Chapter 4 - Morphology

Question 1

Define morphology

Answer 1

Morphology: the study of the internal structure of complex words

Question 2

Give an example of morphology using the word “cats”

Answer 2

Ex; the word [kaets] has 2 meaningful elements

1. [kaet] - means "cat"
2. [s] - means "more than one"
3. [kaets] - means "more than one cat"

* All other combinations of [s] and [kaet] do not mean "more than one cat", just this specific order means "cats"
* [kaet] seems to only designate "cat", while [s] does not mean a particular number, nor can it be an answer to "how many cats are there?" - [s] only means "more than one" when attached to a noun (which can be other than cat)

Question 3

Define what is a morpheme

Answer 3

Morpheme: string of one or more phonemes that convey a particular meaning

Question 4

Define what are free and bound morphemes using the word “cats”

Answer 4

• /kaet/ is a morpheme (it is a free morpheme - it can be used on its own to convey the meaning “cat)
  
  • /s/ is also a morpheme (it is a bound morpheme - it must be bound to another morpheme for it to convey its meaning)

Question 5

How are bound morphemes also called?

Answer 5

Affixes

Question 6

Define the difference between morphemes and phonemes

Answer 6

Morpheme vs phoneme
Morphemes are the smallest units which carry meaning. Phonemes, on the other hand, are the smallest units which signal a difference in meaning but are not meaningful in and of themselves (they are just sounds).

Question 7

Explain the 3 types of bound morphemes (affixes)

Answer 7

Suffixes: affixes which attach at the end of their host
• /s/ is a suffix
Prefixes: affixes which attach at the start of their host word
• /ri/ as in “re-do”
Infixes: affixes which are placed somewhere inside their host morpheme
• Rare to nonexistent in English

Question 8

Can an infix be placed anywhere in a word? Are all morphemes that are in the middle of words considered infixes?

Answer 8

• We need to specify WHERE in the word to add the infixes - otherwise it’s confusing
• A morpheme between a prefix and a suffix is NOT a infix - an infix needs to be into another morpheme
○ It is possible to have multiple suffixes or prefixes

Question 9

What are process morphemes?

Answer 9

Process morphemes: require the modification of the morpheme to which it attaches

Question 10

What is reduplication?

Answer 10

• Reduplication: One takes the initial consonant and vowel of the base morpheme (CV - meaning Consonant Vowel) and prefixes them (in their original order) to that base.

Question 11

What is the main resemblance between allomorphs and allophones?

Answer 11

Allomorphs will also be in complementary distributions, just like allophones, for the same reasons as for allophones (regarding rules)

Question 12

What are morphophonemic rules?

Answer 12

Ø Therefore, the morpheme that means “my” in Sierra Popoluca is /an-/, and it has 3 allomorphs: /am-/, /a longn-/, and /an-/

In Sierra Popoluca, /m/, /n/ and /long n/ are phonemes - therefore this phonological rule changes one phoneme into another
	• Such rules are called morphophonemic rules, and the alternations they give rise to are called morphophonemic alternations

Question 13

Describe what is a productive phoneme

Answer 13

Productive morpheme: can be freely used with “new” lexical items such as an invented word (like “slorg”)
• Ex: adding ex- to “slorg” becomes “ex-slorg” and we can all understand that it means “something that used to be a slorg” even though we have no clue what “slorg” means

Question 14

Describe what is an unproductive (frozen) phoneme

Answer 14

Unproductive (or frozen) morpheme: the list of words that can be made with that morpheme is finite; we cannot put it to any word and make it make sense
• Ex: adding “-th” to “slorg” makes “slorgth” - which makes no sense
• Words like “strength” and “warmth” are abstracts of “strong” and “warm”, and need to be stored separately since they are irregular forms (ex: both “strong” and “strength” are stored)

Question 15

What is the main difference between productive and unproductive phonemes?

Answer 15

Main difference: it is possible to list all words with an unproductive morpheme, while it is impossible to list all the words with a productive one since it can be added to virtually any new word
Unpredictable forms of phonemes must be stored in the grammar, in the same way that unproductive morphemes must also be stored because they are unpredictable

Question 16

What are ambiguous words?

Answer 16

Ambiguous words: have different interpretations depending on the context

Question 17

Describe the 2 different types of word ambiguity

Answer 17

• Lexical ambiguity: based on the fact that often different meanings are associated with an identical phonological form in the lexicon (homophones)
Ex: /najt/ can be “night” or “knight”

• Structural ambiguity: centers around the fact that the same elements may be combined in more than one order, with the interpretation matching the order of combination
	Ex: The order in which we form "untieable" changes the meaning of the word
		(a) combine /ən/ and /taj/ to get /əntaj/ ‘untie’, add /-əbl̩/ giving ‘able to be [ untie ] -d’  (b) combine /taj/ and /-əbl̩/ to get /tajəbl̩/ ‘able to be tied’, add /ən-/ giving ‘not [ able to be

Question 18

How do we show in which order words are formed and how it changes the meaning?

Answer 18

Using a tree structure

Question 19

Describe the components of a tree structure

Answer 19

• Sisters: nodes of the tree which have a common mother node
  * V: indicates that when “un” is attached to a verb it still makes a verb
  * Adj: indicates that the result is still an adjective

Why does sisterhood matter?
• Because the meaning of the word is figured out by looking at the sisterhood relationships within the tree

Question 20

What are cranberry morphemes? Give an example

Answer 20

Cranberry morphemes: complex words which seem to be made of a morpheme attached to a meaningless morpheme
Ex: cranberry and raspberry: we understand what berries are, but what are cran and rasp?
• Hard to determine if they are simple (and therefore we should ignore the parts that seem meaningful to see the word as a whole) or complex (and therefore try to figure out what cran means)