Module 1: Language Use
Reflecting on Noam Chomsky’s By the end of the learning
ideas on the innateness of the experience*, students must
fundamentals of grammar in the be able to:
human mind, I saw that any 1. Familiarize key
innate features of the language concepts about
capacity must be a set of language in use
biological structures, selected in 2. Identify scholars and
the course of the evolution of the human brain. discuss their
contributions in the
S. E. LURIA, A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube, an field of language use.
Autobiography, 1984 3. acquire the basic
conceptual and
Linguistics shares with other sciences a concern to be methodological tools
objective, systematic, consistent, and explicit in its for the systematic
account of language. Like other sciences, it aims to collect analysis of some
data, test hypotheses, devise models, and construct linguistic uses in the
theories. Its subject matter, however, is unique: at one study of languages
extreme it overlaps with such “hard” sciences as physics
and anatomy; at the other, it involves such traditional
“arts” subjects as philosophy and literary criticism. The
field of linguistics includes both science and the
humanities, and offers a breadth of coverage that, for
many aspiring students of the subject, is the primary
source of its appeal.
DAVID CRYSTAL, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Language, 1987
Morphology: Word Formation
Knowing a language means knowing the morphemes of that
language, which are the elemental units that constitute words.
Moralizers is an English word composed of four morphemes:
moral + ize + er + s. When you know a word or morpheme,
you know both its form (sound or gesture) and its meaning;
these are inseparable parts of the linguistic sign. The relationship between form and
meaning is arbitrary. There is no inherent connection between them (i.e., the words and
morphemes of any language must be learned). Morphemes may be free or bound. Free
morphemes stand alone like girl or the, and they come in two types: open class,
containing the content words of the language, and closed class, containing function
words such as the or of. Bound morphemes may be affixes or bound roots such as -ceive.
Affixes may be prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, and infixes. Affixes may be derivational or
inflectional. Derivational affixes derive new words; inflectional affixes, such as the plural
affix -s, make grammatical changes to words. Complex words contain a root around
which stems are built by affixation. Rules of morphology determine what kind of
affixation produces actual words such as un + system + atic, and what kind produces
nonwords such as *un + system. Words have hierarchical structure evidenced by
ambiguous words such as unlockable, which may be un + lockable “unable to be locked”
or unlock + able “able to be unlocked.” Some morphological rules are productive,
meaning they apply freely to the appropriate stem; for example, re- applies freely to
verbal stems to give words like redo, rewash, and repaint. Other rules are more
constrained, forming words like young + ster but not *smart + ster. Inflectional
morphology is extremely productive: the plural -s applies freely even to nonsense words.
Suppletive forms escape inflectional morphology, so instead of *mans we have men;
instead of *bringed we have brought. There are many ways for new wds to be created
other than affixation. Compounds are formed by uniting two or more root words in a
single word, such as homework. The head of the compound (the rightmost word) bears
the basic meaning, so homework means a kind of work done at home, but often the
meaning of compounds is not easily predictable and must be learned as individual lexical
items, such as laughing gas. Back-formations are words created by misinterpreting an
affix look-alike such as er as an actual affix, so the verb burgle was formed under the
mistaken assumption that burglar was burgle + er. The grammars of sign languages also
include a morphological component consisting of a root, derivational and inflectional
sign morphemes, and the rules for their combination. Morphological analysis is the
process of identifying form-meaning units in a language, taking into account small
differences in pronunciation, so that in- and im- are seen to be the “same” prefix in
English.
Exercise 1. Swedish is a Germanic language with morphological marking of nouns
similar to that of English, but with some significant differences. Consider the following
forms of nouns and answer the questions.
1. en lampa a lamp 12. en bil a car
2. stolen the chair 13. bilar cars
3. en tidning a newspaper 14. kattarna the cats
4. lampan the lamp 15. en katt a cat
5. bilen the car 16. soffor sofas
6. en stol a chair 17. tidningarna the newspapers
7. sofforna the sofas 18. bilarna the cars
8. katten the cat 19. lamporna the lamps
9. tidningen the newspaper 20. stolarna the chairs
10. kattar cats 21. en soffa a sofa
11. tidningar newspapers 22. soffan the sofa
23. lampor lamps
a. What Swedish word corresponds to the English indefinite article,a/an?____________
b. What are the allomorphs of the definite morpheme?___________________________
c. Where do they appear?________________________
d. How is the definite singular formed?_______________the definite plural?____________
e. How would you say the forms of the following words?
Definite(Sing) Plural Definite (Plural)
en flicka a girl ______________ ______________ ____________
en klanning a dress ______________ ______________ ____________
en blomma a flower ______________ ______________ ____________
en buss a bus ______________ ______________ ____________
Exercise 2. Divide the following words by placing a + between their morphemes. (Some
of the words may be monomorphemic and therefore indivisible.) Example: replaces = re
+ place + s
a. retroactive
b. befriended
c. televise
d. margin
e. endearment
f. psychology
g. unpalatable
h. holiday
i. grandmother
j. morphemic
k. mistreatment
l. deactivation
m. saltpeter
n. airsickness
