Lec . 1

1. Lec. 1 What is Morphology? Word Structure

2. What is morphology? • The study of the internal structure of words / the study of word formation, • In the 19th century, morphology & the reconstruction of Indo-European (Latin-Sanskrit-Persian- Germanic) • Sound system & word-formation patterns • A synchronic discipline

3. What is a word? • native speakers have intuitive knowledge of how to form new words. • E.g. ‘splinch’ =to step on broken glass • E.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v) • E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode? redie?

4. What is a word? • A person • a word is stretch of letters that occurs between blank spaces. • a word is something small that means something. • A linguist • a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning. • E.g. giraffe, red, re-, -ize, etc.

5. 1. What is a word? • A word is one or two morphemes that can stand alone in a language.

6. Simple words & Complex words • Simple words • giraffe • sit • pistachio • Michael • oops • just • Complex words • opposition • prewashed • blackboard • inseparable • orphanage

7. Exercise • While reading, an English book, you come across the word ‘pockled’? What would you do? • ‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ? • Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles, وردة ورود – وردات - أورد – تورد –وردتين – وردتان

8. 1.1. The Lexeme • We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of the abstract vocabulary item using the term lexeme. The forms eats, eating & eaterare all different realisations/ representations/ manifestations of the lexeme EAT.

9. 1.1. The Lexeme • Lexemes share a core meaning although they are being spelled & pronounced differently. • Lexemes are the words listed in the dictionary

10. Exercise Group words that belong to the same lexeme: sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes – seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy – boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman – sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller – catching – jumping – sees - women

11. 1.2. The word-form • We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a particular physical realisation of a specific lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a particular word-form.

12. 1.2. Word-form • The physical word-form • see – sees- seeing – saw – seen • sleep, sleeping, sleeper, slept, sleeps • catch, catches, catching, caught, • The realisation of the lexeme • SEE • SLEEP • CATCH

13. 1.3. The grammatical word • The word is a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morphosyntactic properties (morphological + syntactic), such as noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

14. Exercise Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words represented by the word cut: • Usually I cut the bread on the table • Yesterday, I cut the bread in the sink • * Jane has a cuton her finger

15. Morphemes • Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning. • Morphology is the study of word-structure. • E.g. • unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under

16. Morphemes • The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function from which words are made up. • A morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller meaningful units, or units that mark a grammatical function.

17. Exercise • -er • player / caller / pretender • -ness • Kindness / cleanliness / goodness • ex- • ex-wife / ex-minister • pre- • Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school

18. Morphemes & meaning • It is possible to combine several morphemes together to form more complex words. • E.g. • uncleanliness • unfaithfulness • reincarnation

19. Morphemes & meaning • Meaning & morphemes: speakers may have different mental lexicons, based on their personal experience • helicopter – pteropus - diptera (pter=wings) • Bible – bibliography – bibliophile • (bibl=book)

20. Identification of morphemes • What is true of science in general is also true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957) • It is not possible to establish mechanical techniques for the identification of morphemes • But, there are a number of reasonably reliable & widely accepted techniques proposed by linguists working in morphology

21. 2.1. the principle of Contrast • We contrast forms (words) that differ in : • 1. phonological shape • /e/ vs. /i/ ten & tin / six & sex • 2. meaning (meaning & grammatical) • The girl plays vs. the boy plays • The girl plays vs. the girl played

22. 2.2 morphemes & morphs • Morphemes are the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.

23. 2.1. morphemes & morphs • The analysis of morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. • A morphis a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes).

24. morphemes & morphs • morpheme • By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find that they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person singular), work + ed(a marker for past tense), work + er(a • marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work + house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these morphemes is called morphology. • morph • Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker, workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, -ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of an element, a segment, which is not yet classified. • Source: http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/Newwords.pdf

25. Exercise Identify the morphs: • Iparkedthecar • Weparkedthecar • I parkedthecar • Heparksthecar • Sheparkedthecar • Sheparksthecar • We park thecar • Heparkedthecar • The morphs are:

26. Exercise • Identify the morphs which represent the past tense morpheme in English: • /d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/ clean, weigh, enjoy, burb… • /t/ the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/ park, miss, watch, … • /id/ the verb ends with /t/ or /d/ mend, paint, hand, wait, …

27. Allomorphs • If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs • Sometimes the difference in form is not associated with a difference in meaning • /d/, /t/, & /id/ • /s/, /z/, & /iz/

28. morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English

29. Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English

30. Identification of morphemes • The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the notion of distribution; the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs.

31. Classification of morphs • We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in complementary distribution: • If morphs: • represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical function, and • are never found in identical contexts

32. The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English are in complementary distribution

33. Exercise • Identify the allomorphs of the negative morpheme • impossible, impatient, immovable • intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive, inelegance • incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude

34. Notes • If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorphs used in a given context is phonologically conditioned (assimilation). • Spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in many languages (e. g. English)