Understanding Morphology Basics for Language Learners

1. Chapter 3 Morphology • Without grammar, little can be conveyed. Without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. (David Wilkins ,1972) • Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.

2. 2. Open class and closed class • Open class words----content words of a language to which we can regularly add new words, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, e.g. beatnik(a member of the Beat Generation), hacker, email, internet, “做秀，时装秀…” in Chinese. • Closed class words----grammatical or functional words, such as conjunction, articles, preposition and pronouns.

3. Morphemes-the minimal units of meaning • word- the smallest free form found in language. e.g. The boys left. • morpheme- the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning. It is a meaning and a stretch of sound joined together. • Simple words & complex words

4. Morpheme--the minimal unit of meaning ---Words are composed of morphemes. Words may consist of one morpheme or more morphemes, e.g. • 1-morpheme boy, desire • 2-morpheme boy+ish, desir(e)+able • 3-morpheme boy+ish+ness, desir(e)+abl(e)+ity • 4-morpheme gentle+man+li+ness, un+desir(e)+abl(e)+ity • 5-morpheme un+gentle+man+li+ness • 6-morpheme anti+dis+establish+ment+ari+an+ism

5. Affix • Prefix ---- morphemes that occur only before others, e.g. un-, dis, anti-, ir-, etc. • Suffix ---- morphemes that occur only after others, e.g. -ful, -er, -ish, -ness, -able, -tive, tion, etc.

6. Free morpheme & bound morpheme • Free morpheme- a morpheme which can be a word by itself, such as bed, tree, sing, dance, etc. • Bound morpheme----a morpheme that must be attached to another one. They can not stand by themselves, such as “-s” in “dogs”, “al” in “national”, “dis-” in “disclose”, “ed” in “recorded”, etc. 黏着词素

7. Allomorph • Some morphemes have a single form in all contexts, such as “dog, bark, cat”,etc. In other instances, there may be some variation, that is, a morpheme may have alternate shapes or phonetic forms. They are said to be the allomorphs of the morpheme, the plural morpheme may be represented by: • map----maps [s] dog----dogs [z] watch----watches [iz] mouse----mice [ai] ox----oxen [n] tooth----teeth sheep----sheep Each of the underlined part is called an allomorph of plural morpheme.

8. Word structures • A root is that part of the word left when all the affixes (inflectional & derivational) are removed, e.g. “desire” in “desirable”, “care” in “carefully”, “nation” in “internationalism”, “believe” in “unbeliev(e)able”… • Affixes are always bound morphemes.

9. Derivational morpheme & inflectional morpheme 屈折 • Derivational morphemes---- the morphemes which change the category, or grammatical class of words, e.g. modern---modernize, length---lengthen, fool---foolish, etc. • Inflectional morphemes---- the morphemes which are for the most part purely grammatical markers, signifying such concepts as tense, number, case and so on; they never change their syntactic category, never add any lexical meaning, e.g. a) number: tables apples cars b)person, finiteness and aspect: talk/talks/talking/talked c) case: John/John’s

10. Morphological rules • The rules that govern the formation of words, e.g. the “un- + ----” rule. unfair unthinkable unacceptable…

11. Two ways to form a new word • Derivation • Compound

12. Some points about compounds • When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will be in this category, e.g. postbox, landlady, icy-cold, blue-black… • When the two words fall into different categories, the class of the second or final word will be the grammatical category of the compound, e.g. head-strong, pickpocket… • Compounds have different stress patterns from the non-compounded word sequence, e.g. red coat, green house… • The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts.

13. Some other terms • Root • Stem • Base

14. Stem • A stem is part of a word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed, e.g. “undesirable” in undesirables

15. base • A base is part of a word-form which remains when all derivational affixes have been removed,

16. root • A root is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means any stem and base can be termed as a root.

17. The difference between root, stem & base • A root can be added by both inflectional & derivational affixes while a stem can be added only by inflectional affixes; • A base is derivationally analyzable (e.g. undesire in undesirable) while a root cannot be further analyzed, e.g. desire in undesirable; • Root, stem and base can be the same form, e.g. desire in desired; • Undesirable in undesirables is either a stem or a base; • Desirable in undesirable is only a base.