Morphology, Part 2

1. Morphology, Part 2 September 26, 2012

2. Quick Write Thoughts • Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary inside his head?

3. Quick Write Thoughts

5. Quick Write Thoughts

6. Quick Write Thoughts

7. In Our Last Episode • Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”) • Free and bound morphemes • Simple and complex words • Affixes and roots • Word-formation rules • Affixes attach to a root (or base) of a particular lexical category… • and create a new word.

8. Layers of Words • Words that are formed through the addition of multiple affixes have a layered, or hierarchical structure. • One (ugly) way to represent this structure is through bracket notation: • [root] [construct] • [[affix] + [root]] [[re-] + [construct]] (=base) • [[base] + [affix]] [[[re-] + [construct]] + [-ion]] • WORD reconstruction

9. Tree Structures • In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to represent word structure. • (because they look better and are easier to read) • re construct ion un desire able • Tree terminology: branches • nodes: where two branches meet • nodes represent constituents of the word

10. Building the Perfect Beasts • To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation… • tree structures should represent the lexical categories of all constituents at each node in the tree. • Noun Adj • Verb Adj • Aff Verb Aff Aff Verb Aff • [re-] [construct] [-ion] [un-] [desire] [-able]

11. Test Case • What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like? • Noun • Verb • Aff Verb Aff • [re-] [assign] [-ment] 3. reassignment 2. reassign 1. assign

12. Another Test Case • How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”? • Noun • Verb • Verb • Aff Noun Aff Aff • [mis-] [category] [-ize] [-ation] 4. miscategorization 3. miscategorize 2. categorize *miscategory 1. category

13. Ambiguity • Some complex words can have more than one interpretation • Different derivations can result in different interpretations • Example: “unlockable” Note: [un-] can attach to both adjectives and verbs [-able] attaches to verbs and creatives adjectives

14. Unlockable, part 1 • Adj • Adj • Aff Verb Aff • [un-] [lock] [-able] • = not able to be locked

15. Unlockable, part 2 • Adj • Verb • Aff Verb Aff • [un-] [lock] [-able] • = able to be unlocked

16. Inflections vs. Derivations • Linguists draw another distinction among affixes: • Inflectional affixes: • mark grammatical properties • (person, number, gender, tense, aspect) • don’t change other aspects of meaning • are required by rules of sentence structure • create a new “word form” • Derivational affixes: • change meaning • create a new word • (typically) have clear semantic content • may change the lexical category of the word

17. Inflectional Affixes • There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English: • -s 3rd person wait --> waits • -ing progressive wait --> waiting • -ed past tense wait --> waited • -en past participle eat --> eaten • -s plural card --> cards • -’s possessive dad --> dad’s • -er comparative tall --> taller • -est superlative weak --> weakest • All of these are suffixes.

18. Inflectional Affixes • Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes. • Examples from French: parler “to speak” • 1st person, plural: parlons “We speak” • 2nd person, plural: parlez “You guys speak” • Past tense: • 1st person, singular: parlais “I spoke” • 1st person, plural: parlions “We spoke” • 2nd person, plural: parliez “You guys spoke” • Plus many, many more. • Note: Volapük. (http://www.visi.com/~dean/volverb.html)

19. Derivational Affixes • In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes: • Create new words when they’re attached to roots • Examples: • re- cycle --> recycle • de- code --> decode • -y fish --> fishy • -ize vandal --> vandalize • Also: English has far more derivational affixes than inflectional affixes. • For fairness’ sake: http://www.visi.com/~dean/volword.html

20. Picky, Picky (last time) • Inflectional affixes are always going to attach to a root with a particular part of speech. • Plural noun = singular noun + “s” • birds = bird + s dogs = dog + s • Past tense verb = present tense verb + “ed” • waited = wait + ed talked = talk + ed • Comparative adjective = adjective + “er” • taller = tall + er shorter = short + er • Q: if both a derivational and an inflectional affix attach to a root, which will attach first?

21. The Relationship • A: Derivational affixes will always attach before inflectional affixes do. • Remember: derivational affixes create new words; • Inflectional affixes just create new word forms. • Examples: blackened, governments, *neighborshood • Verb Noun • Verb Noun • Adj DAff. IAff. Verb DAff. IAff. • black -en -ed govern -ment -s

22. A Note on Word Forms • Morphologists use the term lexeme to refer to a group of related word forms. • wait, waits, waited, waiting, etc. • The canonical form of the lexeme is called the lemma. • = the “headword” in a dictionary. lemma word forms different lexeme • Inflectional affixes relate a lexeme to its various forms. • Derivational affixes relate one lexeme to another lexeme.