MORPHOLOGY I Word Problems WHAT IS A WORD

MORPHOLOGY I Word Problems

WHAT IS A WORD? [wət ɪz ej wɚd] But do we actually pause for every space? [wətɪzə wɚd] How many words do we have now? What’s a word? [wətsə wɚd] How many now? So, we can’t use phonetics to determine what words are, can we?

WHAT IS A WORD? How many words are in… Textbook Text-book Text’s book Textbook editors Textbook editing Textbook copyediting team

OTHER PROBLEMS Variations in spelling, whether in hyphen use, acronyms, or in compound words: all right/alright, O. K. /okay/ok, mixup/mix-up/mix up… Problems of isolation: You might argue that a word is a word because it stands alone, but in speech we use parts of words all the time. “Is that ‘implode’ or ‘im’? ” “Im. ” “Whaaaaaa? ” Words can’t be broken apart? That’s in-fucking-possible.

SO WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? Your book ignores issues of isolation—that sometimes parts of words can occur alone …but most linguists aren’t hung up about it either, because… Words? Where we’re going we don’t need words.

MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHEMES Well, maybe that was a bit of dramatic overstatement (morphologists do like words), but they found something even better: Morphemes are the smallest recurrent meaningful units of language. Cat=1 morpheme Cats=2 morphemes Morphology is the study of how words are constructed out of morphemes.

FINDING MORPHEMES How many morphemes? Books Textbooks Farmer Greatest Beating Unacceptable **One note: Morphemes have to have something to do with the base word. So, even though “cat” has “at” in it, “at” is not one of “cat”’s morphemes.

FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES A Bound Morpheme is one that generally can’t stand alone. You wouldn’t generally say “s” or “ing” in a sentence, would you? A Free Morpheme is one that can generally stand alone, like “cat” or “dare. ”

HOW MORPHOLOGY IS LIKE PHONOLOGY Like phonology, morphology studies the common parts of words that are units of meaning. These units of meaning, are actually called “morphs” (like “phones” in phonetics). But, when a “morph” exhibits a common pattern across many words it is a “morpheme. ” As in phonology, morphology is interested in studying a family of common segments. In phonology, interchangeable phones that have a pattern of complementary distribution are called allophones. In morphology, interchangeable morphs with complementary distribution are called allomorphs. {a}/{an} are allomorphs. They mean the same thing and are interchangeable, but there is a pattern of complementary distribution governing when you use “a” and when you use “an. ” What is it? {s} and {z} are allomorphs. Can you guess why?

REVIEW Name a few problems with the concept of a “word. ” How many morphemes does this word have? Laughter. Orange? Four? Bookish? Fish? Banana? Grapes? Complexity? Unhelpful? Is {ish} free or bound? Is {bat} free or bound? What’s an allomorph?