Transcript U214 A Linguistic Toolkit

U214 A
Linguistic Toolkit
Chapters 4-6
Chapter 4 – Word building
Morphology
• Is the meaning of compound words the same
as the meaning of the individual words
combined?
Metronome (=metro+gnome??), carpet (=car +
pet??), catnap, overcome?
housewife, classroom, toothbrush… ?
Does a “boomerang” boom?
Chapter 4 – Word building
(2) Morphology
• What is a morpheme?
– Morphemes are the smallest unit of grammar that has
meaning p. 26
Free morphemes: can be found either on their own
or in combination with other morphemes. class /
classroom
Bound morphemes: never occurs on its own
un + [happy, tidy, true]
When free morphemes are combined with other free
morphemes, they form compounds [toothbrush,
flagpole, fingerprint, upload, downsize]
Compound words are often hyphenated, but that is not always
consistent[ high-light, code-switch]
Chapter 4 – Word building
(3) Derivation
• Derivation involves adding a bound morpheme to a
stem to form a new word
a.
b.
with a different meaning : disagree;
and very few morphemes will produce a different part of
speech:
o
o
o
‘er’ player (changing play from a verb into a
noun.) ;
‘be’ befriend (changing friend from noun into a
verb) ,
‘post’ post-war (changing war from a noun into an adj.) ;
o
‘-ness’ sadness (changing sad from a adj. into noun) ;
• Affixes are bound morphemes that are added to some
stems.
• Affixes can be prefixes which refers to affixes which
come before the stem [unhappy /disagree]; or suffixes
which come after the stem [friendship/ quickly or friends/
quicker] .
Chapter 4 – Word building
(4) Derivation
• Sometimes new derivations are made in conversation
of words you cannot find in the dictionary, or which
you haven’t heard before, but you have no trouble
understanding them [See full contextual examples p. 27
of: cakeage, poodleism, … and think of some of your
own].
• There usually is a specific acceptable pattern of
derivation, which allows for certain bound morphemes
to be added to specific word classes only [-ness is
usually added to adjectives only ‘happiness’, ‘illness’
but not to nouns], while [You can say super-sad, supergood, & supermarket as well as ‘hyperactive’ and
‘hypermarket’ added to both adjectives and nouns]
Chapter 4 – Word building
(5) Derivation vs. Inflection Examples
play
• plays
• played
• playing
• playful
• player
happy
happier
happiest
happily
happiness
unhappy
When you change the word class, or the meaning of
the word, you have derived a new word.
When you create a new word , by unexpectedly,
unconventionally changing the word class of an
existing word, that is conversion, e.g. bigged/
AOUism, cakeage, smellify… 
(see Activities 4.3 & 4.4 on DVD)
Chapter 4 – Word building
(6) Derivation vs. Inflection
• “Linguists use the special term lexeme to
talk about a word in all its related
forms”(p.29)
• How many words are there in the list below?
o Entrap, entrapment, trapper, trap, trapped,
trapping, traps
i. traps trapped trapping are forms of the same
word trap, and fall under one dictionary heading,
or the lexeme: trap.
ii. entrap entrapment trapper trap are four lexemes.
Chapter 4 – Word building
(6A) Inflections
• In the examples in the previous slide:
traps trapped trapping, the affixes indicate a
grammatical variation but do not create a new
lexeme.
These affixes are called inflections: they don’t change
the word class or meaning, and in English they are
usually suffixes/ word endings.
Old English and Latin had many more inflections than modern
English; German, a Germanic language of the same origin as
English, till has lots of inflections, for different number,
gender+ case indications. See examples p.30
Try to circle the inflections used in Obama’s speech pp. 30,31.
Chapter 4 – Word building
(6B)
• Inflectional affixes in English:
See Table 4.1 p. 31
Plural –s
Possessive ‘s
Present tense –ed
Past participle –en or –ed
Present participle –ing
Comparative –er
Superlative –est
Chapter 4 – Word building
(6D) Allomorphs
• Alternative forms of the same morpheme
(say of the past participle en & ed) are called
allomorphs .
boys , boxes, pets
liked , made, swam,
watched , happened, driven
Chapter 5 – Word that go together
• Collocation is the tendency of words to
keep company with each other (p.32)
• Collocation is useful to understand how there
are some “restrictions” that may apply on the
choice of words that go together while there
would be or “high probability of
occurrence”(p.32) options.
coffee goes with table; tooth goes with brush
home goes with owner / work
Chapter 5 – Word that go together
If we were to complete the following sentence
“I enjoy ------------------------”
the options will be limitless. (swimming, cold
weather, spending time with friends).
But if we were to complete
“One shouldn’t simply ---------- to his whims”
the mostly likely option would be restricted:
surrender/ give –in/ ….
and any other option such as rise, go, jump, sleep, eat,
drink …. would be unacceptable or unlikely.
Chapter 5 – Word that go together
• The reasons words collocate is usually based on
“sense of the items involved” (p.32).
• But sometimes “unlikely” collocations happen, such
as “greased lightening”
“chocolate teapot”
• Words with congruous senses (synonyms) don’t
always collocate with the same combinations of
words.
See p. 33 Table 5.1:
-- It was full of difficult/tricky/ hard words. {but not
knotty words}
-- She hit a difficult/tricky/ hard/ knotty problem.
Chapter 5 – Word that go together
• Computers now help us predict and learn about the
frequency of word collocations (p.33).
• But internet word searches will give responses
indicating multiple meanings and uses of the same
word.
• Based on the word combinations, a word may
adopt a different sense. “hard” in
a) What is hard water?
is different from
b) This is a hard surface.
or
c) This is a hard problem.
Chapter 5 – Word that go together
• Idioms are when words not necessarily expected to be
combined together are linked tightly and function as single unit.
• Example: in the nick of time (at the last moment), a fresh pair of eyes,
take someone to the cleaner (cheat someone of all their money), a lot on
my plate, a steal (an excellent deal), put a sock in it (shut up about it),
bag of bones, bad apple
(pp.35-7)+ www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/b.html)
• “The meaning of an idiom is not predictable from the meaning of
the words it contains” (p.37)
• The literal translation of idioms doesn’t work at all, and so, most idioms
when translated will be senseless in other languages.
• “The form of an idiom is relatively fixed.”(p37)
Some claim that idioms are absolutely fixed, but creative use of idioms is
very frequent in everyday conversations ‘a whole bag of chips on his
shoulders’ instead of ‘ a chip on his shoulder’(p.37)
For sometimes idioms, a literal translation makes sense too.
land on your feet (p.37)