Morphology Flashcards
Morphology
deals with the structure of words
Free Form
elements that do not have to occur in a fixed position with respect to neighbouring elements, and (in many cases) can appear in isolation
-dinosaurs
Morphemes
- smallest unit in language that carries information about lexical or grammatical meaning
- reactivate: re-, act, -iv, -ate
Simple words
-monomorphemic, consisting of a single morpheme
Complex words
-polymorphemic, consisting of two or more morphemes
Morpheme types
- Free vs. bound
- Root vs. affix:morpheme’s position within word
- Derivational vs. inflectional
Free vs. bound
- refer to the morpheme’s ability to occur on its own
- free morpheme: can be a word by itself.
- A bound morpheme: must be attached to another element.
Root
- core, necessary element of a word.
- Free: English morphemes do, treat, and happy in re-do, treat-ment, un-happy.
- Bound: e.g. Japanese arui-
Derivational vs. inflectional
refer to the morpheme’s function within the word
Base
-part to which an affix attaches
Affixes
- Affix(es): (optional) all the other morphemes in the word; affixes are always bound morphemes
- Prefix: an affix that attaches to the front of the base (re-do).
- Suffix: an affix that attaches to the end of the base (act-iv-ate).
- Infix: an affix that occurs within another morpheme. (bili-binili)
Decomposing words into morphemes
-subtract the outermost morpheme and check whether the rest of the form exists as a word having the same/related meaning
Derivation
- uses affixes to form words distinct from their bases in meaning and/or grammatical categories
- nation - nation-al - national-ity.
- noun adjective noun
Parts of speech
- N = noun (the ___, a/an ___ ).
- V = verb (agree with the subject with respect to gender/number/person, etc.).
- A = adjective (modify N, be/look/feel/sound__ ).
- Adv = adverb (modify V, modify A, modify sentence).
- P = preposition ( __ N; in, on, with, during, etc.).
Inflection
- modifies a word’s form to mark some grammatical information (as opposed to the lexical meaning). It is most often expressed by affixation
- the books, He reads well, the smaller one
Inflectional affixation
- English inflection is marked by suffixation
- can express a range of grammatical meanings:
- Number, Gender, Person, Tense, and Case.
- Note, however, that inflection is not the only way to express grammatical meaning
Number
- expresses contrasts for countable quantities.
- The categories of Singular, Dual, and Plural.
Gender
- expresses contrasts in noun classes.
- categories of Masculine, Feminine, Neuter.
- Depending on the gender of the noun, other words agree in gender.
Person
- expresses contrasts between the speaker, the addressee, and anyone else referred to in the sentence.
- First Person (speaker(s)), Second Person (addressee(s)), Third Person (anyone else).
- English 1st: I, me, we, us; 2nd: you; 3rd: he, she, it, they, them
Tense
- expresses the time of an event/state in reference to the speech moment.
- Past, Present, and Future
- Progressive (continuation), Perfect (completion)
- Progressive: He is eating an apple.
- Perfect: He has eaten
Case
- expresses the role of words in sentences:
- Subject, Object, Possessive/Genitive, etc.
Internal change
- grammatical contrasts are indicated by substitution of segments within a root/stem
- sing-sang, drive-drove, foot-feet
Suppletion
- grammatical contrasts are indicated by replacing morphemes with phonologically unrelated ones
- go-went, good-better/best
Reduplication
- grammatical contrasts are indicated by repeating all or part of the base
- lakad-lalakad