Words and Pieces of words

Words and morpheme

What is a word?
A word is a widespread concept , yet it is very difficult
to define.
Defining words
Bloomfield:
A word is a minimum free form, the smallest form
that can occur by itself.
This definition is unsatisfactory :
1. Because words do not normally occur by themselves
in spoken speech.
What is a word?
Even if you ask a simple question, a normal-sounding
reply often requires more than one word.
e.g:
Who did that? John did.
what’s that? An oak tree.
Bloomfield’s definition works better with written
words, where there is space between them,
What is a word?
But linguists work basically with spoken words.
2. Some meaning of words are of two or more words.
For example:
Get on with : tolerate
Go on : continue
3. There are different types of words.
Fly (v) is different from fly(n).
So it is better to say we have different types of words:
lexical items (verbs, nouns, adjectives and preposition).
So the word ‘word’ is difficult because there are different
types of word.
What is a morpheme?
A morpheme is the smallest syntactic unit that
cannot be cut further. They change in size.
Syllables and the length do not help in identifying the
morphemes.
For example:
Chair : one morpheme
Chair s : two morphemes
Walk: one morpheme
Walk ing: two morphemes
Recognizing morphemes
Morphemes are recognized by looking for partial
similarities between words.

The dinosaur sniff-ed arrogant-ly and plodd-ed for-wards.

The dinosaur grunt-ed loud-ly and edg-ed
Back-wards.
As we can see –ed in other cases repeated, then it is a
morpheme.
-ly also as we see in other cases, it is a morpheme.
The same for the other cases.
The same is true for the others.
Types of morphemes
We have two main types of morphemes:
Free vs bound morphemes

Free morphemes: are those types of morphemes that

can stand alone with meaning.
For example:
Book, chair, in, pen, at , the , seek, speak , lie , etc…
Types of morphemes
A bound morpheme : is a kind of morpheme that
cannot stand alone with meaning, it should be attached
to other morphemes to get its meaning.
Look at the underlined morphemes:
looking , re-write, ex-husband, duckling ,
Speaks , shouted , loudly, etc…
Types of bound morphemes
According to function, bound morphemes are of two
types: inflectional and derivational morphemes

Inflectional bound morphemes are types of bound

morphemes that have grammatical function ( they
provide further information about an existing lexical
item).
Types of morphemes
For example:
-s plural : pens, desks, children
- s 3rd person singular : cooks, speaks.
s’ possessive: the boy’s car, the man’s chair
ed- past: watched, smelled
ed- pp: owned, cut, read, shown
Ing : shining, putting , wearing
-er (comp): nicer, heavier,
-est (superlative): clearest, heaviest
Derivational bound morphemes
Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes that
create new words, by changing the category of the
words, the meaning of the words or both.
cloud (A)+ -ly: cloudly (adv.)
Establish (v) + -ment: establishment (N)
Happy(A)+ -ness: happiness(N)
Un- + kind (A) = unkind (A)
Difference between inflectional and
derivational
Inflectional morphemes do not change the syntactic category
of the word. They remain as they are.
Book (n)+ -spl: books (n)
buy (v) + -s 3rd person: buys(v)
While derivational morphemes create new words. e.g:

comfort (N) + able = comfortable (A)

kind ( A) + -ness: kindness (N)
Allomorphs
Sometimes a morpheme has only one phonological
form (one reading). But frequently, a morpheme has a
number of variants known as allomorphs.

For example the morpheme –s plural has different

readings : (it can be pronounces as /s/, /z/or /iz/.
Types of allomorphs
Allomorphs are phonologically conditioned when its
form is dependent on the neighbouring sounds (
preceding sound or following sounds).
For example: plural –s :
A. it is pronounced as /s/, if it is preceded by /p/, /t/,
/k/,/f/ as in:
Steps, books, hats, cliffs, laughs
B. pronounced as /iz/ if preceded by:
/s/, /z/, /S/, / / , / /, / /.
as in : buses, buzzes, clashes, garages, bridges, bunches

C. s plural is pronounced as /z/ else where.

As in : Bags, stairs, pens, nails ec…
Such different types of allomorphs /s/, /z/, and /iz/ are
phonologically conditioned allomorphs, because it is
because of phonology the plural –s has these variations
(allomorphs).
The same is true for –s 3rd person singular and ‘s
possessive, that each has three variants : /s/, /z/ and /iz/.
 The same is true with – ed past morpheme , that has
three allomorphs : /t/, /d/, and /id/.
They are phonological conditioned allomorphs.

- D past participle is the same, it has three variatns /s/, /z/

and /iz/.

This is called morphophonology

Lexical conditioning allomorphs
Lexically conditioned allomorphs are allomorphs when
its form seems to be a purely accidental one, linked to a
particular vocabulary item.
For example:
-s plural morpheme has lexically conditioned
allomorphs as in :
Ox +-spl= oxen
Child + -s pl = children
Goose+ spl= geese
Foot+ -spl = feet
Lexical conditioning allomorphs
We call this lexical conditioning when the allomorphs
do not follow any specific rules, each has to be learnt
differently.
Word classes
In every language there are a limited number of lexical
items , traditionally known as parts of speech. Word
classes as : nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
How are word classes classified:
1. based on their syntactic behaviour
2. based on their morphological form
For example:
The verb in English can be recognized by their
syntactic behaviour that comes after the noun as in:
The man voted. He went out.
The women washed the house.
Or by its morphological form as it takes -ed past:
the man voted.
But having items in one place can be misleading sometimes,
consider:
she ate a pizza.
She ate well.
at first we may just take both of the same type of word
class, but they are different.
Changing the structure from active to passive voice will
reveal that:

A pizza was eaten by her.

What she ate was a pizza.
While for she ate well.
*Well was eaten by her.
* what she ate was well.
So these dissimilarities indicate that a pizza and well
are syntactically different, and they belong to different
classes.
Major word classes
English is considered to have four major word classes:
Noun(N) , Adjective (A), Verb(V), and Preposition
(P).
For example:
Big frogs swim under water.
A N V P N
Major word classes
IF we give featured to these categories:
Noun [ +N, -V]

Verb [ -N, + V]
Adjective [ +N, + V]

Preposition [ -N, -V]

This is an economical way to describe similarities and
differences between them.

Two major types of categories:

lexical categories : contain content words, with
intrinsic meaning. Verbs, nouns and adjectives.

Functional categories: little words , whose meaning is

difficult to specify, such as : the, a, complenetizers :
that……
The functional categories are important for gluing
pieces of sentences together into longer syntactic
forms.

The end