MORPHOLOGY

Morphology

• is the study of the internal structure of words, and of

the rules by which words are formed.
• Language is a CODE for thoughts. The speaker
communicates his thoughts to the listener, by
encoding the thoughts into sound. The listener then
decodes the meaning from the sounds.

• SOUND MEANING
• Every speaker of a language knows thousands,
even tens of thousands of words.

• Knowing a word means knowing both its sound and

its meaning.
• According to a Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure that
sounds (pronunciation) and the meaning of a word are
inseparable.

• de Saussure discussed the arbitrary union between the

sounds (form) and meaning (concept) of the linguistic sign.

• In this sense every word is a linguistic sign.

• Each word must include other information as well.

• The dictionary representation of a word must

include whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective,
etc.

• That is, it must specify what grammatical category,

or syntactic class, it is in.
• Some words, like love, may be either a noun or
verb.

• Ex. I love you.

You are the love of my life.
• Morpheme – the most elemental unit of
grammatical form

• derived from the Greek word “morphe” meaning

form.

• the smallest meaningful unit of a language

• A morpheme can be made up of one phoneme, e.g.
the plural / s /, or more than one phoneme as in /d
g/.

• We cannot equate morphemes with what we call

‘words’, since cats is one word but has two
morphemes.
• We cannot equate morphemes with syllables, since
elephant has three syllables but has one
morpheme.
• A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes:

One morpheme -boy, desire

Two morphemes - boy + ish, desire + able

Three morphemes - boy + ish + ness, desire + able + ity

Four morphemes - gentle + man + li + ness

un + desire + able + ity

More than four- un +gentle + man + li + ness

Word Classes:

1. Content Words – carry lexical meaning (nouns,

verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

2. Function Words – grammatical (pronouns,

conjunctions, auxiliaries, articles)
BOUND AND FREE MORPHEMES

Free Morpheme
• sometimes called a “stem” or “base”
• Morphemes that can stand alone

Ex. book, pencil, elephant, love

Bound Morpheme
• always occur with a base
• occur with a base

Examples:
• plural morpheme – book(s)
• “tense” morpheme – walk(s), walk(ed)
• negative morpheme – (un)happy
• quality morpheme – happi(ness)
• Bound morphemes can be further divided into two
types:

1. Inflectional morphemes (e.g. –s, -est, -ing)

2. Derivational morphemes (e.g. –ful, -like, -ly, un-, dis-)
Word Relations

Words can be related to other words

happy – unhappy

The rules that relate such sets of words are called

WORD FORMATION RULES
Thus, morphology contains:

• its meaning
• fundamental elements – morphemes
• rules of combination – WORD FORMATION RULES
UNHAPPY ( happy and un – meaning not)
1. its meaning – not happy
2. its form – add (un-)
3 a rule of combination (placed before the stem)

HAPPIER (happy and -er – meaning more)

1. its meaning – more happy
2. its form – add –er
3. a rule of combination (placed after the stem)
MORPHOLOGICAL RULES OF WORD FORMATION
1. Derivational Morphemes – morphemes that change
the category, or grammatical class, of words.

• when they are conjoined to other morphemes

(words) a new word is derived, or formed.
Noun to Adjective Verb to Noun

boy + ish agree + ment

Elizabeth + an clear + ance
affection + ate sing + er
health + ful conform + ist
alcohol + ic predict + ion
Adjective to Adverb Noun to Verb

exact + ly moral + ize

quiet + ly vaccin + ate
NOUN TO VERB

s to d pattern

offense - offend
defense - defend

suffix -en

fright - frighten
strength - strengthen
3. suffixes -ze, -ize

apology - apologize
sympathy - sympathize

4. suffixes -fy, -ify

beauty - beautify

5. contrast of /f/ and /v/

belief - believe
relief - relieve
proof - prove
VERB TO NOUN

agree - agreement
pay - payment
treat - treatment
act - actor
permit - permission
combine - combination
appear - appearance
sign - signature
act - action
reside - resident
obey - obedience
excel - excellence
prepare - preparation
2. Inflectional Morphemes – are bound morphemes
which carry grammatical meanings like “plural”,
“tense
markers for plural
Ex. book – books

markers for third-person

Ex. (singular number) s form ( walks )

markers for tenses

Ex. walk - walked

markers for comparative and superlative

Ex. longer, prettier, longest, prettiest
Bound and Free Morphemes
• In the word "doors" there are two morphemes:
"door" and "-s".
• "door" can be used by itself, so it is called a FREE
morpheme.
• "s" cannot be used by itself –
• so "-s" is called a BOUND morpheme.
What does "-s" mean?

• What does the bound plural morpheme "-s" mean?

• It seems to mean "more than one": one door, two
doors.
• A better explanation is that "-s" means "not one"
Affixes
Morphemes added to free forms to make other free forms are called
affixes.
There are four principle kinds of affixes:
• prefixes (at beginning) -- "un-" in "unable"
• suffixes (at end) -- "-ed" in "walked"
• circumfixes (at both ends) -- "en--en" in "enlighten"
(These always seem to consist of otherwise attested independent
prefixes and suffixes.)
• infixes (in the middle) -- (These are not used very much in English but
occur frequently in other languages.
• Consider the data from Bontoc:

Adjective Meaning Verb Meaning

kilad red kumilad to be red
fikas strong fumikas to be strong

the form of the infix is -um-

the rule of combination is that it combines with adjectives to make verbs,
going after the first consonant
the meaning of the infix is "to be Adjective" where Adjective is the
meaning of the stem
A Rule for Forming some English Words
• Consider the following pairs of English words:
Adjective Verb
dark darken
black blacken
red redden
Add "-en" to the end of Adjectives to make Verbs with the
meaning "to make (more) Adjective"
Notice the three parts of the word formation rule for the affix:
• Form: "en"
• Combination: At the end of Adjectives (suffix) to make
Verbs
• Meaning: "to make (more) Adjective"
We can draw a diagram to show the internal structure
of one of the words:
Verb
/ \
Adjective -en
|
black

Meaning: "to make (more) black"

• Consider the following pairs of English words

Verb Noun
sing singer
dance dancer

What generalization (rule) can we make?

Add "-er" to the end of Verbs to make Nouns with the meaning
"someone (something) that Verbs"

Noun
/ \
Verb -er

Meaning: "someone (something) that Verbs"

Rules that don't change category
• Some affixes create the same kinds of words that
they attach to, such as making nouns out of other
nouns:
Noun
/ \
Noun -ian
|
Boston

• Meaning: "someone from Boston"

 Zero Morphemes
• Some affixes consist of no sounds at all
• Consider the following words:

Adjective Verb
yellow yellow
brown brown
green green
purple purple

The relation between "yellow" (adjective) and "yellow" (verb) is the same as
between "white" and "whiten"
But the form of "yellow" doesn't change
So we say that we added a zero suffix:
Verb
/ \
Adjective -Ø
|
yellow
Meaning: "to make (more) yellow"
• Zero morphemes are hard to spot because you
can't hear them.
Compounds
The combination of two free forms is called a COMPOUND.

Noun
/ \
Adjective Noun
| |
black bird

• Meaning: a particular kind of bird

• In English the HEAD of a compound is usually the
right-hand member (bird).

• The head supplies the category (Noun) and basic

meaning (bird-ness) for the whole compound.
Compounds can be used with affixation to produce larger
words:
Noun
/ \
Verb -er
/ \
Verb Verb
| |
sleep walk

• Meaning: Someone who walks and sleeps at the same time

 Noun
/ \
Noun Noun
| / \
window Verb -er
|
painter

• Meaning: Someone who paints windows

Homophonous Morphemes
Sometimes two morphemes have the same
pronunciation (form) with different meanings.
One example form English is the morpheme "un-":

Adjective
/ \
un- Adjective

• Meaning: "not Adjective", for example "unhappy"

 Verb
/ \
un- Verb

• Meaning: "do the reverse of Verb", for example

"undo", "untie", "unlatch"
This can lead to ambiguity in some words with "un-", such as
"un-tie-able".
There are two possible structures for "un-tie-able":
Adjective
/ \
Verb -able
/ \
un- Verb
|
tie

• Meaning: able( un (tie) ) = "can be untied"

 Adjective
/ \
un- Adjective
/ \
Verb -able
|
tie

• Meaning: un( able (tie) ) = "can't be tied"

ALLOMORPHY

• But now we have two ways to make Adjectives into

Verbs meaning "to make (more) Adjective": "black-
en" and "yellow-Ø"
• How do we know which rule to use?
• That is, why not "yellow-en"?
• One possible answer is that we just have to
memorize which affix to use for each stem. We just
memorize that "black" takes "-en" and "yellow"
takes zero.
• The best place to look is "near" the affix. Since "-
en" is a suffix, let's look at the end of the stems.
• What we find is that we can divide the Adjectives
into two classes based on what the last SOUND
(not letter) of the stem is:
• Use "-en" if the last sound is: t, k, d, p, S ("fresh-
en"), ...
• Use "-Ø" if the last sound is a vowel, r, l, n, m
• Another example of allomorphy in English is the
choice of the negative prefix "il-/ir-/im-/in-"
• The rules are:
• Use "il-" when the stem begins with "l": "il-legal"
• Use "ir-" when the stem begins with "r": "ir-
responsible"
• Use "im-" when the stem begins with "m, b, p": "im-
mobile", "im-balanced", "im-possible"
• Otherwise (elsewhere) use "in-": "in-active", etc.
 Morphophonemics

Morpheme – smallest meaningful unit

e.g. unfriendliness – un + friend + li + ness

• lexical morpheme is called the stem

• grammatical morphemes are added as prefixes or
suffixes to the stem
A.
i. cups, sacks, rats, moths, coughs
• the plural (s) is pronounces as the voiceless
fricative /s/
• if the stem ends in a voiceless consonant
ii. ribs, mugs, beds, sleeves, trees

• it is pronounced as the voiced fricatives /z/

• if the stem ends in a voiced consonant

(These are not two different morphemes; they are

simply different pronunciations of the one
morpheme, the plural morpheme.)
B.

i. sacked, tapped, passed, snatched

• the morpheme (d) is pronounced as the voiceless
stop /t/ because it immediately follows a voiceless
consonant
ii. sagged, tabbed, fizzed
– Pronounced as the voiced stop /d/ because it
immediately follows a voiced sound
iii. waited, collided

• Pronounced as the sequence /Іd/, with the

vowel / I / added to avoid an impossible final
sequence of two stops
C. There are other words with a similar but slightly different
prefix : impossible, improbable, illiterate, irrelevant

• It turns out that these prefixes, im-, il-, ir- are all allomorphs
of the one negative morpheme (in)

• Same meaning “not”, and the choice of which form is used

is totally predictable from the phonological environment
a. im- with the bilabial /m/
b. il – when the stem begins with the lateral /l/
c. ir – when the stem begins with /r/

• The prefix assimilates its final consonant to the

initial consonant of the stem
 WORD COINAGE/ WORD FORMATION

1. Compounds
– new words may be formed by stringing together other
words to create compound words
2. Acronyms – are words derived from the initials of
several words

• Ex. laser – light amplification by stimulated emission

of radiation
radar – radio detecting and ranging
scuba –self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
3. Blends – are formed by fusing or putting two words together. Usually the
first part of one word is blended or fused with the last part of another.

Ex.
smog - smoke + fog
motel - motor + hotel
urinalysis - urine + analysis
bioecology - biology + ecology
brunch - breakfast + lunch
kidult - kid + adult
docudrama - documentary + drama
4. Abbreviations/Clippings – it means cutting off the beginning or the
end of the word

Ex. ad (advertisement)
bike (bicycle)
gas (gasoline)
Math (Mathematics)
gym (gymnasium)
phone (telephone)
coop (cooperative)
disco (discotheque)
5. Words from Names – derived from proper nouns of
individuals /or places

• Sandwich – named for the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put

his food between two slices of bread so that he could eat
while he gambled

• Jumbo – named after an elephant brought to the U.S. by P.T.

Barnum
• Island – the word came from the word “isle” which
means “water” or “meadow”. Later it became to mean
a piece of land completely surrounded by water.

• Caesarian – to give birth through a surgical incision

made in the abdominal wall. Some sources say the
term is derived from the name of Julius Caesar, a
great Roman emperor believed to have been
delivered in this manner.