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4: Words- Morphology

Last updated

Feb 23, 2024
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- 3.10: Signed language phonology
- 4.1: Back to the Arbitrary

Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi
eCampusOntario

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Learning Objectives

When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:

Identify morphologically complex words, and the morphemes within them
Distinguish between inflectional morphology, derivational morphology, and compounds
Explain how a word’s morphology interacts with its lexical category
Analyze the structure of complex words

In this chapter, we look at words and at the meaningful pieces that combine to create words. We will see that languages vary in how words are built, but that nonetheless we can find structure inside of words in all languages. In linguistics, the study of word forms is known as morphology.

4.1: Back to the Arbitrary
The video script discusses the concept of arbitrariness in language, highlighting how morphemes combine and function within a linguistic system. It revisits the Principle of the Arbitrary introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure, explaining that there is no inherent link between sounds and their meanings. Examples such as synonyms, varied regional terms, and differing language representations illustrate linguistic arbitrariness.
4.2: What is morphology?
This page discusses the concept of morphology in linguistics, focusing on how words are constructed from smaller units called morphemes. It explains how certain languages, like Inuktitut, use complex words that convey meanings equivalent to full English sentences. The text touches on various intricacies of defining a "word" and differences in word construction across languages.
4.3: Roots, bases, and affixes
The text discusses different types of morphemes, focusing on affixes and roots in language. Affixes, which include prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, infixes, and simultaneous affixes, need to attach to a base (which can be a root or a complex morphological structure). Prefixes and suffixes are common, while the others are less so, illustrated with examples from various languages. It also explains free and bound morphemes - roots being free, while affixes are bound.
4.4: Morphology beyond affixes
This page discusses various morphological patterns that do not involve affixes, including internal change, suppletion, and reduplication. Internal change involves modifications within a word, like irregular plurals and past tenses in English. Suppletion requires replacing a morpheme entirely, with unpredictable and memorized outcomes like 'go' to 'went'. Reduplication, found predominantly outside English, involves repeating word parts to convey meaning.
4.5: Allomorphy
4.6: Lexical categories
The page discusses morphology, which is divided into derivational (changing meaning or category) and inflectional (expressing grammatical information) types. It explores lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and their identification through syntactic and morphological tests. Nouns can follow determiners or be subjects, verbs can combine with auxiliary verbs, adjectives modify nouns, and adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
4.7: Derivational morphology
The page discusses derivational morphology and how derivational morphemes select the category of their base. It explains that derivational affixes like suffixes and prefixes are selective, with suffixes such as -able and -ing attaching to specific categories like verbs and adjectives. Examples include -tion, -ment, and -ness. Prefixes like non- and re- do not change the category of the base.
4.8: Inflectional morphology
The page discusses inflectional morphology, highlighting its role in expressing grammatical information without changing the category of a word's base. English has a limited inflectional system affecting nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The page explores how different languages mark inflectional distinctions like number, person, case, agreement, tense, and aspect.
4.9: Compounding
The page discusses the concept of compounding in morphology, which involves creating words from more than one root rather than combining roots with affixes. English, like other Germanic languages, freely builds compounds such as noun-noun (e.g., doghouse), adjective-noun (e.g., greenhouse), and more. Compounds can be distinguished by pronunciation, interpretation, and syntax. The "head" of a compound, determining its category, is typically on the right in English.
4.10: Structural ambiguity in morphology
The page discusses structural ambiguity in derivational morphology and compounding, focusing on how affixes and roots can combine in different orders to produce multiple meanings. Using the word "untieable" as an example, it illustrates two interpretations: "able to be untied" (affixes ordered as un- + tie + -able) and "not able to be tied" (affixes ordered as tie + -able + un-).
4.11: Morphophonology
The video script discusses morpho-phonology, emphasizing that language elements are interconnected. It highlights morpho-phonological rules where morphology interacts with phonetic changes, using examples like Hebrew reflective pronouns and Spanish epenthesis rules.
4.12: Morphosyntax
The document discusses the integration of morphology and syntax in languages, focusing on the difference between analytical and synthetic languages. Analytical languages, like Mandarin, rely heavily on word order with minimal use of affixes, whereas synthetic languages, such as Hungarian, use affixes to create complex morphemes.
4.13: How to draw morphological trees
In linguistics, the order of attaching derivational affixes or building compound words is significant. For example, "governmental" isn't a simple addition of govern + -ment + -al. This process is illustrated using tree diagrams, which show the structure and order of morphemes in words, reflecting their constituency. Morphological trees help in understanding how roots and affixes combine, with prefixes on the left and suffixes on the right in a left-to-right reading system.
4.14: How to solve morphology problems
The page provides a lesson on identifying morphemes by segmenting words in a language. It uses Inuktut nouns as examples, showing how plural and dual forms can be derived from singular forms by identifying consistent patterns. By comparing words that differ only in one aspect of meaning, one can hypothesize root morphemes and suffixes, such as identifying "-it" as the plural suffix for "doors" and "clouds.
4.15: Exercise your linguistics skills
This page contains several linguistic exercises focused on morphology and syntax in different languages, including Turkish, Krey??l (Haitian Creole), English, and Hebrew. The exercises involve identifying morphemes and their grammatical functions or meanings, examining word structures and affixes, analyzing compound words, and determining whether words are morphologically simple or complex.

Learning Objectives

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