Morphology
Module 3
Morphology
• Morphology is the study of the structure of words.
• Words are formed by combining smaller units of linguistic information called
morphemes, the building blocks of words.
• Morpheme is defined as the minimum word bearing unit
• For Example: Fox – 1 Morpheme - Fox
Cats – 2 Morphemes – Cat , s
English Morphology
• Morphology is the study of the ways that words are built up from
smaller meaningful units called morphemes
• We can usefully divide morphemes into two classes
• Stems: The core meaning bearing units – Main morpheme of the word
• Affixes: Bits and pieces that adhere to stems to change their meanings and
grammatical functions
Additional meaning of various kind -Prefix, suffix, infix and circumfix
Regular and Irregular Nouns and
Verbs
• Regulars…
• Walk, walks, walking, walked
• Table, tables
• Irregulars
• Eat, eats, eating, ate, eaten
• Catch, catches, catching, caught, caught
• Cut, cuts, cutting, cut, cut
• Goose, geese
Compute
• Many paths are possible…
• Start with compute
• Computer -> computerize -> computerization
• Computation -> computational
• Computer -> computerize -> computerizable
• Compute -> computee
Morphemes
• Morphemes can be classified into two groups:
• Free Morpheme: Morphemes which can occur as a word by themselves.
• e.g., go, book,
• Bound Morphemes: Morphemes which are not words in their own right, but
have to be attached in some way to a free morpheme.
• e.g., +ing, +s, +ness
Dimensions of Morphology
• “Complexity” of Words
• How many morphemes?
• Morphological Processes
• What functions do morphemes perform?
• Morpheme combination
• How do we put the morphemes together to form words?
“Complexity” of Word Structure
• The kind and amount information that is conveyed with morphology
differs from language to language.
• Isolating Languages
• Inflectional Languages
• Agglutinative Languages
Isolating languages
• Isolating languages do not (usually) have any bound morphemes
• Mandarin Chinese
• Gou bu ai chi qingcai (dog not like eat vegetable)
• This can mean one the the following (depending on the context)
• The dog doesn’t like to eat vegetables
• The dog didn’t like to eat vegetables
• The dogs don’t like to eat vegetables
• The dogs didn’t like to eat vegetables.
• Dogs don’t like to eat vegetables.
Inflectional Languages
• A single bound morpheme simultaneously conveys multiple pieces of linguistic
information.
• Refers to a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form
of a word to express grammatical meanings
• Latin
• For Example, transforms the
Noun - gulf
verb - engulf
Agglutinative Languages
• (Usually multiple) Bound morphemes are attached to one (or more)
free morphemes.
• Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian
• Swahili, Aymara
• Each morpheme (usually) encodes one "piece" of linguistic
information.
• Not more than one grammatical category.
Morphological Process
• There are essentially two types of morphological processes which
determine the functions of morphemes:
• Inflectional Morphology
• Derivational Morphology
Inflectional Morphology
• Inflection is the combination of a word stem with a grammatical
morpheme – Same class as the original stem.
• Ex : English as a inflectional morpheme –s for making plural on nouns.
-ed – Making the past tense on verb
• English has a relatively inflectional system – noun, verb and adjectives
can be infected.
• English noun – Two kinds of inflection
1. Plural
2. Possessive
Inflectional Morphology
• In English, only nouns, verbs, and sometimes adjectives can be
inflected, and the number of affixes is quite small.
• Inflections of nouns in English:
• An affix marking plural,
• cat(-s), thrush(-es), ox (oxen), mouse (mice)
• ibis(-es), waltz(-es), finch(-es), box(-es), butterfly(-
lies)
• An affix marking possessive
• llama’s, children’s, llamas’, Euripides’ comedies
Kinds of Morphology
Inflectional morphology
grammatical morphemes that are required for words in certain syntactic situations
1. I run
2. John runs
-s is an inflectional morpheme marking 3rd person singular verb
Derivational morphology
morphemes that are used to produce new words, providing new meanings
and/or new parts of speech
1. establish
2. establishment
-ment is a derivational morpheme that turns verbs into nouns
English verbal Inflection
• Main verbs – eat, sleep, impeach
• Modal Verb – can, will, should
• Primary verb – be , have , do
But the English inflection mainly concerned with the main and the
primary verbs, because both have inflectional ending.
Morphological forms of regular verbs
Morphological Regularly Inflected Verbs
Form Classes
Stem Walk Merge Try Map
-s form Walks Merges Tries Maps
-ing participle Walking Merging Trying Mapping
Past form or –ed Walked Merged Tried mapped
Participle
Inflectional Morphology – Irregular verbs
• Morphological forms of irregular verbs
stem eat catch cut
-s form eats catches cuts
-ing principle eating catching cutting
Past form ate caught cut
–ed participle eaten caught cut
Morphology and FSTs 18
Regular Nouns Irregular Nouns
Singular Cat Thrush Mouse ox
Plural cats thrushes Mice oxen
Derivational Morphology
• Derivational morphology produces a new word with usually a
different part-of-speech category.
• e.g., make a verb from a noun.
• The new word is said to be derived from the old word.
• Derivation in English is more complex than inflection because
• Generally less productive
• A nominalizing affix like –ation can not be added to absolutely every verb. eatation(*)
• There are subtle and complex meaning differences among nominalizing
suffixes. For example, sincerity has a subtle difference in meaning from
sincereness.
Morphology
• Derivational Morphology
• basically: category changing
• Nominalization
• Examples: formalization, informant, informer, refusal, lossage
• Deadjectivals
• Examples: weaken, happiness, simplify, formalize, slowly, calm
• Deverbals
• Examples: see nominalizations, readable, employee
• Denominals
• Examples: formal, bridge, ski, cowardly, useful
Derivational Morphology
• Productive vs. unproductive derivational morphology
• Productive: can apply to almost all members of a class of words
• Unproductive: applies to only a few members of a class or words
• lexicalized derivations (e.g., application as in “application program”)
