Lecture 3 - Morphemes

Question 1

Name the building blocks of language

Answer 1

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/)

Question 2

What is Morphology

Answer 2

study of the internal structure of words and the rules that govern it

Question 3

Where did the term Morphology come from?

Answer 3

the term was coined in biology and borrowed to linguistics from this discipline

Question 4

What is a morpheme?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

A word can consist of … morpheme(s)

Answer 5

one (monomorphemic, simplex)
or more (polymorphemic, complex)
-> but every meaningful word must consist of one at least morpheme

Question 6

Morphemes are not a homogeneous group.

There are different types according to:

Answer 6

• Autonomy
• Function/meaning
• Position
  + special cases

Question 7

A morpheme consists of which two sides?

Answer 7

a meaning side and a morph/form

Question 8

Types of morphemes: autonomy

Name and describe the two types of morphemes

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Parts of words which serve as the basis for attaching other morphemes are called …

Answer 9

• bases/stems
• e.g. mother in motherhood
• stems: bases to which you add bound grammatical morphemes

Question 10

a word derived from a base is called …

Answer 10

• derivative

- motherhood

Question 11

Give an example for simplex/complex bases

Answer 11

agree (simplex) > disagree (complex) > disagreement

Question 12

Simplex bases are called…

Answer 12

• roots

- are the core element in a word and normally a word cannot exist without a root

Question 13

Types of morphemes: function/meaning

Name and describe the two types of morphemes

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Types of morphemes: position

Name and describe the two types of morphemes

Answer 14

Prefix:

• Affix before the base
• un(happy), dis(like), mis(pronounce) …

Suffix:

• Affix after the base
• (manage)ment, (mother)hood, (thoughtful)ness, (cup)ful

Question 15

Give an overview over the types of morphemes (family tree)

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Bound morphemes can either be … or …

Answer 16

• grammatical/inflectional

- lexical/derivational

Question 17

Grammatical/inflectional morphemes:

Describe what is meant by inflection

Answer 17

Inflection is when grammatical information or categories are expressed by affixes

Question 18

Grammatical/inflectional morphemes:

Give examples for inflection

Answer 18

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

Question 19

lexical/derivational morphemes:

Describe what is meant by derivation

Answer 19

Derivation is when new lexemes are created by adding an affix to a lexical base

Question 20

lexical/derivational morphemes:

Give examples for derivation

Answer 20

real-ity, fond-ness, re-write, dis-claim, play-er, friend-ly

Question 21

Is it possible to find derivation and inflection in one word?

Answer 21

Yes:
speak-er-s
base - derivational suffix - inflectional suffix

Question 22

Name the differences between inflection and derivation

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Analyse the following word in terms of the autonomy, function and position of their morphemes:
Renewing

Answer 23

Re - bound, lexical, prefix
new - free, lexical
ing - bound, grammatical, suffix

Question 24

Analyse the following words in terms of the autonomy, function and position of their morphemes:

1) Cleaner (someone who cleans)
2) Cleaner (more clean)

Answer 24

1) clean - free, lexical; er - bound, lexical, suffix

2) clean - free, lexical; er - bound, grammatical, suffix

Question 25

What are Unique Morphemes?

Answer 25

• 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)

Question 26

Give the definition of Allomorphy

Answer 26

• one meaningful unit (i.e. morpheme) can have multiple different forms (e.g. actual sounds)
• they carry the same meaning

Question 27

Describe: Morpheme, Morph, Allomorph

Answer 27

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]

Question 28

Conditioning:

Name the types of Conditioning

Answer 28

• phonologically conditioned
• morphologically conditioned
• lexically conditioned

Question 29

Conditioning:

What is phonological Conditioning?

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

Conditioning:

What is morphological Conditioning?

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

Conditioning:

What is lexical Conditioning?

Answer 31

• 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