morphology defined
Study of the structure of words
study of the internal structure of words
systematic form-meaning similarities
morpheme defined
minimal indivisible unit of meaning or grammatical function
types of morphemes
free (sing)
bound (-ing)
componants of morphemes
root (free and bound)
affix (bound) - prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix
word level concepts
lexeme (basic unit eg sing)
word form (has grammatical function eg sings, sang)
word formation (lexical morphology) (3)
creation of new lexemes/words
eg. labelling function (new things eg Roomba)
syntactic recategorisation (V-N eg play-player)
evaluation morphology (eg deminutive suffixes)
inflection
Spelling out the appropriate form in a particular syntactic context
examples of inflection
Concord/Subject-verb agreement
E.g.,
Je suis
Tu es
Il/Elle/On est…
Case
Nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative…
E.g., I – me – mine
word defined
A series of letters written with a space on either side; a word is a unit that conveys a single meaning
problem with word definition
E.g., “Textbook”
One word but has 2 independently occurring meaningful components
E.g., “healthcare” vs “health care”, “e-mail” vs “email”
There is variation in whether something is written with or without spaces – this changes over time
E.g., “walking”
There are 2 meaningful components here. Is “ing” a word? Is “walking” two words?
word formation processes
Affixation/morpheme addition
- derivation (can change meaning/class)
- eg motive -motivate
compounding
- two meaningful roots
- eg keyboard
Onomatopoeia
- words imitate sounds
- eg splash
reduplication
- word or element repeated
- used for intensification, imitation and pluralisation
conversion
- category change/functional shift
- eg noun to verb “to uber”
Borrowing
- words from other languages
Clipping
- cutting out part of a word
- eg exam
Blends
- clipped compounding
- eg chillax
Back formation
- creating new words assuming source derivation
- eg burgle from burglar
eponyms
- derived from a proper noun
- eg tipex, hoover
neologisms
- new words not yet accepted as mainstream
- eg doomscrolling
Folk etymology
types of folk etymology (4)
replacement of a familiar form with an unfamiliar one
spoonerisms (slips of the tongue)
eggcorns (swapping sound/word with for similar sounding ones eg eggcorn for acorn)
mondegreens (errors of the ears - usually in songs)
malapropisms (swapping word for familiar sounding without logic)
allomorphs
variants of a morpheme
vary in shape and pronunciation
phonological reasons (negation in/im)
lexical reasons (plural -en for historical reasons - children)
irregularity
irregular forms foot-feet
suppletion
- inflection where morphemes change instead of adding an affix (go-went)
- total suppletion (bad - worse)
partial suppletion (was -were)
morphology typology
analytic (isolating) languages
synthetic languages (morphologically rich)
analytic (isolating) languages
morphologically poor
little or no inflectional affixation
each morpheme is a different word
lexical and functional info encoded by free morphemes
eg Mandarin Chinese, Thai
sunthetic languages
morphologically rich
agglutinating
fusional
polysynthetic
agglutinating
- morphemes stick together
- bound roots and inflectional affixes
- affix typically represents one grammatical function
- eg Turkish, Bantu family (Xhosa)
fusional
functional info encoded in affixal form
1:1 form - mapping less straightforward, ‘fused meanings’
eg Latin, Romantic languages
polysynthetic
functional info via affixes
lexical elements productively incorporated (eg noun incorporating)
both grammatical and lexical elements form word structure
eg Yupik, Mohawk
