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Morphology 2c+syntax

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37 views16 pages

Morphology 2c+syntax

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panfordlois0
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LNGS 101

CORE AREAS OF LINGUISTICS


DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
UNIVERSITY OF GHANA
FIRST SEMESTER 2022/2023
MORPHOLOGY
ØMorphology is the study of the structure of words.
ØIt also deals with how languages change the form of
words for grammatical purposes and the processes
that are used to create new words.
ØWe can think of words as consisting of meaningful
units called MORPHEMES.
ØA morpheme is defined as the minimal, indivisible
unit of meaning which words are made of.
ØThere are two types of morphemes;
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MORPHEMES
1. Free morphemes = can stand on its own as a
separate word, e.g., teach, farm, sing.
2.Bound morphemes = cannot stand on its own as a
word; it is always attached to another form, e.g.,
teach-er, farm-s, sing-er, walk-ed.
ØA bound morpheme (affix) may be identified based on
its position: prefix∼ beginning; infix∼ between;
circumfix∼ around; suffix∼ end

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MORPHEMES
ØPrefix∼ beginning; eg. disrespect, unfaithful
ØInfix∼ between; eg. Kamhmu,
Verb Noun
toh ‘to chisel’ trnoh ‘chisel’
hoom ‘to tie’ hrnoom ‘tie’
ØCircumfix∼ around; Indonesian
Adjective Noun
besar ‘big’ kebesaran ‘bigness’
Øsuffix∼ end eg. disrespectful, unfaithfulness

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MORPHEMES
There are two types of bound morphemes;
Ø1. derivational= changes the class of the word, e.g., teach-er;
happy –ness, quick- ly.
Ø2. inflectional= express grammatical information, e.g., boy-s,
walk-ed
ØThere are 8 infectional affixes in English.
(s – plurality, ‘s – possession) – attached to nouns
(s – 3rd Person singular marker, ed- past tense marker, ing –
progressive marker, en- past participle marker) – attached to verbs
(er- comparative marker, -est – superlative marker (attached to
adjectives).

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MORPHEMES
There are two types of free morphemes;
1. Lexical morphemes – They carry the content of the
messages we convey (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) Eg,
girl, man, house, yellow, open
2. Functional morphemes – They are functional words in
languages (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns)
Eg. When, but, and, because, in, the, that,

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WORD FORMATION PROCESSES
ØCOINAGE: invention of totally new terms, e.g., aspirin, nylon,
vaseline, zipper, google

ØBORROWING: taking over of words from other languages, e.g., piano


(Italian), pretzel (German), sofa (Arabic), tattoo (Tahitian), tycoon
(Japanese), yogurt (Turkish) and zebra (Bantu).

ØCOMPOUNDING: joining of two separate words to produce a single


form, e.g., fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket.

ØBLENDING: taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the
end of the other word, e.g., bit (binary/digit), brunch
(breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel) and telecast
(television/broadcast).
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WORD FORMATION PROCESSES
ØCLIPPING: a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form, e.g., ad
(advertisement), bra (brassiere), cab (cabriolet), condo (condominium), fan
(fanatic), flu (influenza), perm (permanent wave),phone (telephone), plane
(aeroplane).

ØBACKFORMATION: word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of


another type (usually a verb), e.g., donate (from “donation”), emote (from
“emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from “liaison”) and babysit
(from “babysitter”).

ØCONVERSION: A change in the function of a word, e.g., bottle, butter, chair,


vacation may be used as verbs.

ØACRONYMS: new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words,
e.g., NATO, NASA, UNESCO, COVID-19.

ØDERIVATION: use of affixes to form new words, e.g., happiness , misrepresent,


prejudge, joyful, careless, boyish, terrorism.
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SYNTAX
ØSyntax is the study of how words are put together to
form larger units such as phrases, clauses and sentences.
ØWords form phrases, and can be combined with other
phrases to form a clause or a sentence.
ØThe structure and arrangement of sentences appears to
be governed by systematic rules; nothing is done
haphazardly.
• ALL LANGUAGES follow complex but systematic rules
and principles in the way phrases are formed and
combined.
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SYNTAX
ØWords used to build sentences are referred to as parts of
speech.
1. Lexical/open category: noun (N), verb (V), adjective
(Adj), and adverb (Adv)
• 2. Functional/closed category: prepositions (P),
determiners (D), conjunctions (Conj), complementizers
(Comp), Tense auxiliaries (T), negation (Neg)
ØDo you know how to define each of these categories?
ØWhat are the problems associated with semantic or
traditional definitions of these categories?
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TRADITIONAL DEFINITIONS: PROBLEMS
ØIf we define a noun as a “person, place, or thing” and a verb as
“an action, state, or state of being”, it will be difficult for us to
correctly identify the category of the underlined words.
a. Sincerity is an important quality.
b. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba shocked the world.
ØAlso, sometimes the same word may function differently in
various contexts.
a. My father is a rich man.
b. Did John father a child with you?
ØFurther, there are words which cannot be easily defined although
they perform an important function in a sentence. e.g. what is
the meaning of that?
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DISTRIBUTIONAL CRITERIA
ØWords can be categorized based on their distribution.
1. Morphological distribution: the type of affixes (prefix and
suffix) that occur on words.
a. Derivational: morphemes which change the category of a word.
e.g. teacher, education
b. Inflectional: morphemes which mark some grammatical notion,
such as number or person etc. e.g. teachers, educational
• 2. Syntactic distribution: the position of words relative to other
words, e.g. nouns occur with determiners such as a or the, etc.
a. The man loved his son.
ØThus, once we know the category of one word, we can determine
the category of the rest.
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MORPHOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
ØNOUN:
Derivational: establishment, action, sincerity, certainty, specialist,
intimacy, employee, attendant.
Inflectional: peoples, houses, children.
ØVERBS:
Derivational: regularize
Inflectional: walked, talking, beaten
ØADJECTIVE:
Derivational: indicative, readable, childish
Inflectional: wiser, wisest
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MORPHOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
ØADVERB:
Derivational: quickly
Inflectional: more quickly

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SYNTACTIC DISTRIBUTION
NOUNS:
[ Det ], e.g. the, a
[ Adj ]
[ Prep ], e.g. in, on, about, under
[ subj saw obj ]

VERBS
[ Aux ], e.g. will, has/have, be
[ Adv ], e.g. often, frequently
[ Kofisubj Amaobj ]
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SYNTACTIC DISTRIBUTION
ADJECTIVES:
[ Det N], e.g. the man
[ Aux ] be
[ Very ]

ADVERBS
*[ Det N], e.g. the *often man
[ Very ]

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