Pr Ghanoui & Pr Zniber

MORPHOLOGY

Morphology:
LECTURE OUTLINE:
The Words of Language 1- DEFINITION
2-Morphemes
2.1Classifying Morphemes: free / bound
3-Affixation
4-Inflection and Derivation
4.1-Inflectional Morphology
4.2-Derivational Morphology
5-Word-formation processes

DEFINITION: The Words of Language

• Morphology: deals with the study of the internal structure of • Lexicon: Our mental dictionary of all the words we know
words that can be broken down into meaningful parts and
the rules for word formation. • Lexicographers aim to create written records of our
• Morphology is concerned with how speakers understand and lexicons (dictionaries)
create complex words.
• Words have internal structure consisting of smaller unit that
carries information about meaning or function – Dictionaries describe the spelling, standard pronunciation,
definitions of meaning, and parts of speech of each word
• Examples: build-er, marry/re-marry ,read-er, re-consider

Simple/ monomorphemic words: they can’t be subdivided.

Complex/ polymorphemic words: they consist of 2 or more
morphemes.
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Content and Function Words Morphemes

– 1) Content words: the words that convey conceptual meaning
(nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) house, orange, joy, walk, read, • Morpheme: A morpheme is defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has
lucky, free…….. semantic meaning.
• For example, the word boy cannot be broken down into any further unit of
• Open class: new types of content words can be added all the meaning.
time • Sad consists of only ONE morpheme.
EXAMPLES:
– brexit But the word antigovernment can be broken down into :
• anti- = against
– Spam : (undesired e-mails) • govern = to rule/administrate
– to goggle • -ment = noun suffix
– Staycation Therefore, we say that antigovernment is made of three morphemes.
– 2) Function words: the words that convey grammatical meaning
(articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.); the , an, under, above, – Morphemes can be words on their own, and/or can often be combined with other
or , so, yet……… morphemes to make words
• E.g. the word book has one morpheme
• Closed class: new function words are very rarely added to a • E.g. the word books has two morphemes:
language book + -s
– English does not have a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, and rather N + -s plural marker
than adopt a new pronoun, many people use they instead of choosing between he Faith+ ful faithful
and she. Noun+ ful adjective

Unluckily un-lucky- ly

Morphemes Features Classifying Morphemes:Free and Bound Morphemes

• Discreteness: In all languages, sounds combine to make
morphemes, morphemes combine to make words, and words
combine to make sentences – FREE: morphemes that can stand alone or be used
alone.
– Lexical morphemes: They represent the concepts of the
• Creativity: We can combine morphemes in new ways to message we wish to denote. Car , hand and boy are some
create new words that can easily be understood examples. They are an open set of words in a language.
– writable – Functional morphemes: They are functional words, like
– rewritable determiners, pronouns, conjunctions and so
– unrewritable on. Whatever, because and against are some examples;
the same as : he , this, you their, the, an
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BOUND: MORPHEMES Affixation in English

– BOUND: morphemes that cannot stand alone, but must be • Affixation is the morphological process by which
attached to other morphemes i.e. they are affixes.
– Derivational morphemes: We change the grammatical category or bound morphemes are attached to a roots or stems to
the meaning of the word. Examples are re-act; de-grade; un-,happy; mark changes in meaning, part of speech, or
careless -ness;
quick -ly and so on grammatical relationships. Affixes take on several
forms and are placed in different position. They may
– E.g. un- and -ish are bound morphemes because they be at the beginning, at the end in the middle or even
cannot stand alone
– Ex: unsafe childish surround the root. In English we primarily see 2
types
– Inflectional morphemes: We do not change the meaning or
grammatical category [part of speech] of the word with these; we use
them to mark plurality, tense, agreement, possessive case and so on.
Speak-s; student’s ; change-ing

TYPES OF AFFIXATION OTHER TYPES

• Prefixes: bound morphemes that attach to the • Infixes: morphemes that are inserted inside a root.
beginning of a root Although English generally does not have infixes, or morphemes that
go "in the middle" of a word, other languages do. An exception in
– E.g. un- as in untie rearrange antidepressant English might be -bloody- in the following:
Preview disability • Q: Are you going to the concert tonight?
• Suffixes: bound morphemes that attach to the end of • A: Absobloodylutely. (absolutely)
Ex from Arabic: the base Arabic (šag·ala) -t- in (i) š-t-ag·ala ‘be
a root occupied’
– E.g. -ness as in kindness -ful as in hopeful NOTE: Infixes are rarely used in formal writing, an infixation can
Action placement refusal courageous sometimes be heard in colloquial language and slang.
NOTE: Languages may differ in how they use affixation, ie What is a prefix in • Circumfixes: affixes that attach to both the beginning and the end
one language may be a suffix in another and what is a separate word in one of a root.
language may be an affix in another • Although English has few examples of this type of affix, other
languages use it. in English are en- -en in en-light-en and em-
-en in em-bold-en
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Roots and Stems Derivational morphemes

• Derivational morphemes change the meaning and/or part
– Roots: the morpheme base upon which other of speech of a root
morphemes are attached to create complex words:
un-love-able – Adding –un to the word do changes the meaning drastically

– Stems: once an affix has been attached to a root, – Adding –ish to the noun boy creates the adjective boyish
the result is called a stem to which more - Adding – ness to the adjective happy creates the noun happiness
morphemes may be attached: un-lovable - Adding –or to the verb act changes to the noun actor

– Affixes: morphemes which attach to roots and • Derivational morphemes carry semantic meaning.
stems: un-love-able untreatable
dis-satisfi -ed

Inflectional morphology Practice

• Inflectional morphology have only grammatical function (similar Analyse the morphological features of the following
words:
• to function words) and never change the part of speech of the root
• big, bigg-er, bigest- are all adjectives • and,
– EX: waited, waits, waiting
• boy/boys,
• English only has eight inflectional morphemes , all of which are • hope/ hopeful
suffixes and always follow any derivational morphemes:
• -s (after a noun) indicates plurality • hunt/ hunter/ hunters,
• -'s indicates the possessive case • act/ active/ activate/ activation
• -s (after a verb) indicates the third-person singular
• -ing indicates the progressive aspect, or participles • reactive/reactivate / reactivation
• -en indicates the perfect aspect in some irregular verbs • man/ gentle-man/gentlemanly/ gentlemanliness
• -ed indicates the past tense
• -er indicates comparatives • sadness, anti-abortion, presidential,, hospitalise,
• -est indicates superlatives typewriters, disbelief, from, they, and, can’t (can not)
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EXERCISE:PART 1: Instructions:study each word EXERCISE: PART 2

that’s in bold print. identify the root word (or base) along with any
prefixes and/or suffixes that are attached to it

• At the end of his performance, the magician made a graceful bow to the audience.
• We watched a preview of the new Pixar movie. Root: ____________
Root: ____________ Suffix: ____________
Prefix: ____________ • Because of the lightness of the breeze, the sailboat moved quite slowly.
Root: ____________
• The dancing cat was seen by more than two-million viewers. Suffix: ____________
Root: ____________ • Despite the heaviness of his backpack, Jack raced up the hill.
Suffix: ____________ Root: ____________
Suffix: ____________
• The teacher handed out paper hearts to the students who had done extra • Some dogs are shy or unfriendly, and they might bark or snap if you try to pet them.
work. Root: ____________
Root: ____________ Prefix: ____________
Suffix: ____________
Suffix: ____________ • Esther quickly reopened the door and called for her cat.
• The magician made the rabbit disappear. Root: ____________
Prefix: ____________
Root: ____________ Suffix: ____________
Prefix: ____________

Rules of Word Formation: case morphology

Rules of Word Formation
• Inflectional morphemes are productive, • Some languages use case morphology, where the
grammatical relations of nouns are marked with inflectional
meaning they apply freely to almost any morphemes
appropriate base
• In Russian, the sentence “Maxim defends Victor” can have a
variety of word orders:
– Most nouns will take the inflectional suffix –s to
make a plural noun

– Only some nouns will take the derivational suffix – – This is because the –a in Viktora marks the object of the sentence,
ize to make a verb regardless of the word order
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Hierarchical Structure of Words Hierarchical Structure of Words

• Morphemes are added to a base in a fixed order which • The example of unsystematic represents the
reflects the structure of a word
application of two morphological rules:
• unsystematic = un + system + atic – Noun + -atic ! Adjective
– un- + Adjective ! Adjective
adjective

un- adjective

noun -atic

system

EXERCISE: Identify the morphemes for each of the

following words, in the order that they appear in the
word
Rule Productivity
Derivational affixes are productive to different extents:
1- Inputs, components, elements ,Indo-European,
Persian, within, another, notable – -able can be affixed to any verb to create an adjective
– Ex; read+ able= readable
– Change+ able= changeable
2- Put a tree structure to the following words:
Unkind, books, destroyed, modernize, active, blacken, – un- is most productive for adjectives derived from verbs
treatment, healthy, undo and words with polysyllabic bases
• unsimplified, unenlightened, and unhappy,
• but not *unsad, *unbrave, or *untall
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Other Morphological Processes

EXECPTIONS about Rule Productivity 1) Back-formations

• Exceptions :
• 1) Back-formations: Also called back-derivation is
the process of forming a new word (a neologism) by
– Not all words undergo regular morphological processes (e.g. feet, went, sing,
children) removing a real or potential affixes from another
• These words must be learned separately since rules don’t apply to them word. It is simply a shortened word created from a
– When new words enter the language, regular morphological rules generally longer word such as
apply to them
• The plural of fax became faxes rather than faxen • to housekeep from Housekeeping
– Borrowed words may retain borrowed morphology • to babysit from Babysitting
• Latin datum and data (rather than *datums)
• edit from editor.
– Some words have no change when made plural or past tense
• sheep (singular) and sheep (plural)
• Burgle from burglar
• hit (present tense) and hit (past tense) • Diagnose from diagnosis

2) COMPOUNDING: 3) Conversion
2) COMPOUNDING: Also called composition is the process of • 3) Conversion: also called zero derivation, is an other
combining two or more words (free morphemes) to create a new process of a word formation involving the creation of a
word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). Ex: sunglasses, word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a
bathroom, landlord, greenhouse, football stadium, window
different word class) without any change in form, which is
cleaner
to say, derivation using only zero.
• Compounding is the most common type of word-formation
in English.
• For example:
Distinguishing Features of Compounds • challenge (noun)→ challenge (verb).
• In most compounds the rightmost morpheme determines the • ship[( noun) to ship ( verb)
category or the part of speech of the entire word. Thus, • Poor ( adj) the poor (noun)
greenhouse is a noun because its rightmost component house is a • Down (prep) to down ( verb)
noun, spoonfeed is a verb because feed also belongs to this
category, and nationwide is an adjective just as wide is. • Clean (adj) (to clean) ( verb)
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4 ) Acronymisation 5) Clipping

• 4 ) Acronymisation: is another process of forming new • 5) Clipping is the word formation process in which
words. a word is reduced or shortened without changing the
• An acronym is a word formed as an abbreviation from the meaning of the word. Clipping differs from back-
initial letters of a word in a phrase , usually individual formation in that the new word retains the meaning
letters (as in "NATO, FBI, WHO, or "laser") and of the original word.
sometimes syllables (as in "Benelux")
• For example:
• Ex: a word (such as FBI, USA, radar, or laser) is formed
from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive • ads advertisment;
parts or major parts of a compound term. • math,mathematics;
• An abbreviation may be any type of shortened form, such • exam, examination;
as words with the middle omitted
• phone, telephone;
• (for example, Rd for road or Dr for Doctor)
• lab, laboratory

6) Blending

EXERCISE (a). From the following list of words, select five

• 6) Blending is the word formation process in which words with inflectional morphology.
parts of two or more words combine to create a new and then (b) select five words with derivational morphology
word whose meaning is often a combination of the
original words.
• For example:
• advertisement + entertainment → advertainment • Elements , gain, and, unkind, as, some, case, example,
feature, great, have, linked, Indo-European, speech, egg,
• motor + hotel → motel off, ordering, one, morphology, Persians, killed, such,
• breakfast + lunch → brunch tend, the, these, thought, within
• simultaneous + broadcast → simulcast
• smoke + fog → smog
• Spanish + English → Spanglish