Linguistics week 13

1. Linguistics week 13 Morphology 3

2. Morphology, then • What is it? • It’s the study of word forms, and the changes we make to words • It’s part of the grammar of languages? • What is the other important part? • Some languages are morphologically more complex than others • What guess could you make about languages which are not morphologically complex?

3. Words. How many words are there in this utterance? • She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went. • That was easy. How did you determine the number? • Now answer two further questions • How many different word-forms are there? • How many different lexemes are there? • And another question: • What do you think “lexeme” means? • Lexemes and word-forms are very like phonemes and allophones, actually.

4. Word segmentation • In English, words are conveniently separated by white space, in writing • This is not true of Chinese • And it is not true of spoken English either • If you know a language, you can separate the stream of continuous speech into words • Adults who never learned to read are equally aware of words • Words are sound + meaning units • Words (lexemes) are the units stored in dictionaries (and in your head) • With their pronunciation, meaning, and morphological structure

5. Two kinds of words • Function words • Restricted in number • A closed class • Have a grammatical function • Usually just one morpheme (a grammatical morpheme) • Content words • An open class • New content words often come into use in every language • Which words on this slide …? Chinese examples?

6. You think English is hard? • Ha! When I was at school I had to do Latin • See if you can find out what this is: amo amamus amas amatis amat amant • Or this annus anni anne anni annum annos anni annorum anno annis anno annis

7. They were Latin inflections • That means • The two lists each show the different word-forms, for a Latin noun or verb • In English, inflection includes things like • Number • Tense • BUT inflection does NOT allow for making a new lexeme • So sleepy is not an inflection of sleep • Write down 10 roots (like sleep) • Give one or more inflected forms (eg sleeps) for each • And one or more derived forms (like sleepy)

8. Inflectional vs derivational morphology • Inflection does not change the word class (syntactic category, part-of-speech, 詞類) • Derivation may or may not change word class • Derivation makes a new lexeme • create creative • Inflection just changes the grammatical ending of the original lexeme • create  creates • Inflection is productive • You can add –s to any verb, to make it plural • Derivation is not necessarily productive • You cannot always add un- to an adjective, or -ive to a verb

9. Roots and affixes • Unbelievable contains • One free morpheme • A root and two affixes • One prefix and one suffix • In English, there are derivational prefixes and suffixes • There are no inflectional prefixes • Suffixes are more common in the world’s languages • But Thai has only prefixes – no suffixes • Plural in the Zapotec language is realized by a prefix, not a suffix

10. Infixes • In Tagalog • sulat = write • sumulat = wrote • sinulat = was written • What is the root morpheme here? • What are the affixes? • Yule describes a kind of infix used in English • I don’t want to go to uni-bloody-versity • Is there any infixing in Mandarin, do you think?

11. Reduplication • Afrikaans • dik = ‘thick’; dikdik = ‘very thick’ • Motu (Papua New Guinea) • mero = boy; memero = boys • meromero = little boy • How do you say ‘little boys’ in this language? • And – you guessed it – what uses does reduplication have in Mandarin?

12. Reading • Read Chapter 7 • Answer the Study Questions • Don’t look at the answers until you have finished!

13. Conversion to a different POS • Related words with different POS share the same form • Bank: He banked the money • Better: • You should respect your elders and betters • His performance is difficult to better • Empty: He emptied his glass in one gulp • Sometimes the stress changes • See how many examples you can think of

14. Zero morphs (in inflectional morphology) • What’s the plural of sheep? • We can either say • {SHEEP}:{Ø} (the root plus a zero morph), or • The morpheme {SHEEP} realizes both singular and plural meanings • The same applies to the past and present tense of hit • A lot of linguists don’t like the idea of zero morphs, because it implies • {羊} singular, {羊};{Ø} plural (!)

15. Shortening processes • Backformation (you usually need to know the history of the word) • Babysitter  babysit • Editor  edit • Clipping (this doesn’t involve complete morphemes) • Science-fiction  sci-fi • Information  info • Chinese stump compounds • 台大 • 網咖 • Are these backformations or clipped forms?

16. Neo-classical compounds: two bound morphemes • Biology {LIFE}+{WORDS} • Telephone {DISTANT}+{SOUND} • Introduce {IN}+{LEAD} • In a way, these are the closest English equivalent to Chinese words like 朋友 • Group activity

17. Reading • Read Chapter 7 • Answer the Study Questions • Don’t look at the answers until you have finished!