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Morphology: A Review

Morphology: A Review. Building Words. All words have a root (smallest part of a word which is not a morpheme) The root can have affixes added to it Derivational: Changes part of speech Inflectional: Adds grammatical information

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Morphology: A Review

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  1. Morphology: A Review

  2. Building Words • All words have a root (smallest part of a word which is not a morpheme) • The root can have affixes added to it • Derivational: Changes part of speech • Inflectional: Adds grammatical information • The head of a word is the part of the word that gives it its grammatical properties

  3. What is the “head”? • Crunchable • “-able” • Type of ability, not a type of crunch • Fits in the grammatical roles defined by “-able” (adjective) • It was a crunchable chip. It was an eatable chip. • *The chip crunchable. The chip crunched.

  4. Why is the head important? • Gives the grammatical function of the word • All words with “-ly” can take on the same roles: • She ran quickly to the store. She ran slowly to the store. • Suddenly, it began to rain. Surprisingly, it began to rain. • The amazingly blue color surprised us. The wonderfully blue color surprised us.

  5. Headedness and Irregularity • Since words take on the properties of their head, if a word is “headless,” it doesn’t have the properties of its components. • Ex: • One snowman, two snowmen/*snowmans • One Walkman, two *Walkmen/Walkmans • A snowman is a type of “man”  man is the head • A Walkman isn’t a type of “man”  headless; “WALKMAN” is head

  6. Headedness and Irregularity • WALKMAN follows regular rules of grammar: plural form = +s • SNOWMAN follows the irregular rule of its head: plural form of “man” = “men”

  7. Morpheme Definitions and Rules • Every morpheme has a definition: • -er: noun stem affix; means “one who does X”; attach me to a verb stem • Rules exist for combining morphemes and roots: • Nstem Stem Nstem • TEACHER  TEACH – ER • Simplifies the process of learning a language!

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