Introduction To Linguistic: Morphemes (Which Can't Stand Alone As Words)
Introduction To Linguistic: Morphemes (Which Can't Stand Alone As Words)
Introduction To Linguistic: Morphemes (Which Can't Stand Alone As Words)
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. They are commonly
classified as either free morphemes (which can occur as separate words) or bound
morphemes(which can't stand alone as words).
Many words in English are made up of a single free morpheme. For example, each
word in the following sentence is a distinct morpheme: "I need to go now, but you
can stay." Put another way, none of the nine words in that sentence can be divided
into smaller parts that are also meaningful.
Also see:
ETYMOLOGY
From the French, by analogy with phoneme, from the Greek, "shape, form"
Language Acquisition
"English-speaking children usually begin to produce two-morpheme words
in their third year and during that year the growth in their use of affixes is
rapid and extremely impressive. This is the time, as Roger Brown showed,
when children begin to use suffixes for possessive words ('Adam's ball'), for
the plural('dogs'), for present progressive verbs ('I walking'), for third-person
singular present tense verbs ('he walks'), and for past tense verbs, although
not always with complete corectness ('I brunged it here') (Brown 1973). Notice
that these new morphemes are all of them inflections. Children tend to
learn derivationalmorphemes a little later and to continue to learn about them
right through childhood . . .."
(Peter Bryant and Terezinha Nunes, "Morphemes and Literacy: A Starting
Point." Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes, ed. by T. Nunes and P.
Bryant. Routledge, 2006)
by Richard Nordquist
Updated April 21, 2017
A word is a speech sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation
in writing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a
single morphemeor a combination of morphemes.
The branch of linguistics that studies word structures is called morphology. The
branch of linguistics that studies word meanings is called lexical semantics.
Arbitrariness
Base
Beautiful Words: Competitions and Composition
Commonly Confused Words
Complex Word
Connotations and Denotations
Content Word
Daily Word Sites
Diction
Free Morpheme
Function Word
How Word Meanings Change
Inflectional Morphology
Lemma
Lexeme
Lexical Competence
Lexical Integrity
Lexicalization
Lexicogrammar
Lexicon
Lexis
Listeme
ETYMOLOGY
"[A word is the] smallest unit of grammar that can stand alone as a
complete utterance, separated by spaces in written language and potentially
by pauses in speech."
(David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Cambridge University Press, 2003)
"A grammar . . . is divided into two major
components, syntax and morphology. This division follows from the special
status of the word as a basic linguistic unit, with syntax dealing with the
combination of words to make sentences, and morphology with the form of
words themselves."
(R. Huddleston and G. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language. Cambridge University Press, 2002)
"We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what
comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a
miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that
which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there
they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as
we do our neighbours, and make the best and not the worst of them."
(Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, 1912)
Big Words
"A Czech study . . . looked at how using big words (a classic strategy for
impressing others) affects perceived intelligence. Counter-intuitvely,
grandiose vocabulary diminished participants' impressions of authors'
cerebral capacity. Put another way: simpler writing seems smarter."
(Julie Beck, "How to Look Smart." The Atlantic, September 2014)
The Power of Words
"It is obvious that the fundamental means which man possesses of extending
his orders of abstractions indefinitely is conditioned, and consists in general
in symbolism and, in particular, in speech. Words, considered as symbols for
humans, provide us with endlessly flexible conditional semantic stimuli,
which are just as 'real' and effective for man as any other powerful stimulus.
Virginia Woolf on Words
"It is words that are to blame. They are the wildest, freest, most
irresponsible, most un-teachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them
and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words
do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. If you want proof of this,
consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find
none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-a-million
words all in alphabetical order. But can we use them? No, because words do
not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. Look once more at the
dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and
Cleopatra; poems lovelier than the 'Ode to a Nightingale'; novels beside
which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of
amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in
the right order. But we cannot do it because they do not live in dictionaries;
they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and
strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and thither, falling in
love, and mating together."
(Virginia Woolf, "Craftsmanship." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays,
1942)
Word Word
"Word Word [1983: coined by US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an Indian Indian?';
'It happens in Irish English as well as English English.'"
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford
University Press, 1992)
Phrase definition: A phrase is a grammatical term referring to a group of
words that does not include a subject and verb.
What is a Phrase? Examples, Definitions
What are phrases? A phrase is a group (or pairing) of words in English. A
phrase can be long or short but it does not include the subject-verb pairing
necessary to make a clause.
Some examples of phrases include:
after the meal (prepositional phrase)
the nice neighbor (noun phrase)
were waiting for the movie (verb phrase)
Each example of a phrase above does not contain a subject doing an action
(subject-verb). Therefore, each example is merely a group of words called a
phrase.
Concepts can begin with a single word and develop into a compound
sentence.
Example:
meal (word)
after the meal (phrase)
that mom prepared (clause)
After the meal that mom prepared I felt full. (sentence)
After the meal that mom prepared, I felt full because I ate too much.
(complex sentence)
After the meal that mom prepared I felt full, but my brother was still
hungry. (compound sentence)
More Phrase Examples
What is an adverbial
phrase? Adverbial phrases are phrases that act as adverbs. They modify
verbs, adverbs, or adjectives.
around the block (modifying where)
after the meal (modifying when)
in silence (modifying how)
What is a gerund phrase? Gerund phrases are essentially noun phrases that
begin with a gerund.
running through the woods
jumping like a kangaroo
What is an infinitive phrase? Infinitive phrases begin with a verb infinitive
and include any modifiers. Infinitive phrases function as nouns, adjectives, or
adverbs.
to run out of food
to visit to the countryside
What is an appositive phrase? An appositive is essentially a noun phrase
but one that renames another noun in the sentence.
The tree, a tall redwood, was beautiful.
The curtains were made of lace, a beautiful and delicate fabric.
by Richard Nordquist
Updated April 26, 2017
The four basic sentence structures are the simple sentence, the compound sentence,
the complex sentence, and the compound-complex sentence.
Etymology
From the Latin, "to feel"
Declarative Sentence
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society."(Mark Twain)
Interrogative Sentence
"But what is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is
unreadable and literature is not read."(Oscar Wilde)
Imperative Sentence
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."(Mark
Twain)
Exclamatory Sentence
"To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would
be if men died for ideas that were true!(H. L. Mencken)
"I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one
period."(William Faulkner in a letter to Malcolm Cowley)
"The term 'sentence' is widely used to refer to quite different types of unit.
Grammatically, it is the highest unit and consists of one independent clause,
or two or more related clauses. Orthographically and rhetorically, it is that
unit which starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark
or exclamation mark."
(Angela Downing, English Grammar: A University Course, 2nd ed.
Routledge, 2006)
"A written sentence is a word or group of words that conveys meaning to the
listener, can be responded to or is part of a response, and is punctuated."
(Andrew S. Rothstein and Evelyn Rothstein, English Grammar Instruction
That Works! Corwin Press, 2009)
"None of the usual definitions of a sentence really says much, but every
sentence ought somehow to organize a pattern of thought, even if it does not
always reduce that thought to bite-sized pieces."
(Richard Lanham, Revising Prose. Scribner's, 1979)
"The sentence has been defined as the largest unit for which there are rules
of grammar."
(Christian Lehmann, "Theoretical Implications of Grammaticalization
Phenomena." The Role of Theory in Language Description, ed. by William A.
Foley. Mouton de Gruyter, 1993)
The Notional Definition of a Sentence
"It is sometimes said that a sentence expresses a complete thought. This is
a notional definition: it defines a term by the notion or idea it conveys. The
difficulty with this definition lies in fixing what is meant by a 'complete
thought.' There are notices, for example, that seem to be complete in
themselves but are not generally regarded as sentences: Exit, Danger, 50 mph
speed limit.
"On the other hand, there are sentences that clearly consist of more than one
thought. Here is one relatively simple example:
This week marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of Sir Isaac
Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a fundamental
work for the whole of modern science and a key influence on the philosophy
of the European Enlightenment.
How many 'complete thoughts' are there in this sentence? We should at least
recognize that the part after the comma introduces two additional points
about Newton's book: (1) that it is a fundamental work for the whole of
modern science, and (2) that it was a key influence on the philosophy of the
European Enlightenment. Yet this example would be acknowledged by all as a
single sentence, and it is written as a single sentence."
(Sidney Greenbaum and Gerald Nelson, An Introduction to English
Grammar, 2nd ed. Pearson, 2002)
Pronunciation: SEN-tens