linguistic

assignment

NAME - KHUSHI BHAGAT

ROLL NO. - 21234ENG044
PAPER TITLE - LINGUISTICS AND THE
STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE II
PAPER CODE - BAE 323

SUBMITTED TO - Prof. PREETI KUMARI

 MORPHOLOGY
In linguistics, morphology is the study of how words are put
together. For example, the word cats is put together from two
parts: cat, which refers to a particular type of furry four-
legged animal , and -s, which indicates that there’s more than
one such animal.
Most words in English have only one or two pieces in them,
but some technical words can have many more, like non-
renewability, which has at least five (non-, re-, new, -abil, and
-ity). In many languages, however, words are often made up
of many parts, and a single word can express a meaning that
would require a whole sentence in English.
Not all combinations of pieces are possible, however. To go
back to the simple example of cat and -s, in English we can’t
put those two pieces in the opposite order and still get the
same meeting—scat is a word in English, but it doesn’t mean
“more than one cat”, and it doesn’t have the pieces cat and -s
in it, instead it’s an entirely different word.

One of the things we know when we know a language is how

to create new words out of existing pieces, and how to
understand new words that other people use as long as the
new words are made of pieces we’ve encountered before. We
also know what combinations of pieces are not possible. In
this chapter we’ll learn about the different ways that human
languages can build words, as well as about the structure that
can be found inside words.
In order to understand morphology, it is important to have a
clear understanding of morphemes. A morpheme is the
smallest meaningful unit of a word. There are two forms
meaning can take: functional meaning and content meaning.
It is also important to note that the number of syllables in a
word is not equivalent to the number of morphemes that a
word contains. For instance, the word "jumps" has one
syllable, but has two morphemes, "jump" (verb morpheme)
and "-s" (inflectional bound suffix morpheme). Another
example is the word "points" which also has one syllable, but
has two morphemes. The word "America" has four syllables
but is a lexical morpheme on its own. This means one cannot
break the lexeme "America" down further into meaningful
units. The word "polluted" has three syllables but only has
two morphemes. "Pollute" is the stem verb morpheme, while
"-ed" is the bound morpheme in the form of an inflectional
suffix that indicates the past tense of the word. There are two
types of morphemes: bound and free morphemes.
A free morpheme is a morpheme that occurs alone and
carries meaning as a word. Free morphemes are also called
unbound or freestanding morphemes. You might also call a
free morpheme a root word, which is the irreducible core of a
single word.
EXAMPLE – Frigid, Are, Must, Tall, Picture, Roof, Clear,
Mountain.
Bound morphemes are those that cannot stand alone with
meaning. Bound morphemes must occur with other
morphemes to create a complete word.
Many bound morphemes are affixes
An affix is an additional segment added to a root word to
change its meaning. An affix may be added to the beginning
(prefix) or the end (suffix) of a word.

WORD FORMATION

WHAT IS ‘WORD FORMATION PROCESS’?

The ‘Word Formation Process’ is regarded as the
branch of Morphology, and it has a significant role in
expanding the vocabulary that helps us communicate
very smoothly. The main objectives of the wordformation
process are to form new words with the
same root by deploying different rules or processes.
9 ESSENTIAL WORD FORMATION PROCESSES
1. Derivation
2.Back Formation
3. Conversion
4.Compounding
5.Clipping
6.Blending
7.Abbreviation
8.Acronyms
9.Borrowing
1. DERIVATION
‘Derivation’ is one of the significant word-formation
processes that attach derivation affixes to the main
form to create a new word. Affixes (prefix or suffix) are
regarded as bound morphemes.
• A bound morpheme doesn’t have any independent
meaning, and it needs the help of a free morpheme to
form a new word.
• Examples:
Base Forms New Words
Appear Disappear
Justice Injustice
Lighten Enlighten
Friend Friendship
Happy Happiness
2.BACK FORMATION
*Back-Formation’ is a word-formation process that
eliminates the actual derivational affix from the main
form to create a new word.
However, Back-Formation is contrary to derivation in
terms of forming new words.
EXAMPLES:
Base Forms Back Formation
Insertion Insert
Donation Donate
Procession Process
Obsessive Obsess
Resurrection Resurrect
3. CONVERSION
In conversion, a word of one grammatical form
converts into another grammatical form without
changing any spelling or pronunciation. For example,
the term ‘Google’ is originated as a noun before the
verb.
A few years ago, we used the term as a noun only
(search it on Google), but now we say ‘Google it.
• EXAMPLES:
Noun To Verb
Access -to access
Google -to google
Email -to email
Name -to name
Host -to host

Verb To Noun
To hope Hope
To cover Cover
To increase Increase
To attack Attack
4. COMPOUNDING
‘Compounding’ is a word-formation process that
allows words to combine to make a new word.
•Compounding words can also be formed as two words
joined with a hyphen.
• EXAMPLES:
Words Compounding Words
Class+room Classroom
Note+book Notebook
Break+up Breakup
Brother+in+law Brother in law

5.CLIPPING
‘Clipping’ reduces or shortens a word without
changing the exact meaning.
In contrast to the back-formation process, it reserves
the original meaning.
Clipping is divided into four types. They are:
1. Back Clipping
2. Fore Clipping
3. Middle Clipping
4.Complex Clipping
•Back Clipping removes the end part of a word
•Fore Clipping removes the beginning part of a word
• Middle Clipping reserves the middle position
•Complex Clipping removes multiple pieces from
multiple words.
•Examples
Words Clippings
Advertisement Ad
Photograph Photo
Telephone Phone
Influenza Flu
Cable telegram Cablegram
6.BLENDING
In the ‘Blending word-formation method, the parts of
two or more words combine to form a new word.
• EXAMPLES:
Words Blendings
Breakfast+lunch Brunch
Biographical+picture Biopic
Motor+hotel Motel
Spanish+English Spanglish
Telephone+marathon Telethon
7.ABBREVIATION
Abbreviation’ is another famous and widely used
word-formation method used to shorten a word or
phrase.
•EXAMPLES:
Words/Phrases Abbreviation
Junior Jr.
Mister Mr.
Mistress Mrs.
Doctor Dr.
Department Dept.
Bachelor of Arts B.A
Master of Arts M.A
Master of Business MBA
Administration
8.ACRONYMS
An Acronym is a popular word-formation process in
which an initialism is pronounced as a word.
It forms from the first letter of each word in a phrase,
and the newly formed letters create a new word that
helps us speedy communication.
For example, ‘PIN’ is an initialism for Personal Identification
Number used as the word ‘pin.’
• EXAMPLES:
Acronyms Words/Phrases
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
AIDS Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
NASA National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
ASAP As Soon As Possible
AWOL Absent Without Leave
9.BORROWING
‘Borrowing’ is another word-formation process in
which a word from one language is borrowed directly
into another language.
EXAMPLES:
Words Borrowed from
Algebra Arabic
Cherub Hebrew
Murder French
Pizza Italian
Tamale Spanish
 SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It can be
applied to entire texts or to single words. In linguistics,
semantics is the subfield that studies meaning. Semantics can
address meaning at the levels of words, phrases, sentences,
or larger units of discourse. One of the crucial questions which
unites different approaches to linguistic semantics is that of
the relationship between form and meaning.
Semantics involves the deconstruction of words, signals, and
sentence structure. It influences our reading comprehension
as well as our comprehension of other people‟s words in
everyday conversation. Semantics play a large part in our daily
communication, understanding, and language learning
without us even realizing it. For example, in everyday use, a
child might make use of semantics to understand a mom‟s
directive to “do your chores” as, “do your chores whenever
you feel like it.” However, the mother was probably saying,
“do your chores right now.”
Semantics is the study of meaning, but what do we mean by
„meaning‟? Meaning has been given different definitions in
the past. Meaning equals connotation. The meaning is simply
the set of associations that a word evokes, and it is the
meaning of a word defined by the images that its users
connect to it. So „winter‟ might mean „snow‟, „sledging‟ and
„mulled wine‟. But what about someone living in the
amazon? Their „winter‟ is still wet and hot, so its original
meaning is lost. Because the associations of a word don‟t
always apply, it was decided that this couldn‟t be the whole
story .
It has also been suggested that the meaning of a word is
simply the entity in the World which that word refers to. This
makes perfect sense for proper nouns like „New York‟ and
„the Eiffel Tower‟, but there are lots of words like „sing‟ and
„altruism‟ that don‟t have a solid thing in the world that they
are connected to. So meaning cannot be entirely denotation
either. So meaning, in Semantics, is defined as being
Extension: The thing in the world that the word/phrase refers
to, plus Intension: The concepts/mental images that the
word/phrase evokes.
Thus, semantics is interested in how meaning works in
language: The study of semantics looks at how meaning works
in language, and because of this it often uses native speaker
intuitions about the meaning of words and phrases to base
research on. We all understand semantics already on a
subconscious level, it‟s how we understand each other when
we speak. How the way in which words are put together
creates meaning is one of the things that semantics looks at,
and is based on, how the meaning of speech is not just
derived from the meanings of the individual words all put
together. The principle of compositionality says that the
meaning of speech is the sum of the meanings of the
individual words plus the way in which they are arranged into
a structure. Likewise, semantics also looks at the ways in
which the meanings of words can be related to each other.
2. Sense Relations
Here are a few of the ways in which words can be
semantically related 1. Synonymy – Words are synonymous/
synonyms when they can be used to mean the same thing (at
least in some contexts – words are rarely fully identical in all
contexts). Begin and start, Big and large, Youth and
adolescent 2. Antonymy Words are antonyms of one another
when they have opposite meanings (again, at least in some
contexts). Big and small, Come and go, Up and down.
3. Polysemy – A word is polysemous when it has two or more
related meanings. In this case the word takes one form but
can be used to mean two different things. In the case of
polysemy, these two meanings must be related in some way,
and not be two completely unrelated meanings of the word.
Bright (shining) and bright (intelligent). Mouse (animal) and
mouse (computer hardware).
4. Homophony – Homophony is similar to polysemy in that it
refers to a single form of word with two meanings, however a
word is a homophone when the two meanings are entirely
unrelated. Bat (flying mammal) and bat (sports equipment).
Pen (writing instrument) and pen (small cage) (Betti, and
Yaseen, 2020: 61). (Al-Seady, 1995: 77)
 SEMANTICS THEORIES
Behaviourist semantics

B.F. Skinner
B.F. Skinner, 1971.
In an effort to render linguistic meaning public and the study
of linguistic meaning more “scientific,” the American
psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904–90) proposed that the correct
semantics for a natural language is behaviouristic: the
meaning of an expression, as uttered on a particular occasion,
is either (1) the behavioral stimulus that produces the
utterance, (2) the behavioral response that the utterance
produces, or (3) a combination of both. Thus, the meaning of
fire! as uttered on a particular occasion might include running
or calling for help. But even on a single occasion it is possible
that not everyone who hears fire! will respond by running or
calling for help. Suppose, for example, that the hearers of the
utterance include a firefighter, a pyromaniac, and a person
who happens to know that the speaker is a pathological liar.
The behaviourist account seems committed to the implausible
view that the meaning of fire! for those people is different
from the meaning of fire! for others who run or call for help.
The behaviourist account, like the ideational one, is also
vulnerable to the objection based on compositionality.
Suppose that a person’s body recoils when he hears brown
cow but not when he hears either brown or cow alone. The
meaning of brown cow, which includes recoiling, is therefore
not determined by or predictable from the meanings of
brown and cow.

Referential semantics
As noted above, reference is an apparent relation between a
word and the world. Russell, following the 19th-century
British philosopher John Stuart Mill, pursued the intuition that
linguistic expressions are signs of something other than
themselves. He suggested that the meaning of an expression
is whatever that expression applies to, thus removing
meaning from the minds of its users and placing it squarely in
the world. According to a referential semantics, all that one
learns when one learns the meaning of tomato is that it
applies to tomatoes and to nothing else. One advantage of a
referential semantics is that it respects compositionality: the
meaning of red tomato is a function of the meanings of red
and tomato, because red tomato will apply to anything that is
both red and a tomato.
But what about expressions that apparently refer to nothing
at all, such as unicorn? A referential semantics would appear
to be committed to the view that expressions such as unicorn,
Santa Claus, and Sherlock Holmes are meaningless. Another
problem, first pointed out by Frege, is that two expressions
may have the same referent without having the same
meaning. The morning star and the evening star, for example,
refer to the same object, the planet Venus, but they are not
synonymous. As Frege noted, it is possible to believe that the
morning star and the evening star are not identical without
being irrational (indeed, the identity of the morning star and
the evening star was a scientific discovery).
Such examples have led some philosophers, including Mill
himself and Saul Kripke, to conclude that proper names lack
meaning. But the problem also affects common nouns,
including definite descriptions. The descriptions the first
president of the United States and the husband of Martha
Washington apply to the same individual but are not
synonymous. It is possible to understand both without
recognizing that they refer to the same person. It follows that
meaning cannot be the same as reference.

Fregean semantics
According to Frege, the meaning of an expression consists of
two elements: a referent and what he called a “sense.” Both
the referent and the sense of an expression contribute
systematically to the truth or falsehood (the “truth value”) of
the sentences in which the expression occurs.
As noted above, Frege pointed out that the substitution of
coreferring expressions in a sentence does not always
preserve truth value: if Smith does not know that George
Washington was the first president of the United States, then
Smith believes that George Washington chopped down a
cherry tree can be true while Smith believes that the first
president of the United States chopped down a cherry tree is
false. Frege’s explanation of the phenomenon was that, in
such sentences, truth value is determined not only by
reference but also by sense. The sense of an expression,
roughly speaking, is not the thing the expression refers to but
the way in which it refers to that thing. The sense of an
expression determines what the expression refers to.
Although each sense determines a single referent, a single
referent may be determined by more than one sense. Thus,
George Washington and the first president of the United
States have the same referent but different senses. The two
belief sentences can differ in truth value because, although
both are about the same individual, the expressions referring
to that individual pick him out in different ways.

Verificationist semantics
Frege did not address the problem of how linguistic
expressions come to have the meanings they do. A natural,
albeit vague, answer is that expressions mean what they do
because of what speakers do with them. An example of that
approach is provided by the school of logical positivism, which
was developed by members of the Vienna Circle discussion
group in the 1920s and ’30s. According to the logical
positivists, the meaning of a sentence is given by an account
of the experiences on the basis of which the sentence could
be verified. Sentences that are unverifiable through any
possible experience (including many ethical, religious, and
metaphysical sentences) are literally meaningless.
The basic idea underlying verificationism is that meaning
results from links between language and experience: some
sentences have meaning because they are definable in terms
of other sentences, but ultimately there must be certain basic
sentences, what the logical positivists called “observation
sentences,” whose meaning derives from their direct
connection with experience and specifically from the fact that
they are reports of experience. The meaning of an expression
smaller than a sentence is similarly dependent on experience.
Roughly speaking, the meaning of an expression is given by an
account of the experiences on the basis of which one could
verify that the expression applies to one thing or another.
Although the circumstances in which triangular and trilateral
apply are the same, speakers go about verifying those
applications in different ways.

The case against verificationism was most ardently pressed in

the 1950s by the American philosopher Willard Van Orman
Quine. He argued that experience cannot be used to verify
individual observation sentences, because any experience can
be taken to verify a given observation sentence provided that
sufficient adjustments are made in the truth values of the
other sentences that make up the scientific theory in which
the sentence is embedded. In the case of word meaning,
Quine asked: What experience, or empirical evidence, could
determine what a word means? He contended that the only
acceptable evidence is behavioral, given the necessity that
meanings be public. But behavioral evidence cannot
determine whether a person’s words mean one thing or
another; alternative interpretations, each compatible with all
the behavioral evidence, will always be available. (For
example, what possible behavioral evidence could determine
that by gavagai a speaker means “rabbit” rather than
“undetached rabbit part” or “time-slice of a rabbit”?) From
the underdetermination of meaning by empirical evidence,
Quine inferred that there is no “fact of the matter” regarding
what a word means.