity
• Some complex words can have more than one
interpretation
• Different derivations can result in different interpretations
• Example: “unlockable”
Note: [un-] can
attach to both
adjectives and verbs
[-able] attaches to
verbs and creatives
adjectives
Unlockable, part 1
Adj
Adj
Aff
Verb
Aff
[un-]
[lock]
[-able]
• = not able to be locked
Unlockable, part 2
Adj
Verb
Aff
Verb
Aff
[un-]
[lock]
[-able]
• = able to be unlocked
Inflections vs. Derivations
•
1.
Linguists draw another distinction among affixes:
Inflectional affixes:
• mark grammatical properties
• (person, number, gender, tense, aspect)
• don’t change other aspects of meaning
• are required by rules of sentence structure
• create a new “word form”
2. Derivational affixes:
• change meaning
• create a new word
• (typically) have clear semantic content
• may change the lexical category of the word
Inflectional Affixes
•
There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English:
1. -s
3rd person
wait --> waits
2. -ing
progressive
wait --> waiting
3. -ed
past tense
wait --> waited
4. -en
past participle
eat --> eaten
5. -s
plural
card --> cards
6. -’s
possessive
dad --> dad’s
7. -er
comparative
tall --> taller
8. -est
superlative
weak --> weakest
•
All of these are suffixes.
Inflectional Affixes
• Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes.
• Examples from French: parler “to speak”
• 1st person, plural: parlons
“We speak”
• 2nd person, plural: parlez
“You guys speak”
• Past tense:
• 1st person, singular: parlais
“I spoke”
• 1st person, plural: parlions
“We spoke”
• 2nd person, plural: parliez
“You guys spoke”
• Plus many, many more.
• Note: Volapük. (http://www.visi.com/~dean/volverb.html)
Derivational Affixes
• In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes:
• Create new words when they’re attached to roots
• Examples:
• re-
cycle --> recycle
• de-
code --> decode
• -y
fish --> fishy
• -ize
vandal --> vandalize
• Also: English has far more derivational affixes than
inflectional affixes.
• For fairness’ sake: http://www.visi.com/~dean/volword.html
Picky, Picky (last time)
• Inflectional affixes are always going to attach to a root
with a particular part of speech.
• Plural noun = singular noun + “s”
• birds = bird + s
dogs = dog + s
• Past tense verb = present tense verb + “ed”
• waited = wait + ed
talked = talk + ed
• Comparative adjective = adjective + “er”
• taller = tall + er
shorter = short + er
• Q: if both a derivational and an inflectional affix attach to
a root, which will attach first?
The Relationship
• A: Derivational affixes will always attach before
inflectional affixes do.
• Remember: derivational affixes create new words;
• Inflectional affixes just create new word forms.
• Examples: blackened, governments, *neighborshood
Verb
Noun
Verb
Adj
DAff.
black -en
Noun
IAff.
Verb
DAff.
-ed
govern -ment
IAff.
-s
A Note on Word Forms
• Morphologists use the term lexeme to refer to a group of
related word forms.
• wait, waits, waited, waiting, etc.
• The canonical form of the lexeme is called the lemma.
• = the “headword” in a dictionary.
lemma
word
forms
different
lexeme
• Inflectional affixes relate a lexeme to its various forms.
• Derivational affixes relate one lexeme to another
lexeme.