BUSL External Degree Program 2019

Morphology

Morphology – the internal structure of words

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of linguistic study today.

·         The term morphology is Greek and is a make-up of morph- meaning ‘shape, form’, and -logy which means ‘the study of something’.

·         Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form of words.

What is a word?

Smallest independent units of language

Independent:

1.     do not depend on other words.

2.     can be separated from other units

3.     can change position.

The man looked at the horses.

·         s is the plural marker, dependent on the noun horse to receive meaning

·         Horses is a word: can occur in other positions or stand on its own

:
The horses looked at the man.
– What is the man looking at? – Horses.

Words are thus both independent since they can be separated from other words and move around in sentences and the smallest units of language since they are the only units of language for which this is possible.

Morphemes – the building blocks of morphology

Words have internal structure: built of even smaller pieces

1.     SIMPLE WORDS: Don’t have internal structure (only consist of one morpheme) eg work, build, run. They can’t be split into smaller parts which carry meaning or function.

2.     COMPLEX WORDS: Have internal structure (consist of two or more morphemes) eg worker: affix -er added to the root work to form a noun.

Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units of language.

FREE VS BOUND MORPHEMES

Free morpheme: a simple word, consisting of one morpheme eg house, work, high, chair, wrap. They are words in themselves.

Bound morpheme: morphemes that must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning.

EG: UNKINDNESS

·         UN- and -NESS are the bound morphemes, requiring the root KIND to form the word.

These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. There are two types as outlined below:

1.     Prefix (front of the base)= Un-

2.     Suffix (end of the base)= -ness

Drawing Morphology Trees

Below is a step-by-step guide to drawing a morphology tree:

Morphology trees show the internal structure of a word. Below are the completed morphology trees.

Reference: What is Morphology?   By Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Fudeman

What is Morphology?

The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‘shape, form’, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch 2 MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed.

A major way in which morphologists investigate words, their internal structure, and how they are formed is through the identification and study of morphemes, often defined as the smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function. This definition is not meant to include all morphemes, but it is the usual one and a good starting point. A morpheme may consist of a word, such as hand, or a meaningful piece of a word, such as the -ed of looked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. You may also run across the term morph. The term ‘morph’ is sometimes used to refer specifically to the phonological realization of a morpheme. For example, the English past tense morpheme that we spell -ed has various morphs. It is realized as [t] after the voiceless [p] of jump (cf. jumped), as [d] after the voiced [l] of repel (cf. repelled), and as [@d] after the voiceless [t] of root or the voiced [d] of wed (cf. rooted and wedded). We can also call these morphs allomorphs or variants. The appearance of one morph over another in this case is determined by voicing and the place of articulation of the final consonant of the verb stem. Now consider the word reconsideration. We can break it into three morphemes: re-, consider, and -ation. Consider is called the stem. A stem is a base morpheme to which another morphological piece is attached. The stem can be simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one piece. Here it is best to consider consider a simple stem. Although it consists historically of more than one part, most present-day speakers would treat it as an unanalyzable form. We could also call consider the root. A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to morphologically simple units. For example, disagree is the stem of disagreement, because it is the base to which -ment attaches, but agree is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the entire word. Returning now to reconsideration, re- and -ation are both affixes, which means that they are attached to the stem. Affixes like re- that go before the stem are prefixes, and those like -ation that go after are suffixes. 2 MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS 3. Some readers may wonder why we have not broken -ation down further into two pieces, -ate and -ion, which function independently elsewhere. In this particular word they do not do so (cf. *reconsiderate), and hence we treat -ation as a single morpheme. It is important to take very seriously the idea that the grammatical function of a morpheme, which may include its meaning, must be constant. Consider the English words lovely and quickly. They both end with the suffix -ly. But is it the same in both words? No – when we add -ly to the adjective quick, we create an adverb that describes how fast someone does something. But when we add -ly to the noun love, we create an adjective. What on the surface appears to be a single morpheme turns out to be two? One attaches to adjectives and creates adverbs; the other attaches to nouns and creates adjectives.

Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly." It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: -ly
Word: badly

When we talk about words, there are two groups: lexical (or content) and function (or grammatical) words. Lexical words are called open class words and include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New words can regularly be added to this group. Function words, or closed class words, are conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns; and new words cannot be (or are very rarely) added to this class.

Affixes are often the bound morpheme. This group includes prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes. Prefixes are added to the beginning of another morpheme, suffixes are added to the end, infixes are inserted into other morphemes, and circumfixes are attached to another morpheme at the beginning and end. Following are examples of each of these:

Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces fumikas (to be strong) in Bontoc
Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) produces geliebt (loved) in German

There are two categories of affixes: derivational and inflectional. The main difference between the two is that derivational affixes are added to morphemes to form new words that may or may not be the same part of speech and inflectional affixes are added to the end of an existing word for purely grammatical reasons. In English there are only eight total inflectional affixes:

-s	3rd person singular present	she waits
-ed	past tense	he walked
-ing	progressive	she's watching
-en	past participle	she has eaten
-s	plural	three tables
-'s	possessive	Holly's cat
-er	comparative	you are taller
-est	superlative	you are the tallest

The other type of bound morphemes are called bound roots. These are morphemes (and not affixes) that must be attached to another morpheme and do not have a meaning of their own. Some examples are ceive in perceive and mit in submit.

English Morphemes

A.   Free

1.     Open Class

2.     Closed Class

B.   Bound

1.     Affix

a.     Derivational

b.     Inflectional

2.     Root

There are six ways to form new words. Compounds are a combination of words, acronyms are derived from the initials of words, back-formations are created from removing what is mistakenly considered to be an affix, abbreviations or clippings are shortening longer words, eponyms are created from proper nouns (names), and blending is combining parts of words into one.

Compound: doghouse
Acronym: NBA (National Basketball Association) or scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)
Back-formation: edit from editorAbbreviation: phone from telephone
Eponym: sandwich from Earl of Sandwich
Blending: smog from smoke and fog

Morphology, in linguistics, study of the internal construction of words. Languages vary widely in the degree to which words can be analyzed into word elements, or morphemes (q.v.). In English there are numerous examples, such as “replacement,” which is composed of re-, “place,” and -ment, and “walked,” from the elements “walk” and -ed. Many American Indian languages have a highly complex morphology; other languages, such as Vietnamese or Chinese, have very little or none. Morphology includes the grammatical processes of inflection (q.v.) and derivation. Inflection marks categories such as person, tense, and case; e.g., “sings” contains a final -s, marker of the 3rd person singular, and the German Mannes consists of the stem Mann and the genitive singular inflection -es. Derivation is the formation of new words from existing words; e.g., “singer” from “sing” and “acceptable” from “accept.” Derived words can also be inflected: “singers” from “singer.”