Lecture 3 - Morphemes Flashcards
Name the building blocks of language
1) Sentence (My dad adores old cars which were built in the 50s.)
2) Clause (My dad adores old cars)
3) Phrase (My dad - adores - old cars - …)
4) Word/Lexeme (My - dad - adores - old - cars - …)
5) Morpheme (car+s)
6) Phoneme (/k/ - /a/ - /r/ - /s/)
What is Morphology
study of the internal structure of words and the rules that govern it
Where did the term Morphology come from?
the term was coined in biology and borrowed to linguistics from this discipline
What is a morpheme?
is the smallest meaningful unit
e.g. = woman to be married or = plural
= a series of images appearing in the mind during sleep or = plural
A word can consist of … morpheme(s)
one (monomorphemic, simplex)
or more (polymorphemic, complex)
-> but every meaningful word must consist of one at least morpheme
Morphemes are not a homogeneous group.
There are different types according to:
- Autonomy
- Function/meaning
- Position
+ special cases
A morpheme consists of which two sides?
a meaning side and a morph/form
Types of morphemes: autonomy
Name and describe the two types of morphemes
Free morphemes:
- Can appear on their own without any other morphemes attached to them
- e.g. man, cat, these, from
Bound morphemes:
- Can appear only in combination with other morphemes
- un(happy), (selfish)ness, (happi)ly, (cat)s
Parts of words which serve as the basis for attaching other morphemes are called …
- bases/stems
- e.g. mother in motherhood
- stems: bases to which you add bound grammatical morphemes
a word derived from a base is called …
- derivative
- motherhood
Give an example for simplex/complex bases
agree (simplex) > disagree (complex) > disagreement
Simplex bases are called…
- roots
- are the core element in a word and normally a word cannot exist without a root
Types of morphemes: function/meaning
Name and describe the two types of morphemes
Lexical morphemes:
- content words (if free)
- establish a relation between the word and the world
- nouns, verbs, adjectives; (tree, talk, deep, negation, …); i.e. open classes
- new items can be added quite easily
- new lexemes can be created quite easily
Grammatical morphemes
- function words (if free)
- establish a relation with other parts of
the sentence
- prepositions, articles, conjunctions, pronouns; plural, case, tense; i.e. closed classes
- spontaneous neologisms are impossible
Types of morphemes: position
Name and describe the two types of morphemes
Prefix:
- Affix before the base
- un(happy), dis(like), mis(pronounce) …
Suffix:
- Affix after the base
- (manage)ment, (mother)hood, (thoughtful)ness, (cup)ful
Give an overview over the types of morphemes (family tree)
Autonomy -> 1) free words:
Function -> a) open: content words; lexical classes; student, borrow, new, quickly
Function -> b) closed: function words; grammatical classes; and, the, from, every
2) bound affixes:
a) lexical or derivational affixes: un-, mini-, -ion, -ment
b) grammatical or inflectional affixes: -s, -ing, -est
Autonomy: • Free (lexeme) or bound (affix) Function: • Lexical (content/derivational) or grammatical (function/inflectional) Position (bound morphemes only): • Prefix or suffix
Bound morphemes can either be … or …
- grammatical/inflectional
- lexical/derivational
Grammatical/inflectional morphemes:
Describe what is meant by inflection
Inflection is when grammatical information or categories are expressed by affixes
Grammatical/inflectional morphemes:
Give examples for inflection
suffix - function - example
-s - plural - cats
-s - verb form for 3rd p sg - plays, writes
‘s - possessive of nouns - John’s
-ed - past tense of regular verbs - painted
-ing - progressive of verbs - singing, painting, going
-er - comparative of adj. - warmer, colder
-est - superlative of adj. - warmest, coldest
lexical/derivational morphemes:
Describe what is meant by derivation
Derivation is when new lexemes are created by adding an affix to a lexical base
lexical/derivational morphemes:
Give examples for derivation
real-ity, fond-ness, re-write, dis-claim, play-er, friend-ly
Is it possible to find derivation and inflection in one word?
Yes:
speak-er-s
base - derivational suffix - inflectional suffix
Name the differences between inflection and derivation
Inflection:
- > never changes word-class
- > stable form-meaning relationship
- > suffixes attach to all possible bases
- > only suffixes
Derivation:
- > can change word-class
- > variable form-meaning relationship
- > affixes attach to a subset of possible bases
- > suffixes and prefixes
Analyse the following word in terms of the autonomy, function and position of their morphemes:
Renewing
Re - bound, lexical, prefix
new - free, lexical
ing - bound, grammatical, suffix
Analyse the following words in terms of the autonomy, function and position of their morphemes:
1) Cleaner (someone who cleans)
2) Cleaner (more clean)
1) clean - free, lexical; er - bound, lexical, suffix
2) clean - free, lexical; er - bound, grammatical, suffix
What are Unique Morphemes?
- also known as ‘cranberry’ morphemes
- type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other
- E.g. cran(berry), cob(web), twi(light)
Give the definition of Allomorphy
- one meaningful unit (i.e. morpheme) can have multiple different forms (e.g. actual sounds)
- they carry the same meaning
Describe: Morpheme, Morph, Allomorph
Morpheme:
- Smallest meaningful/functionally relevant unit in an utterance (abstract) {plural}
Morph:
- An actual (meaningful) sound/element [z]
Allomorph:
- The morphs which correspond to the morpheme
- Morphs which have been classified as representations of a specific morpheme
- [z], [s], [ɪz], [ɹen]
- Cats: [kæts]
- Dogs: [dɒgz]
- Places: [ˈple̥ɪsɪz]
- Children: [ˈtʃɪɫdɹən]
Conditioning:
Name the types of Conditioning
- phonologically conditioned
- morphologically conditioned
- lexically conditioned
Conditioning:
What is phonological Conditioning?
- the shape of the allomorph depends on neighbouring sounds
- dependent on the neighbouring sounds
Example: indefinite article
→ [ə] before a consonant sound and [ən] before a vowel sound
Example: regular plural
→[s] after voiceless consonants, [z] after voiced consonants or vowels, and [ɪz] after sibilant consonants
Conditioning:
What is morphological Conditioning?
- the shape of the allomorph depends on the morpheme which precedes or follows
- dependent on the attached morphemes
Example: derivation Divide → Divis-ion (the base ‘divide’ is realized differently when a certain morpheme is attached to it) agile → agil-ity exclaim → exclam-ation able → abil-ity receive → recept-ive
Conditioning:
What is lexical Conditioning?
- the shape of the allomorph depends on the word as a whole
- dependent on the word itself as a whole
Example:
Child → Children
Tooth → Teeth
Sheep → Sheep
good-better-best
go-went-gone
is-are-was
