4. Linguistics chapter 6 & 16 Flashcards
What is morphology?
Investigating basic forms in language known as morphology. What we have been describing as “elements” in the form of a linguistic message are technically known as “morphemes.”
Languages’ single forms turn out to contain a large number of “word-like” elements.
In Swahili/Kiswahili the form “nitakupenda” represents “I will love you”. Since it is a single word it seems to consist of a number of elements that, in English, turn up as separate “words”. Ni-ta-ku-penda = I-will-you-love.
What are morphemes?
We can discover “word forms” may consist of a number of elements. Recognize in English, word forms such as; talks, talker, talked and talking. It consists of one element “talk” and the other four elements -s, -er, -ed, ing= All these five elements are described as morphemes.
The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function” and they include forms to indicate past tense or plural in ex. renewed and tourists.
Minimal units of meaning
re- (again) new (recently made)
tour (travel for pleasure) -ist (person who)
Grammatical function
-ed (past tense)
-s (plural)
What are Free and Bound Morphemes?
There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as a single word, for example, new and tour. The free morphemes can be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Bound morphemes, are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, for example, re-, -ist, -ed, -s. These forms are also described as affixes. All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are bound morphemes in English.
In words such as receive, reduce and repeat we can identify the bound morpheme re- but the elements -ceive, -duce- and -peat are not separate word forms and can therefore not be free morphemes- they are described as “bound stems”.
undressed
un- dress-ed
prefix-stem-suffix
(bound)-(free)- (bound)
Carelessness
Care-less-ness
stem-suffix-suffix
(free)-(bound)-(bound)
What are lexical and functional morphemes?
Free morphemes fall into two categories.
The first category is a set of ordinary nouns (girl, house) verbs (break, sit) adjective (long, sad) and adverbs (never, always) that we think of as the words that carry the “content” of the messages we convey- these forms are called lexical morphemes and we can add new lexical morphemes to the language.
Other types of morphemes are called functional morphemes for example articles (a, the) conjunctions (and, because) prepositions (on, near) and pronouns (it, me) and they are described as a “closed” class of words.
What are derivational Morphemes?
Affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can be divided into two types and these are derivational morphemes. We use these bound forms to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.
For example the derivational morpheme -ment changes the verb encourage to the noun encouragement.
The noun class can become the verb classify by the addition of the derivational morpheme -ify.
Derivational morphemes can be suffixes like -ment and -ify and also prefixes, such as re, pre, ex, mis, co, un.
What are inflectional morphemes?
The second set of bound morphemes contains inflectional morphemes, they indicate the grammatical function of a word.
Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, past or not and if it is a comparative or possessive form. English has eight inflectional morphemes, and all of them are suffixes.
Nouns------Verbs------Adjectives
Inflectional;
Jim-´s—-like-s, laugh-ing—-quiet-er
Sister-s—–enjoy-ed, be-en—-loud-est
Derivational;
critic-ism——Critic-ize——Critic-al
encourage-ment——class-ify——wonder-ful
What is “Morphological Description”?
Morphological Description
An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word, for example old and older are both adjectives and the er only creates a different version of the adjective.
However a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er. Just because they look the same -er doesn’t mean they do the same kind of work.
When inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes are used together the derivational comes before the inflectional teacher-s.
Morphemes /free/
lexical - teach, shock
functional - and, the
Morphemes /bound/
derivational- -er, -ness
inflectional -s, -ed
What are Morphs, Allomorphs and some Special Cases?
For example, the form cats consists of two parts /kaet/ + /s/ with a lexical morpheme (cat) and an inflectional morpheme (plural). The words dogs and horses also consist of two parts, /dog/ + /z/ and /hors/ + /ez/ each consisting of a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (plural) Down stairs are the three allomorphs of the one morpheme “plural”.
Example: [l] and [ɫ] are allophones of the English phoneme /L/
Morpheme are said to be allomorphs of that morpheme. For example, the regular plurals of English nouns are formed by adding one of three morphs on to the form of the singular: /s/, /z/, or /iz/ (in the corresponding written forms both /s/ and /z/ are written -s and /es/…
Some special cases are “zero-morphs” involved when we add the “plural” morpheme to a word like “sheep”. When we add plural to “man” we could have a vowel change in the word (a) to (e) as the morph that produces the “irregular” plural form men. It is more likely that we treat the two forms man and men as two distinct lexical morphemes that we learn as separate words.
*There is a similar pattern in “past tense”. The inflectional suffix -ed is used in the typical derivation. Flirted, hugged, kissed.
*The irregular forms are like separate lexical morphemes: go/went, be/was/were.
What are some Morphemes in other languages such as Kanaru and Ganda.
Kanaru; From this set, we can propose that nam- is a prefix, functioning as a derivational morpheme that is used to derive nouns from adjectives. Similar to the suffix -ness in English. We can make predictions when we encounter other forms. If length is namkurugu then we can be reasonably sure that long is kurugu.
Excellent=karati becomes excellence=namkarite
Big; = kura becomes bigness=namkura
Small; gana becomes smallness= namgana Bad; dibi becomes badness= namdibi
Ganda; Different languages also employ means to produce inflectional marking on forms. Singular and plural. From this sample, we observe that there is an inflectional prefix omu-used with singular nouns and aba-used with the plural of those nouns. If abalenzi means boys then we can learn that omulenzi must be the singular form for boy.
Doctor=omusawo becomes doctors=abasawo
Woman= omukazi becomes
women= abakazi
Girl= omuwala becomes girls= abawala
Heir=omusika becomes abasika= heirs
What are some Morphemes in other languages such as illocano and Tagalog
Illocano/Singular and plural
In these examples there seems to be repetition of the first part of the singular form. If the first part is bi- in the singular then the plural begins with this form repeated bibi- The process here is known as reduplication=repeating all or part of a form. If you found out the plural form for fields is taltalon then you can work out that the singular field is talon.
Head=ulo becomes Heads= ululo
Road= dalan becomes daldalan = roads
Life= biag becomes bibiag= lives
Plant=mula becomes mulmula= plants.
Tagalog
Basa= read becomes bumasa = Read! Becomes babasa=Will read
Tawag=Call becomes tumawag= Call! Becomes tatawag= Will write
Sulat=Write becomes sumulat=Write! Becomes susulat= Will write
The first infix is “um” and the third infix is to repeat the two first letters.
What is writing?
We can define writing as the symbolic representation of language through graphic signs. It is unlike language not acquired but has to be learned through sustained conscious effort. Not all languages have a written form. Human attempts to make information visually back to drawings made 20,000 years ago & clay tokens 10,000 years ago- earliest writing is known as a “cuneiform”.
What are pictograms?
Cave drawings may serve to record some event but they are not treated as a type of specifically linguistic message but treated as a part of pictorial art. But when these “pictures” started to look alot like particular images in a consistent way, we started to describe the form as picture-writing meaning pictogram. Modern pictograms are language independent and can be understood with the same meaning in alot of different meanings. 16.2. Like the signs you see on the road showing a fork/knife + telephone + cup”. Pictograms are graphic representations of a physical object.
What are ideograms?
A picture of a cup doesn’t just let us know that there is a cup in this location- that is odd because we wouldn’t be just looking for a cup, but also something to put in that cup, such as coffee or tea, and maybe something to go with it, such as cake or cookies (none of which is included in the picture). We actually interpret the images, not as objects, but as symbols of the object, with meaning associated with the symbol that may be tied to the object. Ideograms are graphic symbols used to describe words, ideas, or concepts.
What are logograms?
Sumerians living in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago used to make cuneiform writing, which means “wedge-shaped”. They pressed a shaped implement into soft-clay that created a permanent symbol which then hardened, resulting in forms such as «l<>l «ll<l<l<l<l«l The form of this symbol gives no clue to what this entity is being referred to. The relationship between the written form and the object has become arbitrary and we have a clear example of word-writing or a logogram. Modern logograms in English are forms such as $, 8, &.
What is phonographic writing?
“Symbols adopted to represent the sounds of word are known as phonographic writing”. In phonographic writing, the symbol represents a sound or pattern with no reference to meaning. Like the chinese alphabet and english its just symbols; “K-J-L” or “___l “
The physical shape in the form of an arrow —-> was first used in representations of the word for “arrow” (ti) then later adopted for the more abstract concept “life” (ti) simply because both words sounded the same. The symbol /= was used for a physical object “reed” (gi) and then taken over by the abstract concept “reimbursement” (gi) on the basis of similar pronunciation.
