What is morphology?
The study of the smallest units of meaning
The study of the structures of words
Morpheme?
The smallest unit of meaning
Every word has at least 1 morpheme
Forms vs meanings of words and morphemes
Forms: the sounds that make up the words
Meanings: the concepts they express
Allomorphs
variant pronunciations of a morpheme
based on the phonological context
Ex: English plural morpheme -s /z/ has 3 allomorphs
([z], [əz], [s]):
cat /kæt + z/ [kæts] devoicing after voiceless non-sibilant consonant
fox /fɑks + z/ [fɑksəz] schwa-insertion after sibilants
dog /dɑg+ z/ [dɑgz] [z] elsewhere
Surface realization comes about via what 4 steps?
- Lexical entries
- Morphological rules (of plural formation)
- Phonological rules
- Allophonic (phonetic) variation
Mono-morphemic vs multi-morphemic
Mono-morphemic: – words that cannot be broken down into meaningful parts • tree, black, think Multi-morphemic: – words that are morphologically complex • tree-s, black-board, un-think-able
Free vs. bound morphemes
• Free: a morpheme that can stand as an
independent word (i.e. can be free-standing)
e.g. tree, black, board, think
• Bound: a morpheme that can’t stand alone
e.g. -s, -un, -able
Analytic languages vs Synthetic languages
Analytic languages have mostly free morphemes
Synthetic languages have mostly bound morphemes
What is a root?
The morpheme in a word that carries the
major component of meaning
In English, mainly free rarely bound but do exist (eg. kempt)
What is an affix?
no lexical category*, always bound
Pre vs suf vs in
Front of base, back of base, within base
Root vs. Base
Root: The one morpheme that carries the
major component of meaning
Base: one or more morphemes
– form to which any affix is attached
What is a compound?
Compounds contain two or more roots
Rightheaded?
the right root is usually the head (the morpheme that
determines the lexical category of the entire
compound)
2 ways to represent compounds
Trees and bracketing
Constituent?
constituent is a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure.
Tests for compound words
- Stress
black board = compound (a chalkboard)
black board = phrase (a board that is black)
• primary stress is usually not placed on heads
of compounds - Placement of regular inflection
• tense and plural markers can’t go inside
compounds - Must stay together
- Semantic drift
Meaning doesn’t have to be a combination of the parts
Derivational vs. Inflectional
Derivational affixes change the meaning of the word
– Some change syntactic category of the word
Inflectional affixes
– mark things like tense and number
– don’t change the syntactic category of the word
– adjust meaning slightly
Noun inflection: What is case?
provides information about the role that a
noun plays in a sentence
Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, ablative
Noun inflection: What is grammatical gender?
= traditional name for a kind of noun class
system in languages like French, German,
Russian, …
Noun inflection: What is Noun class?
Classes may be partly semantically defined:
people, animals, inanimate things, body parts, etc.
– Grammatical gender = one kind of noun class
system
Types of Inflection
– case, gender, noun class, number on nouns
– tense and aspect on verbs
Noun inflection: What is numbers?
Common system: plural vs. singular
Verb inflection: Tense
Indicates the point in time, relative to the
time of speaking that an event took place
Temporally when
