Transcript Diapositive 1

Content words and function words
• Content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives,
(most) adverbs
– denote objects, actions, attributes, ideas
e.g. children, anarchism, sour, purple, run,
liberty
– open class : new words regularly added
e.g. download, byte, email,
Content words and function words
• Function words: conjunctions (and, or, …),
prepositions (in, of, …), articles (a, the),
pronouns (it, he, …)
– No clear lexical meaning
– No obvious concepts associated with them
– Closed class
– Grammatical role
[sometimes called lexical vs grammatical words]
Psycholinguistic evidence
• Slips of the tongue typically involve
content words
– “the journal of the editor” instead of “the editor
of the journal”
• In early speech children tend to omit
function words
– “doggie barking”
• Data from aphasia studies
Broca’s aphasia
• “Yes — ah — Monday ah — Dad — and
Dad — ah — Hospital — and ah —
Wednesday — Wednesday — nine o’clock
and ah Thursday — ten o’clock ah doctors
— two — two — ah doctors and — ah —
teeth — yah. And a doctor — ah girl —
and gums, and I.”
(FR&H, p.45)
Broca’s Aphasia
• Broca (1865) described patients who
displayed halting, agrammatic speech
– Content words were well preserved
– Function words (i.e., prepositions, articles)
impaired
– Typically left inferior prefrontal lobe of the
cortex is affected
Wernicke’s aphasia
• Wernicke (1874) described patients whose
speech is fluent, but has little or no
informational value
• “I felt worse because I can no longer keep
in mind from the mind of the minds to keep
me from mind and up to the ear which can
be to find among ourselves.”
Wernicke’s aphasia
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Neologisms
Speech appears to have no information content
“fluent nonsense”
Preserved function words, impaired content
words
• Comprehension impaired
• Even simple sentences not well understood
• Associated with left temporal lobe damage
Broca and Wernicke’s areas
Morphemes
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desirable
likely
inspired
happy
developed
sophisticated
• ADJECTIVE
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undesirable
unlikely
uninspired
unhappy
undeveloped
unsophisticated
• UN- + ADJECTIVE
Morphemes
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Phone
Phonetic
Phonetics
Phonetician
Phonic
Phonology
Phonologist
Phonological
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Telephone
Telephonic
Phoneme
Phonemic
Allophone
Euphonious
Symphony
Morphemes
• Basic meaningful items
• Many words contain several morphemes
– 1 morpheme: boy, desire
– 2 morphemes: boy+ish, desire+able
– 3 morphemes: boy+ish+ness, desire+able+ity
– 4 morphemes: un+ desire+able+ity
Morphemes
• The morpheme is the locus of arbitrariness
• A multimorphemic word is typically non
arbitrary
– Writable CD, Rewritable CD, Unrewritable CD
• Discreteness
• Creativity
Bound and Free Morphemes
• Free morphemes: make a word by
themselves
– boy, desire, gentle, man
• Bound morphemes: do not make a word
by themselves
– -ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans-, un-
• Prefixes and suffixes (affixes)
Derivation vs. Inflection
• Derivation
– Adding an affix to a stem creates a new word
– un- + true  untrue
– true and untrue are different words
Derivation vs. Inflection
• Inflection
– Adding an affix (suffix in English) to a stem
creates a new form of the same word
– talk + -ing  talking
– talk + -ed  talked
– talking and talked are different forms of the
same word
Lexemes and word-forms
• Ambiguity in the use of the word “word”.
– boy and boys are the same word
– boy and boys are different words
• Notion of “lexeme”
– boy and boys are different word-forms of the
same lexeme
– boy and boyish are different lexemes
• Lexeme = lexical word; function words
(and, in, the, etc.) are not lexemes.
Derivation vs. Inflection
• Derivation creates new lexemes
• Inflection creates word forms of a given
lexeme
Roots, stems and lexemes
• boy+ish+ness
– boy = root and stem and lexeme
– The suffix –ish is added to the stem boy giving
the lexeme boyish
– boyish can serve as a stem for further
suffixation though it is not a root
– The suffix –ness is added to the stem boyish
giving the lexeme boyishness
– “stem” = “base”
Rules of word (lexeme) formation
• Derivation : stem + affix
– boyish + -ness
• Compounding : stem1 + stem2
– black + berry
• Conversion (zero-derivation) : stem  stem
– loveV  loveN