CH. 6: Morphology - CSD 2030: Intro to Language
Morphology: Intro to Language
Terminology
- Morphology: The study of the forms or structure of words and their parts.
- Morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning for a set of sounds that can have a grammatical, constant meaning and structure. It impacts meaning or function and distinguishes word form in a particular language. A morpheme cannot be made smaller while retaining its meaning.
What is a Word?
Words can vary greatly in length:
- Very long (Welsh): Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch
- Medium-sized (multilingual): karaoke-singers
- Very short (English): a
Elements in Word Forms
Words can have multiple elements, with each element representing a morpheme. For example, in "walks," "walking," and "walked," the core element 'walk' is combined with other elements like '-s,' '-ing,' and '-ed.' Each of these is a morpheme.
Types of Morphemes
Morphemes are categorized into two main types:
Free Morphemes:
Can stand by themselves as single words.
Examples: 'Mother,' 'Shout.'
Root Words: The word that carries most content/meaning. It cannot be further reduced while keeping its meaning. It is the form of a word without any affixes (prefixes or suffixes) attached. Root words are typically nouns, adjectives, or verbs.
- Examples of Root Words:
- 'arbor' - tree (e.g., arboreal, arboretum, arborist)
- 'ego' - I (e.g., egotist, egocentric, egomaniac)
- 'form' - shape (e.g., conform, formulate, reform)
- 'legal' - related to the law (e.g., illegal, legalities, paralegal)
- 'meter' - measure (e.g., kilometer, millimeter, pedometer)
- 'norm' - typical (e.g., abnormal, normality, paranormal)
- 'phobia' - fear (e.g., arachnophobia, claustrophobia, hydrophobia)
- Examples of Root Words:
Lexical Free Morphemes:
- Carry the content of the message.
- Examples include Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs (e.g., 'very'), and Verbs.
- These are considered an "open class" because new words can be easily added to this category in a language.
Functional Free Morphemes:
- Indicate function and express the relationship between lexical morphemes.
- Examples include Articles (e.g., 'a,' 'an,' 'the'), Prepositions (e.g., 'on,' 'under,' 'near'), Conjunctions (e.g., 'and,' 'but,' 'yet'), and Pronouns (e.g., 'she,' 'he,' 'they,' 'you,' 'me').
- These are considered a "closed class" because new words are not typically added to this category.
Bound Morphemes:
Cannot stand on their own as a word.
They need a 'partner' and must be attached to some other form.
Examples: In 'Mothers,' '-s' is a bound morpheme. In 'Shouting,' '-ing' is a bound morpheme.
Bound Stems: Basic word forms that cannot stand on their own and are therefore not considered free morphemes. These words are often derived from Latin.
- Example: In "Reduce," 're-' is a prefix, and '-ceive' is a bound stem. In "Repeat," 're-' is a prefix, and '-peat' is a bound stem.
Derivational Bound Morphemes:
- Create new words by changing the grammatical category of the stem they are added to.
- They carry a significant amount of information even if they cannot stand alone.
- Can be either prefixes (e.g., 'un-') or suffixes (e.g., '-ness').
- Examples:
- 'Fool' (noun) + '-ish' (derivational suffix) = 'Foolish' (adjective).
- 'Govern' (verb) + '-ment' (derivational suffix) = 'Government' (noun).
- 'un-' + 'dress' + '-ed' combines different morpheme types.
Inflectional Bound Morphemes:
- Do not change the grammatical category of the stem they are added to, nor do they create new words.
- They only add grammatical information (e.g., number, tense, possession).
- Inflectional morphemes are always suffixes.
- There is a finite set of these morphemes (typically eight in English).
- Examples:
- For Nouns:
- Possessive ('-s): 'Unicorn's'
- Plural ('-s): 'Unicorns'
- For Adjectives:
- Comparative ('-er): 'Taller' (meaning "more")
- Superlative ('-est): 'Tallest' (meaning "most")
- For Verbs:
- 3rd person singular, present tense ('-s): 'she blog + s' (blogs)
- Present participle ('-ing): 'she is blogg + ing' (blogging)
- Past tense ('-ed): 'she blogg + ed' (blogged)
- For Nouns:
Differentiating Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes
- Derivational: Changes word type or meaning (e.g., 'Dance' (verb) $\rightarrow$ 'Dancer' (noun)).
- Inflectional: Adds grammatical information without changing word type or core meaning (e.g., 'Tall' (adjective) $\rightarrow$ 'Taller' (adjective)).
Morpheme Breakdown Examples
- WRITERS: WRITE + ER + S
- DANCE:
- Dance + -s $\rightarrow$ Dances (2 morphemes)
- Dance + -er $\rightarrow$ Dancer (2 morphemes)
- Dance + -ed $\rightarrow$ Danced (2 morphemes)
- Dance + -ing $\rightarrow$ Dancing (2 morphemes)
- Here, 'Dance' is the free morpheme, and the suffixes are bound morphemes.
- jumps: 'jump' (verb) + '-s' (3rd person regular) $\rightarrow$ 2 morphemes
- books: 'book' (noun) + '-s' (plural marker) $\rightarrow$ 2 morphemes
Review: Derivational or Inflectional?
- 'unhappy': Derivational ('un-' changes meaning)
- 'crying': Inflectional ('-ing' adds grammatical tense)
- 'dislike': Derivational ('dis-' changes meaning)
- 'fallen': Inflectional (participle form of a verb)
- 'darken': Derivational ('-en' changes adjective to verb or makes concept more intense)
- 'closed': Inflectional (past tense/past participle of a verb)
- 'taller': Inflectional ('-er' adds comparative grammatical information)
- 'dancer': Derivational ('-er' changes verb 'dance' to noun 'dancer')
- 'dancers': Derivational (from dance to dancer) + Inflectional (plural 's')
- 'mother's': Inflectional ('-s' adds possessive grammatical information)
Allomorphs
- Allomorphs: Two or more versions of the same morpheme, which are alternate forms of a morpheme. This concept is analogous to "allophones" in phonology. For example, the plural morpheme '-s' can be pronounced in different ways ('-s', '-z', '-ɪz') depending on the preceding sound, but it still conveys the same plural meaning.
Counting Morphemes and Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
Morphemes do not equal syllables.
- Car = 1 morpheme, 1 syllable
- Hippopotamus = 1 morpheme, 5 syllables
- Laptop = 1 morpheme, 2 syllables (if treated as a compound free morpheme initially, but as a single word 'laptop' = 1 morpheme)
- Kissed = 2 morphemes (kiss + -ed), 1 syllable
Brown's Grammatical Morphemes: A list of grammatical morphemes that children acquire in a relatively consistent order, often used in language development assessment.
- Examples with order of acquisition:
- Present progressive (- ext{ing}) (e.g., Baby crying)
- 'in' (e.g., Juice in cup)
- 'on' (e.g., Book on table)
- Plural regular (- ext{s}) (e.g., Daddy have tools)
- Past irregular (e.g., Doggie ate bone)
- Possessive ('s) (e.g., Jake's apple)
- Uncontractible copula (used as main verb) (e.g., This is mine)
- Articles (a, the) (e.g., A red apple, The big house)
- Past regular (- ext{ed}) (e.g., He jumped high)
- Third person regular (- ext{s}) (e.g., Susie drinks)
- Third person irregular (e.g., Baby does patty-cake, Kitty has a toy)
- Uncontractible auxiliary (e.g., Are you thirsty?, She was running, He is. (Response to "Who's crying?"))
- Contractible copula (e.g., It's cold outside)
- Contractible auxiliary (e.g., Mommy's crying)
- Examples with order of acquisition:
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU):
- A measure of linguistic productivity in children, calculated by dividing the total number of morphemes by the total number of utterances.
- Formula: MLU = rac{ ext{Total number of morphemes}}{ ext{Total number of utterances}}
- MLU Developmental Stages (Child's Age):
- Stage I: 12-26 months, MLU 1.0-1.9 (e.g., No; all gone; dog sit)
- Stage II: 27-30 months, MLU 2.0-2.5 (e.g., Me no like; What doing? [in, on, and])
- Stage III: 31-34 months, MLU 2.5-3.0 (e.g., Gotta tell mommy; she can play)
- Stage IV: 35-40 months, MLU 3.0-3.5 (e.g., Don't like those; that isn't how)
- Stage V: 41-46 months, MLU 3.5-4.0 (e.g., This is our house; I'm leaving now, ok?)
- Stage V+: 47+ months, MLU 4.0+ (Adult-like conversation, considered mastery)