English Morphology – Lecture 1

David Brett Antonio Pinna University of Sassari 2007

A definition of morphology

• The area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words involving the morphemes that compose them

What is a word?

• An orthographic definition • A phonological definition • A semantic definition • A syntactic definition

An orthographic definition

• Words as units in the writing system: words are uninterrupted strings of letters • For ex.

writing

is a word because there are blank spaces surrounding it

Problems with this definition:

• Can you make a list of punctuation marks?

• Can you think of instances of words characterized by different spellings?

• What about compound nouns?

How many words are there in the following sentences?

• a.

John’s girl friend lives in a high-rise apartment building.

• b.

Mary’s a policewoman in the United States

.

• - Is

John’s

in a. above one or two words? • - Is

Mary’s

in b. above one or two words?

• - Is

high-rise

in a. above one or two words?

The orthographic word may not coincide with our intuitions:

• Compound nouns:

apartment building

,

parking ticket

,

ground floor, United States

.

• Phrasal verbs:

get up

,

look after

,

put up with

.

A phonological definition

• Words as phonological units: spoken in isolation each word can only have one main stress • E.g.

Words as elements of the system

The underlined characters indicate the main stress

Problems with this definition:

• Function words (i.e. words such as

as, of, the

) do not seem to have a main stress; • Clitics (i.e.

‘s

in the example below) do not seem to have a main stress • Ex.

Jane’s in the garden

: ‘

s

,

in

,

the

are not stressed.

A semantic definition

• Words as meaningful units: • a. Words express unified concepts • b. Words are the minimum meaningful units of a language

Problems with these definitions:

• Concepts can be expressed by noun groups or larger units; for ex.

the man who lives next door

or

that beautiful summer morning of 1985 when we drove to the beach on an old CV2

• Function words may not have an easily identifiable meaning (for ex. can you specify the meaning of

the

?)

4. A syntactic definition #1

• Words as syntactic units: words are the smallest syntactic elements in a sentence: • a. They belong to certain word classes (and follow the rules of these syntactic categories) • • • • Words can be grouped into 2 main categories: 1. Open-class words: classes of words which can contain an infinite number of words • (i.e. nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs) 2. Closed-class words: classes of words which contain a limited number of words (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and modal verbs, conjunctions, determiners)

4. A syntactic definition #2

• b. Only words (and groups of words) can be moved to a different position in a sentence • 1.

She

can ride the bike • 2. Can

she

ride the bike?

• 1. She brought the can opener.

• 2a. The can was brought by her opener. ✘ • 2b. The can opener was brought by her. ✓

The relationship between words and meanings

Words with unpredictable meanings:

dog, door, desk, book, pen, …

Words with predictable meanings Complex words:

unhappy, helpful, madly, …

E.g. The relationship between the sequence of letters its form.

cat

and its meaning [domestic feline] in English is the result of a convention. Whenever this association form-meaning is the result of a convention, the meaning of a word is unpredictable on the basis of Exception: onomatopoeic words

splash

resembles the sound of a liquid hitting something;

beep

resembles a short high sound, like the sound of a car horn.

Non-words and meanings

• entities that are larger than a word with unpredictable meanings – Idioms:

pull someone’s leg

;

kick the bucket

; … – Collocations:

hard work, white coffee, white collar worker

… – Proverbs:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, birds of a feather flock together, a bad workman blames his tools,

…

The difference between words and lexical items

Words are the smallest syntactic units in a sentence (i.e. words are grammatical entities) • Lexical items are semantic units whose meanings are unpredictable; they may be larger than words, but often they can coincide with them (i.e. lexical items are semantic entities)

Taking words apart

• • • Why is the meaning of the following words predictable to a certain extent?

unbelievable, capitalistic, mismatched, disproportional, misunderstanding, irregularity.

lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.

Complex words: affixation

• Words can be composed of identifiable smaller parts,

morphemes

, put together in a whole can reliably be determined on the basis of the meaning of the smaller parts.

systematic

fashion, so that the meaning of the •

un-believe-able, anti-capital-ist-ic, de-colony-al-ize-ation, dis proportion-al, mis-under-stand-ing, ir-regul-ar-ity

.

• This group contains words which are divisible into: • a component that carries most of the meaning (e.g.

believe

,

capital

,

colony

,

proportion

of meaning (e.g. – , etc.) • other elements that are associated with it to add some other aspects

able

in

believable

= something or someone is capable of being believed;

un

- in

unbelievable

= something or someone is not capable of being believed).

• The process through which these words are formed is called

affixation

.

Word compounding

• B.

lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.

• Group B contains words which are divisible into two other words. • These component words can be found independently in an English dictionary, but when they associate they form a compound word • The meaning of the union is not necessarily a function of the meaning of the two combining words. For ex. a

lighthouse

is neither a

light

nor a

house

. This process is called

word compounding

.

Word compounding: exercise

• How many compund words can you create with the following words?

bag car box case

Hand-, body-, air-, sick-, punch-, sleeping bag Sports, estate, company, courtesy, car Mail-, post-, letter-, telephone, gear Book-, suit-, brief-, display, lower box case

A morpheme must

– be identifiable from one word to another – However, consider: Attack Stack Tackle Taxi (/t æksi/)

A morpheme must

– Also contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word Believ-able Eat-able Read-able Work-able N.b. this extra meaning is not necessarily equal in all cases, e.g.

readable

, does not mean ‘can be read’ in a literal sense, but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.

How can I recognise a morpheme?

Morphemes must be identifiable from one word to another: identifying affixes: – un- :

uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear

, … – -able:

variable, changeable, solvable

, … – de- :

deselect, dethrone, detoxify

, … – -al:

cultural, federal, liberal, modal

, … – -ize:

computerize, realize

, …

Identifying the core element:

• •

Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly; Change: change-able, chang-ing, un chang-ed;

• •

Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly; Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber ty;

•

Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al

Distinguishing between morphemes:

•

Bound

and

free

morphemes: • Free morphemes can occur on their own: –

happy, change, select, green, house

, … • Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to other morphemes: – Affixes (

un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er

, …) –

liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-,

… • Eg.

liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy, materi-al

Bound morphemes as core elements: words derived from Latin

Circul-

Circular

Liber-

Liberty Circulation Liberation Circulator Circulatory Liberalize Libertine

Problem case: Verbs of Latin origin

re ceive re vert re late re duce de ceive con ceive con vert col late de duce con duce per ceive per vert trans late Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme? Or prefix + bound morpheme?

General tendency

• The core vocabulary of English is generally composed of words of Anglo Saxon origin • There is a general tendency for core elements to be free morphemes • • E.g.

Hand Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,

What is the difference between these two sets of complex words

Fair-ly Fast-er Sing-ing Open-ed Car-s Write-s Big-gest Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Fam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular Red-dish

Fast-er, Sing-ing, Open-ed, Car-s, Write-s, Big-gest

• These affixes do not change the word class, but rather contribute to meeting grammatical constraints. These are called:

Inflectional morphemes

Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dish Fam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular

These affixes do not necessarily change the class of the word, but this is normally the case, e.g.

fame

(n.)>

famous

(adj.) • Furthermore, the semantic element is notably higher. These morphemes are called:

Derivational morphemes

Derivation with –

ful

and –

less

• Which words can be derived by adding the following suffixes -ful/less Only -ful Only -less Age, Bag, Care, Cease, Cheer, Child, Colour, Cup, Defence, Delight, Effort, End, Fate, Friend, Help, Hope, Penny, Play, Spoon, Tact , Taste , Use,

-ful/less Care Use Cheer Colour Help Taste Hope Tact Only -ful Fate Spoon Delight Bag Play Cup Only -less Friend Age Cease Child Defence End Effort Penny