English Linguistics 1 (major): Levels of Language

& English Linguistics 1 (minor): Levels of Language

2 Morphology, Syntax, Semantics & Pragmatics I

BA English (major & minor), Autumn 2024

Sten Vikner, Office hour: Friday 14:15-15:15, Room 330, Building 1481
[email protected] ● http://au.dk/en/sten.vikner@cc ● https://tildeweb.au.dk/au132769/

2. Introduction to morphology
(Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams 2003, 69–82)

Contents
1. The Lexicon .................................................................................................................................... 1
2. Morphemes ..................................................................................................................................... 2
3. Morphemes vs. syllables ................................................................................................................ 2
4. Morphological structure ................................................................................................................. 3
5. Types of Morphemes ...................................................................................................................... 4
Exercises .................................................................................................................................................. 6
References ................................................................................................................................................ 6

1. The Lexicon
The word lexicon is ambiguous (as is grammar, MSSP-01, §6): It is a list of all the words of a lan-
guage, either in the brain or in book form. Lexical entries contain information of the following kinds:

(1) a. Phonology (e.g. pronunciation)

b. Morphology (e.g. inflectional forms)
c. Syntax (e.g. word class)
d. Semantics (e.g. meaning)

It may also contain other types of information:

(2) a. etymology (history)

b. orthography (spelling)
c. pragmatics (use, e.g. irony, slang…)
d. …

Word classes (also called "parts of speech") fall into two groups, lexical content words and function
words. This division almost exactly corresponds to the division between open and closed classes,
respectively:
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(3) Lexical content words (open classes):

a. Nouns car, book, beauty, loudspeaker, ...
b. Main verbs drive, read, write, magnify, ...
c. Adjectives fast, red, good, big, understandable, ...
d. Adverbs fast, kindly, roughly, surprisingly, ...
e. Prepositions in, on, beneath, ...

(4) Function words (closed classes):

a. Pronouns it, she, I, they, which, ...
b. Articles a, the
c. Auxiliary verbs have, be, do, can, may, must, ought, shall, will
d. Conjunctions and, but, if, because, that...
e. Numerals five, fifth, ...

Open classes contain a potentially infinite number of members. New words can be and are added all
the time. Closed classes on the other hand contain only a limited number of members.
While the members of the closed classes have very little meaning, arguably prepositions (such
as in, through and under) do have some meaning. Therefore, they are here categorised as lexical
content words rather than functional words even though they constitute a closed class (and even
though some classifications consider prepositions to be functional words).

2. Morphemes
Morphemes are the building blocks that words are made out of.

(5) a. Words: load, loaded, loads, unload, download, downloadable

b. Morphemes: load, -ed, -s, un-, down, -able

(6) a. Phonemes: minimal units that distinguish between different meanings

[l] ~ [r] ~ [s], as in [ləʊd] ~ [rəʊd] ~ [səʊd] (load, road, sewed)

b. Morphemes: minimal units that carry meaning themselves

load-s ~ cram-s ~ fill-s [ləʊd-z, kræm-z, fɪl-z]
load-s ~ load-ing ~ un-load [ləʊd-z, ləʊd-ɪŋ, ʌn-ləʊd]

If the minimal unit that carries meaning would be the word, i.e. if words did not have internal
morphological structure, the semantic connections between e.g. load and unload, and eat, eats, eater
and eaten would just be accidents.

3. Morphemes vs. syllables

Both morphemes and syllables are units larger than phonemes (i.e. sounds) but smaller than words.

(7) Words Words

↑ ↑
Morphemes Syllables
↑ ↑
Phonemes Phonemes
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Words are divided into syllables on the basis of their sound structure, but they are divided into
morphemes on the basis of their meaning:

(8) a. morphemes b. c. d. e.
(MEANING) crush jury load -s child -ish

word crush jury loads childish

(SOUND) [krʌʃ] [dʒʊə ri] [ləʊdz] [tʃaɪl dɪʃ]

syllables

Words can be either monomorphemic (consist of only one morpheme), as in (8)b,c, or poly-
morphemic (two or more morphemes), as in (8)d,e. At the same time, words can be either
monosyllabic (one syllable), as in (8)b,d, or polysyllabic (two or more syllables), as in (8)c,e. Note
that the number of morphemes and the number of syllables are independent of each other.

4. Morphological structure
Some words are ambiguous, i.e. they have more than one potential meaning. Some words are lexically
ambiguous, e.g. tank ('container' or 'war machine'), bat ('animal' or 'instrument'), or arm ('to equip
with weapons' or 'the part of the human body between hand and shoulder’). Some polymorphemic
words are structurally ambiguous, and the different structures reflect different interpretations:

(9) a. b.

un- lock -able un- lock -able

[un- [lock-able]] [[un-lock] -able]
"cannot be locked" "can be unlocked"

Most other polymorphemic words only have one structure:

(10) a. un-[believe-able] vs. *[un-believe]-able

b. un-[want-ed] vs. *[un-want]-ed
c. *be-[little-(e)d] vs. [be-little]-(e)d

About grammaticality judgments:

If there is no sign at all in front of the example, the reader is allowed to conclude that it is
acceptable to all speakers, as in
You should not belittle his achievements.

* means that the example is unacceptable to all speakers, as in

*You should not little his achievements.

% would mean that the example is acceptable to some but not all speakers.
? would mean that the example is almost acceptable (to all speakers), whereas
?? would mean that the example is almost unacceptable (to all speakers).
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In some cases, the structure of a word is rather complex:

(11) • establish: to set up.

• dis-establish: to end established status.
• disestablish-ment:
the separation of church and state.
• disestablishment-arian:
advocate of disestablishment.
anti- dis- establish -ment -arian -ism • anti-disestablishmentarian:
opponent of disestablishment.
• antidisestablishmentarian-ism:
ideology against disestablishment.

5. Types of Morphemes
Morphemes are either free (they can appear on their own) or bound (must be attached to another
morpheme):

(12)
Morphemes

Free morphemes Bound morphemes

(load, down, …) (-ed, -s, un-, -able…)

Furthermore, morphemes are either roots or affixes:

(13)
Morphemes

Roots Affixes
(Free or bound) (Bound)

All affixes are bound morphemes. Some roots are free morphemes (function words, lexical content
words), whereas other roots are bound morphemes (bound roots). For example, in the word speakers,
speak is the root, speaker is the stem, and both -er- and -s are affixes, more specifically, they are
suffixes (cf. Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams 2003, 80–81).

(14) a. noun b. adjective c. noun

noun suffix prefix adjective noun suffix

verb suffix verb suffix noun noun

(root) (root) (root)
prefix verb
(root)
speak -er -s un- fore- see -able book case -s

((14)c bookcases is a compound noun: It contains two roots, book and case.)
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Affixes can be divided into four types (all of which are bound morphemes), based on their position in
the word:

(15) Affixes:

• Prefix un- (unload, unpack, unkind, untrue, unpaid)

re- (rewrite, reset, repay, reprint)
• Suffix -ing (loading, writing, printing)
-ly (kindly, slowly, roughly, surprisingly)
• Infix not in English (except maybe mother-in-law ~ mothers-in-law)
• Circumfix not in English
(maybe Old English folgian ~ gefolgod = German folgen ~ gefolgt,
i.e. the infinitive 'follow' ~ the past participle 'followed')

The types of morphemes are summarised in the diagram in (16) below:

(16)
Morphemes

Roots Affixes
(always bound)
• Prefixes
re-, un-
• Suffixes
Free roots Bound roots -ing, -ly, -s
(-peat, huckle-) • (Infixes)
• (Circumfixes)

Lexical content words Function words

• Nouns • Pronouns
• Main verbs • Articles
• Adjectives • Auxiliary verbs
• Adverbs • Conjunctions
• Prepositions • Numerals

This diagram assumes that also roots can be divided into subtypes, namely free roots and bound
roots, and that free roots again can be divided into function words and lexical content words:

(17) Roots:
• Function words: she, what, the, will, could, that, if, five, …
• Lexical content words: car, wheel, drive, see, red, nice, soon, nicely, in, above …
• Bound roots: -peat (repeat) (not related to the noun peat)
-late (relate, translate) (not related to the adjective late)
-ceive (receive, perceive, conceive, deceive)
-mit (remit, permit, commit, transmit, submit)
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Such an analysis requires an addition to the definition of the morpheme as the minimal unit that
carries meaning (i.e. a revision of (6)b): Morphemes are the minimal linguistic units that carry
meaning themselves, even if "some morphemes are not meaningful in isolation but acquire meaning
only in combination with other specific morphemes" (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams 2003, 81).

Notice that the alternative would be much worse: Then cran- could not be a morpheme and so
cranberry would be only one morpheme and there would be no morpheme berry in cranberry,
barberry, huckleberry or whortleberry, even though they are all types of berries, just like blueberry
(which clearly consists of two morphemes: blue and berry).

Affixes can also be divided into derivational and inflectional morphemes, depending on what
happens to the word they are affixed to:

 By adding a derivational morpheme to a word, we derive a new word (loud ~ loudly).

 By adding an inflectional morpheme to a word, we only end up with a different form of the
word we started out with (loud ~ louder).

Derivational morphology, both affixation and the other types of derivation, is the topic of the next
lecture, MSSP-03, and inflectional morphology is the topic of the lecture after that, MSSP-04.

References
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina M. Hyams. 2003. An Introduction to Language. 7th ed.
Boston: Thomson/Heinle.

Exercises
For the seminars, please do the following exercise:

1. Divide the following words into morphemes and assign the words a morphological structure, using
(14)a-c above as models.

(18) a. anticlockwise i. rediscovery

b. antipathetic j. unlucky
c. hair care product k. deactivation
d. seasickness l. overprotective
e. heavy metal concert m. endearment
f. unhappier n. begrudged
g. mistreatment o. Nottinghamshire road casualty
h. cooperation reduction partnership