Morphology, Part 2

January 26, 2012

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] • [[affix] + [root]] • [[base] + [affix]] • WORD [construct] [[re-] + [construct]] [[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]] 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 [re-] Verb [construct] Aff [-ion] Aff [un-] Verb Aff [desire] [-able]

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 [un-] [lock] • = not able to be locked Aff [-able]

Unlockable, part 2

Adj Verb Aff Verb [un-] [lock] • = able to be unlocked Aff [-able]

Inflections vs. Derivations

•

1.

2.

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” • • • •

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 2. -ing 3rd person progressive wait --> wait wait --> wait

s ing

3. -ed 4. -en past tense past participle wait --> wait

ed

eat --> eat

en

5. -s 6. ’s 7. -er plural possessive comparative • 8. -est superlative All of these are suffixes.

card --> card

s

dad --> dad

’s

tall --> tall

er

weak --> weak

est

Inflectional Affixes

• Other languages can have

a lot

more inflectional affixes.

• Examples from French: parler “to speak” • 1st person, plural: parl • 2nd person, plural: parl • Past tense: • 1st person, singular: parl

ais

• 1st person, plural: parl

ons ez ions

• 2nd person, plural: parl

iez

• Plus many, many more.

“We speak” “You guys speak” “I spoke” “We spoke” “You guys spoke”

Derivational Affixes

• In contrast to inflectional affixes,

derivational

affixes: • Create new words when they’re attached to roots • Examples: • re • de • -y cycle --> code -->

re de

cycle code fish --> fish

y

• -ize vandal --> vandal

ize

• Also: English has far more derivational affixes than inflectional affixes.

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.

The Class System

• In English, there are two types of derivational affixes: • 1. Class 1 • root (or Level 1) Often cause phonological (sound) changes in the • Also cause more profound semantic (meaning) changes to the root • • Can combine with bound roots, too.

Ex: -ity, -y, -ion • • For instance: Electric  electric

ity

; stupid  stupid

ity

democrat  democracy; nat

ion

The Class System

• Class 2 (or Level 2) • Don’t cause phonological (sound) changes in root.

• Less of a semantic (meaning) effect, too.

• Ex: -ness, -less, -er, -ish • Normally, Class 1 affixes attach to the root before Class 2 affixes.

• relational • divisiveness • *fearlessity • fearlessness -ion (1), -al (1) -ive (1), -ness (2) -less (2), -ity (1) -less (2), -ness (2)

Productivity

• Productivity = the extent to which a word-formation rule can be applied to new morphemes, to form new words • Class 2 affixes tend to be more productive than Class 1 affixes.

• -ness vs. -ity • both attach to: adjectives • both form: nouns • both mean: the quality of the adjective blindness happiness goodness stupidity validity complexity

Productiveness

• -ness is very productive, so it can expand its reach to other words: • stupidness, validness, complexness • The same is not true of -ity: • *blindity, *happity, *goodity • -ness is so productive, it can also be affixed to new words: truthy + -ness chair + -ness productive + -ness    truthiness chairness productiveness

Unproductivity

• -able is another very productive morpheme: • make-fun-of-able • Other morphemes are not so lucky: • -th: warm + -th = warmth wide + -th deep + -th = = cool + -th = • -en: moist + -en = red + -en = cute + -en = abstract + -en = width depth *coolth moisten redden ?cuten

*abstracten

An Intermediate Case

• -ify attaches to adjectives to form verbs • just + -ify = justify pure + -ify • quick + -ify = = purify ?quickify

smart + -ify = • An anecdotal case ?smartify

busy + -ify = busify ugly + -ify = uglify • -ify has limited productivity

Blocking

• Productivity can sometimes be limited by the existence of other words • intelligent + -ness = *intelligentness • “intelligence” gets in the way • it

blocks

intelligentness from existence • true + -ness = *trueness (truth) • inhabit + -er= • guide + -er = *inhabiter *guider (inhabitant) (guide) • In other cases, a new word gets created anyway: • pride + -ful = prideful (proud)

Content and Function Words

• One last distinction: there are both

content

and

function

words. • Content words = • have some semantic content (meaning) • nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs • ex: politics, baseball, socks, green, create • Function words = • specify grammatical relations • have little or no semantic content • prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions

Content and Function Words

• Content words are an “open class”- • we can add new members anytime we want.

• Function words are a “closed class”- • it’s not easy (or possible?) to add new members.

• When was the last time you heard a new pronoun? Or new preposition?

• (thoughts on the quick write?) • Our minds also process function words differently from content words.