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Morphology and Syntax

morphology and syntax

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109 views19 pages

Morphology and Syntax

morphology and syntax

Uploaded by

Alice ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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INTRODUCTION TO

MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Dr. Monira Al-Mohizea


Outline
What is morphology?
1.1 Introduction
1.2 What is a ‘word’?
1.3 Words and lexemes
1.4 Morphemes
Introducing Morphology
Definition:
Morphology is simply the study of how words are put
together.
¨ Morphology is the component of grammar that

study the internal structure of words.


¨ It is concerned with:

1. the speakers knowledge of words (e.g. goalkeeper).


2. The rules used to interpret and form new words.
Consider the following words!
¨ Earwitness
¨ Televangelist
¨ Imho
¨ Wordrobe
¨ McJob
¨ Disorient Express
Aim of Morphology

¨ The aim of morphology is to make the


subconscious knowledge of words
explicit.
What is a word

Morphology is the study of words internal


structure but what is a word??

Discuss this with your partner.


A definition of a ‘word’
¨ Bloomfield (1935) “a word is a minimum free form”.
¨ It can occur on its own as an utterance,

E.g. Boys!
¨ It is the smallest unit in language that can be
manipulated by syntax (can be parsed).
Consider the following:
¨ The neighbour’s dog disturbed burglars.
¨ Burglar's were disturbed by the neighbour’s dogs.
¨ *s burglar weres disturb the ed by the neighbour’s
dog s.
¨ *sdog the neighbour’s disturbed s burglar.
¨ The neighbour’s *dog sdisturb burglar ed.
¨ *dog ed the s neighbour’s disturb the s burglar.
Other definitions of a ‘word’ (1)
¨ Word form: the shape that represent the word in
speech or writing.
In the written language word-forms are called
Orthographic words. vs. phonological words.
Consider this sentence above, how many words are
there??
Compare it to:
www.yahoo.com
Other definitions of a ‘word’ (2)
¨ Lexeme or a ‘lexical item’ is used when by word we
mean vocabulary item, which requires a single
dictionary entry.
¨ E.g. lexeme: write
¨ Writing
¨ Wrote
¨ written
Other definitions of a ‘word’ (3)
¨ Words viewed as syntactic units are called
grammatical words, whereby :
¨ a lexeme is considered together with its

morphological and syntactic (morpho-syntactic)


properties.
E.g.
speaking, spoke, spoken.
What is a morpheme?
¨ Is word the smallest unit of morphological structure?
Discuss?
What is a morpheme?
¨ E.g. Boys!
Boy (has meaning)+ -s(pl.) (grammatical function)
v the minimal unit which has a meaning or a
grammatical function is called morpheme.
What is a morpheme?
¨ Linguists define a morpheme as the smallest unit of
language that has its own meaning. Simple words
such as, giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are morphemes.
but so are prefixes like re- and pre- and suffixes like -
ize and -er.
¨ So, a word is one or more morphemes that can

stand alone in a language.


Exercise!
Consider the following
words, What do you
notice: ¨ giraffe
¨ fraud
¨ opposition ¨ murmur
¨ intellectual ¨ oops
¨ crystallize ¨ just
¨ prewash ¨ Pistachio
¨ repressive
¨ Blackboard
(1) Simplex words vs. complex
¨ Words that consist of only one morpheme, such
as the words in (1) giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are
morphemes, can be termed simple or simplex
words.
¨ Words that are made up of more than one
morpheme, e.g. prewash, goalkeeper, and
classroom are called complex.
Discussion J
¨ How many words do we know in our language?
Consider in reference to age groups:
How much do we know?
¨ Children entering school – 13000*
¨ A highschool graduate – 60000*
¨ A literate adult – 120000* + names of people, places...
¨ The list of words for any language is called lexicon??
¨ Existence of words in the native language is obvious, but in
a foreign language it is difficult to recognize words. When
you have mastered a language, you are able to recognize
individual words without effort.
* source: Akmajian, A. et al. 2001. Linguistics. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 11
Thank you J

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