Content words and function words Content words nouns

Content words and function words • Content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, (most) adverbs – denote objects, actions, attributes, ideas e. g. children, anarchism, sour, purple, run, liberty – open class : new words regularly added e. g. download, byte, email,

Content words and function words • Function words: conjunctions (and, or, …), prepositions (in, of, …), articles (a, the), pronouns (it, he, …) – No clear lexical meaning – No obvious concepts associated with them – Closed class – Grammatical role [sometimes called lexical vs grammatical words]

Psycholinguistic evidence • Slips of the tongue typically involve content words – “the journal of the editor” instead of “the editor of the journal” • In early speech children tend to omit function words – “doggie barking” • Data from aphasia studies

Broca’s aphasia • “Yes — ah — Monday ah — Dad — and Dad — ah — Hospital — and ah — Wednesday — nine o’clock and ah Thursday — ten o’clock ah doctors — two — ah doctors and — ah — teeth — yah. And a doctor — ah girl — and gums, and I. ” (FR&H, p. 45)

Broca’s Aphasia • Broca (1865) described patients who displayed halting, agrammatic speech – Content words were well preserved – Function words (i. e. , prepositions, articles) impaired – Typically left inferior prefrontal lobe of the cortex is affected

Wernicke’s aphasia • Wernicke (1874) described patients whose speech is fluent, but has little or no informational value • “I felt worse because I can no longer keep in mind from the mind of the minds to keep me from mind and up to the ear which can be to find among ourselves. ”

Wernicke’s aphasia • • Neologisms Speech appears to have no information content “fluent nonsense” Preserved function words, impaired content words • Comprehension impaired • Even simple sentences not well understood • Associated with left temporal lobe damage

Broca and Wernicke’s areas

Morphemes • • • desirable likely inspired happy developed sophisticated • ADJECTIVE • • • undesirable unlikely uninspired unhappy undeveloped unsophisticated • UN- + ADJECTIVE

Morphemes • • Phonetics Phonetician Phonic Phonology Phonologist Phonological • • Telephone Telephonic Phoneme Phonemic Allophone Euphonious Symphony

Morphemes • Basic meaningful items • Many words contain several morphemes – 1 morpheme: boy, desire – 2 morphemes: boy+ish, desire+able – 3 morphemes: boy+ish+ness, desire+able+ity – 4 morphemes: un+ desire+able+ity

Morphemes • The morpheme is the locus of arbitrariness • A multimorphemic word is typically non arbitrary – Writable CD, Rewritable CD, Unrewritable CD • Discreteness • Creativity

Bound and Free Morphemes • Free morphemes: make a word by themselves – boy, desire, gentle, man • Bound morphemes: do not make a word by themselves – -ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans-, un- • Prefixes and suffixes (affixes)

Derivation vs. Inflection • Derivation – Adding an affix to a stem creates a new word – un- + true untrue – true and untrue are different words

Derivation vs. Inflection • Inflection – Adding an affix (suffix in English) to a stem creates a new form of the same word – talk + -ing talking – talk + -ed talked – talking and talked are different forms of the same word

Lexemes and word-forms • Ambiguity in the use of the word “word”. – boy and boys are the same word – boy and boys are different words • Notion of “lexeme” – boy and boys are different word-forms of the same lexeme – boy and boyish are different lexemes • Lexeme = lexical word; function words (and, in, the, etc. ) are not lexemes.

Derivation vs. Inflection • Derivation creates new lexemes • Inflection creates word forms of a given lexeme

Roots, stems and lexemes • boy+ish+ness – boy = root and stem and lexeme – The suffix –ish is added to the stem boy giving the lexeme boyish – boyish can serve as a stem for further suffixation though it is not a root – The suffix –ness is added to the stem boyish giving the lexeme boyishness – “stem” = “base”

Rules of word (lexeme) formation • Derivation : stem + affix – boyish + -ness • Compounding : stem 1 + stem 2 – black + berry • Conversion (zero-derivation) : stem – love. V love. N