Morphology Flashcards
What is morphology?
The study of the smallest units of meaning
The study of the structures of words
Morpheme?
The smallest unit of meaning
Every word has at least 1 morpheme
Forms vs meanings of words and morphemes
Forms: the sounds that make up the words
Meanings: the concepts they express
Allomorphs
variant pronunciations of a morpheme
based on the phonological context
Ex: English plural morpheme -s /z/ has 3 allomorphs
([z], [əz], [s]):
cat /kæt + z/ [kæts] devoicing after voiceless non-sibilant consonant
fox /fɑks + z/ [fɑksəz] schwa-insertion after sibilants
dog /dɑg+ z/ [dɑgz] [z] elsewhere
Surface realization comes about via what 4 steps?
- Lexical entries
- Morphological rules (of plural formation)
- Phonological rules
- Allophonic (phonetic) variation
Mono-morphemic vs multi-morphemic
Mono-morphemic: – words that cannot be broken down into meaningful parts • tree, black, think Multi-morphemic: – words that are morphologically complex • tree-s, black-board, un-think-able
Free vs. bound morphemes
• Free: a morpheme that can stand as an
independent word (i.e. can be free-standing)
e.g. tree, black, board, think
• Bound: a morpheme that can’t stand alone
e.g. -s, -un, -able
Analytic languages vs Synthetic languages
Analytic languages have mostly free morphemes
Synthetic languages have mostly bound morphemes
What is a root?
The morpheme in a word that carries the
major component of meaning
In English, mainly free rarely bound but do exist (eg. kempt)
What is an affix?
no lexical category*, always bound
Pre vs suf vs in
Front of base, back of base, within base
Root vs. Base
Root: The one morpheme that carries the
major component of meaning
Base: one or more morphemes
– form to which any affix is attached
What is a compound?
Compounds contain two or more roots
Rightheaded?
the right root is usually the head (the morpheme that
determines the lexical category of the entire
compound)
2 ways to represent compounds
Trees and bracketing
Constituent?
constituent is a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure.
Tests for compound words
- Stress
black board = compound (a chalkboard)
black board = phrase (a board that is black)
• primary stress is usually not placed on heads
of compounds - Placement of regular inflection
• tense and plural markers can’t go inside
compounds - Must stay together
- Semantic drift
Meaning doesn’t have to be a combination of the parts
Derivational vs. Inflectional
Derivational affixes change the meaning of the word
– Some change syntactic category of the word
Inflectional affixes
– mark things like tense and number
– don’t change the syntactic category of the word
– adjust meaning slightly
Noun inflection: What is case?
provides information about the role that a
noun plays in a sentence
Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, ablative
Noun inflection: What is grammatical gender?
= traditional name for a kind of noun class
system in languages like French, German,
Russian, …
Noun inflection: What is Noun class?
Classes may be partly semantically defined:
people, animals, inanimate things, body parts, etc.
– Grammatical gender = one kind of noun class
system
Types of Inflection
– case, gender, noun class, number on nouns
– tense and aspect on verbs
Noun inflection: What is numbers?
Common system: plural vs. singular
Verb inflection: Tense
Indicates the point in time, relative to the
time of speaking that an event took place
Temporally when
Verbs inflection: Aspect
Expresses the duration or time of
completion of an event
temporally how
Category change: Inflection vs. Derivation
Inflectional affix: does not change the grammatical
category
• Derivational affix: often* changes the grammatical
category of the base
Ordering: Inflection vs. Derivation
Inflectional affixes always follow derivational affixes
when both are present
Semantic Composition: Inflection vs. Derivation
• Meaning of inflected complex word: – Sum of its parts i.e. compositional meaning • Meaning of a derived complex word: – Sum of parts OR meaning may have drifted
Productivity: Inflection vs. Derivation
• Inflectional affixes:
– are more productive than derivational affixes
– attach to virtually* all instances of the category
• Derivational affixes:
– often attach to only a restricted set of bases
English has 8 inflectional affixes
- plural: “cats”
- possessive/genitive case: “the cat’s paw”
- 3rd person sg. agreement: “the cat jumps a lot”
- past tense: “the cat jumped off the couch”
- progressive aspect: “the cat is jumping”
- perfective aspect: “the cat has jumped”
- comparative: “this cat is fluffier”
- superlative: “this cat is the fluffiest”
Root internal changes
changes inside the root can mark grammatical
change
Suppletion
change in entire morpheme, eg. is ~ was
Only in high frequency words
Reduplication
copy some part of the root and add it to the
root
Conversion
A new word is created by assigning an existing word to a new category (noun, verb, adj, etc.)
Clipping
Creating a new word by shortening an existing
multisyllabic word
