Words and their parts MORPHOLOGY Exercise 1 1

Words and their parts MORPHOLOGY

Exercise 1. 1. � 1. Make a list of word classes as you know them. � 2. Now analyze the sentence: �‘Criminologists, in order to uncover clues not visible to the eye, use specialized tools, such as luminal, a liquid that reacts with the hemoglobin in blood to illuminate previously invisible blood stains’, � 3. Assign each of the words to a word class

Content words �Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs �Refer to something in our experience (whether real or imagined)

Function words �Allow us to connect different parts of phrases, clauses and sentences, or to convey another type of meaning, such as polarity (‘yes’ or ‘no’ polarity), prepositions, prepositional phrases, articles, discourse markers

How many words begin with ‘b’? List the different dictionary entries you would create � 1. The bear attacked him. � 2. I can’t bear the sight of him. � 3. People argue over the right to bear arms. � 4. Bare feet are not allowed. � 5. She bore up well under the strain. � 6. He bears no malice towards those who did him this injustice. � 7. I was born at 5 a. m. � 8. In the village, there was a woman who bore twins four times. � 9. He is such a bore. � 10. With bared teeth, he uttered his horrifying threat.

Homonyms �Words which sound the same but have different meanings �Bear, bare �Bore, bore

Polysemy �Words with different, but related senses �Bear, bear (3. and 6. )

Verb inflection �Example 6: �He bears him no malice �I bear him no malice �Is ‘bear’ and ‘bears’ the same word?

Look at the list and decide if it is considered a word � 1. hello � 2. chair � 3. the � 4. friend � 5. friendship � 6. ly � 7. friends � 8. goodbye � 9. ceive 10. un 11. gotcha 12. gonna 13. coffee cup 14. cran 15. blackboard 16. faked

Content words and function words �Content words – refer to concepts in the realm of experience (tangible or abstract, real or imaginary) �Function words – create connections or provide specification of how we are to interpret the content words

Content words �Nouns �Verbs �Adjectives �Adverbs � - an open class of words, as new content words are being created constantly

Function words �Pronouns �Determiners �Prepositions �Conjunctions � - a closed class: fixed, relatively stable, and new ones are not inclined to be added

Make a list of several words which are new to your language �For each word: � 1. List its word class: adjective, adverb, noun, verb? � 2. In what contexts have you heard the word � 3. How recent is it? How did it enter the language? � 4. Google the word. How many hits does it get? Look through some of the hits. Does the way the word is used match your understanding?

Neologisms: how are new words created? �Acronyms: AIDS < acquired immunity deficiency syndrome �Alphabetic abbreviations: CD< compact disk �Clippings: prof < professor �Blends: camcorder < camera + recorder �Generified words: xerox (<the name of the corporation that produces photocopying machines) �Proper nouns (guillotine – named after its inventor, Dr. Joseph Guillotin)

Neologisms: how are new words created? �Borrowings: Direct (avocado – Aztec word) �Borrowings: Indirect (grattacielo<skyscraper) �Changing the meaning of words

What is a word? �The task of any language learner, including young children acquiring their language, is to figure out how to segment and analyze the talking noise around them into meaningful units – namely, words and their meaningful parts �Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: “word is the smallest independent unit of language, or one that can be separated from other such units in an utterance”

What is a word? �Words are “usually separated by spaces in writing and distinguished phonologically, as by accent” �Chinese doesn’t insert spaces between words in writing �People who can’t read and speakers of languages without writing systems know what words are in their languages

Morpheme �Word – difficult to delineate �Morpheme – the smallest unit of linguistic meaning that has clear delineation

Morphology �Studies morphemes and the ways in which morphemes combine together into larger units of meaning

Determine the number of morphemes in each of the words below. How can you divide them into categories? � 1. dogs � 2. unpack � 3. carrot � 4. behead � 5. repackage � 6. redness � 7. deactivate � 8. classroom � 9. paper � 10. writer’s

Morphemes �Free �Bound

Free and bound morphemes �Free m. can stand alone as words (e. g. dog, carrot, head, red, class, room, paper, write) �Bound m. must be attached to another morpheme (e. g. s, er, un, be, de, ate, ness, re, ‘s)

Root morphemes �The smallest units cannot be analyzed into smaller units (e. g. pack, write, act)

Stem �Root morpheme + affixes �E. g. write + er = writer + s = writers

Affixes �Bound morphemes that attach to roots or stems in different ways

Affixes �Prefixes: attach at the beginning of a root or stem morphemes: un-, re-, dis-, etc. �Suffixes: attach at the end of root or stem morphemes: -s, , -ness, -ly, etc. �Infixes: insert in the middle of root or stem morphemes (Croatian pokušati ‘try’ > pokuša-va-ti) �Circumfixes: attach simultaneously at the beginning and at the end of a bound or stem morpheme (German: past participle ge-hab-t)

Bound morphemes �Inflectional �Derivational

Inflectional morphemes �Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning of a word; they change the word because of constraints provided by the syntax of their surrounding phrase or sentence (e. g. I come, he comes)

Inflectional morphemes �Provide information on: �Case, �gender, �person, �mood, � tense, �voice, �aspect

Person �Distinguishes entities referred to in an utterance � 1 st person: speaker � 2 nd person: addressee � 3 rd person: a default category that refers to everything else �Person – often combined with number

Number �A grammatical property of nouns �Singular – plural (some languages also dual) �Uncountable nouns cannot be pluralized (abstract nouns: carelessness, peace; non-individual material: milk, rice); a mass noun in one language may be countable in another: furniture – meuble/meubles

Gender �Genus ‘kind, sort’ �Masculine, feminine, neuter �Sometimes: gender indicated on the noun itself: Sp. amigo – amiga; forms of the indefinite article un/una and the adjective americano/a agree with the gender of the noun

Case �One of the most important functions of morphology is to distinguish the roles played by the various participants in an event �Case indicates a noun’s relation to some other element in a clause or phrase �Case marking – the relation of the noun to the verb (as its subject, direct or indirect object) or to another noun (possessive or locational relation)

Tense �All human languages have ways for locating situations in time �Tense used to locate an event or state in relation to a point in time �In simple tenses (past, present, future), the reference point is “now”, at the moment of speaking �English – 2 tenses: past and non-past

Aspect �Encodes whether an action is (or was) completed (perfective), ongoing, repeated (iterative) or habitual (progressive): �John is painting the kitchen. �John was painting the kitchen. �John painted the kitchen.

Mood �A grammatical category that expresses the speaker’s belief, opinion, or attitude about the content of an utterance

Mood �Indicative - used for making declarative assertions �Interrogative – asking questions �Imperative – giving commands �Subjunctive – wishes, thoughts, hopes, doubts etc. �Conditional – expresses what one would or should do

English inflectional morphemes Word class i. morpheme function examples Nouns s plural dogs ‘s possessive John’s er comparative faster est superlative fastest s 3 rd person sg. walks ed Past tense walked ed Past participle cooked ing Present participle walking Adjectives Verbs

Inflection and derivation in English �Inflectional morphemes are few in English, but derivational morphemes are many �Inflectional morpheme does not change the grammatical class or the underlying meaning of a word, a derivational morpheme changes one or the other

English derivational morphemes �-ness, -ly: change the grammatical class of a word: friend (noun) > friend-ly (adverb); �Friendly (adverb) > friendliness (noun)

English derivational morphemes �Some derivational morphemes change or add to the meaning of the root or stem, but do not change the grammatical class �unhappily �impossible �intolerant �mistreat �friendship �blueish

Morphonematics �Impossible – inflexible: allomorphs of the same morpheme

Allomorphy A B C D Clicks /kliks/ Pigs /pigz/ Flaws /floz/ Kisses /kisiz/ clips beds days judges plates caves knees sashes myths pans plows churches

Allomorphy �Different pronunciations of the plural morpheme depend on the surrounding phonetic context �A: unvoiced consonant �B: voliced consonant �C: words ending in vowels �D: vowel epenthesis

Can you identify the morphemes? �The musicians reconsidered their director’s unusual proposal.

The meaning of complex words �readable - well written, good style �A bill is payable – doesn’t mean that it can be paid but it must be payed �If a theory is questionable, it doesn’t mean that it can be questioned but that it is dubious and suspect �Meanings of many complex words – not merely composites of the meanings of their parts (semantic drift)

Compounding �Concatenation of two or more lexemes to form a new lexeme �English: greenhouse, moonlight, download

Compounding: writing conventions �Often, the hyphen is used when a compound has been recently created (black-board) �When it has gained a certain currency or permanence, spelled without a hyphen (black board) �Spelled as one word (blackboard)

Summary �Derivational morphology creates new lexemes from existing ones, with a change in a word’s lexical category or meaning �Inflectional morphology adds grammatical information to a lexeme: person, number, gender, case, tense, aspect, mood