Comprehensive Notes on Morphology and Word Structure

Introduction to Morphology

Morphology is defined as the scientific study of the internal structure of words and the rules governing word formation. Every word in a language is associated with a specific grammatical category or syntactic class, such as nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adjectives. Understanding the internal structure of a word involves identifying the smallest units of meaning within it, known as morphemes. A classic example used to demonstrate the complexity of morphology is the word antidisestablishmentarianism. This word can be broken down into multiple levels of structure: establish $(v)$, disestablish $(v)$, disestablishment $(n)$, antidisestablishment $(n)$, antidisestablishmentary $(adj)$, antidisestablishmentarian $(n)$, and finally antidisestablishmentarianism $(n)$.

Content and Function Words

The lexicon of a language is primary divided into two distinct classes: content words and function words. Content words denote concepts such as physical objects, actions, attributes, and abstract ideas. These include nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Content words belong to an open class, meaning new items are added to the language constantly. Examples include modern nouns like xerox, laser, and blog; verbs such as google, fax, and blog; and adjectives like online and grody.

Function words, by contrast, convey grammatical meaning rather than conceptual content. These include prepositions (in, at, on), articles (the, an), conjunctions (and, or, but), and pronouns (I, it, they). Function words belong to a closed class, as new function words are very rarely added to a language. In English, the lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun has led many speakers to adapt the existing word "they" rather than inventing a new one. For example, the sentence "We will hire the best person for the job regardless of his sex" is frequently updated to "We will hire the best person for the job regardless of their sex."

Neuro-linguistic and Developmental Evidence

The brain processes content and function words differently. Evidence from individuals with aphasia shows that some patients are unable to read function words like "in" and "which" but retain the ability to read phonetically identical content words like "inn" and "witch." Furthermore, speech errors (slips of the tongue) often involve the switching of content words (e.g., saying "the journal of the editor" instead of "the editor of the journal"), but there is no recorded documentation of function words being switched in this manner. Developmentally, children learning their first language often omit function words during the early stages of speech, producing phrases like "doggie barking."

Morphemes and Affixation

A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning in a language. Morphemes may stand alone as independent words or may be combined to form complex words. For example, the word "book" contains exactly $1$ morpheme, while the word "books" contains $2$: the noun "book" and the plural marker "-s."

Morphemes are categorized as either free or bound. Free morphemes can stand alone as words, such as "love," "fly," "eat," "at," "the," and "near." Bound morphemes, also known as affixes, cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes. Affixes are classified based on their position relative to the root:

1. Prefixes: Bound morphemes attached to the beginning of a word, such as "un-" in "untie," "pre-" in "premature," and "bi-" in "bilingual." In Isthumus Zapotec (Mexico), the plural prefix is "ka-", as seen in "zigi" (chin) becoming "kazigi" (chins), "zike" (shoulder) becoming "kazike" (shoulders), and "diaga" (ear) becoming "kadiaga" (ears).

2. Suffixes: Bound morphemes attached to the end of a word, such as "-ness" in "kindness," "-er" in "driver," and "-ist" in "pianist." In Turkish, the suffix "-ak" denotes a place associated with an action, such as "dur" (to stop) becoming "durak" (stopping place) and "bat" (to sink) becoming "batak" (sinking place, marsh, or swamp).

3. Infixes: Morphemes inserted inside the root. In Tagalog (Philippines), the infix "-um-" indicates past tense, turning "takbuh" (run) into "tumakbuh" (ran) and "lakad" (walk) into "lumakad" (walked).

4. Circumfixes: Morphemes that attach simultaneously to the beginning and the end of a root. In Chickasaw (USA), the negative form is created with the circumfix "ik-…-o", turning "chokma" (he is good) into "ikchokmo" (he is not good) and "lakna" (it is yellow) into "iklakno" (it is not yellow).

Root Morphemes

A root is the lexical morpheme base to which other morphemes are attached to create complex words, such as "love" in "un-love-able," "paint" in "paint-er," or "read" in "re-read." It represents the most basic form of a word and carries the most significant semantic content. Roots can be free morphemes (love, paint, read) or bound roots. Bound roots cannot stand alone and only acquire meaning when combined with other morphemes. Examples include:

• {-ceive} meaning take/hold: receive, conceive, perceive, deceive
• {-mit} meaning send/let go: permit, submit, transmit, admit
• {-cede} meaning go/yield: precede, recede
• {-fer} meaning carry/bring: infer, prefer, transfer

To identify roots and additional morphemes, consider the following examples:

• unbelievable: $un-$ + $believe$ + $-able$
• theatricality: $theat(e)r$ + $-ic$ + $-al$ + $-ity$
• unsystematically: $un-$ + $system$ + $-atic$ + $-al$ + $-ly$

Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

Derivational morphemes are used to construct new words and often carry distinct semantic meaning, acting as the affix version of content words (e.g., "undo," "rewrite," "homeless"). They can change the grammatical category of a word, such as transforming an adjective to a noun (e.g., {-ness} in happiness), a noun to an adjective (e.g., {-y} in flowery), an adjective to a verb (e.g., {-en} in sharpen), a verb to an adjective (e.g., {-able} in gradable), or a verb to a noun (e.g., {-ment} in judgement).

Inflectional morphemes have purely grammatical functions and never change the part of speech of the word. In English, there are exactly $8$ inflectional affixes, all of which are suffixes:

1. 3rd person singular present: {-s} as in "waits"
2. Past tense: {-ed} as in "waited"
3. Past participle: {-ed} as in "waited"
4. Progressive: {-ing} as in "waiting"
5. Possessive: {-’s} as in "Dan’s"
6. Plural: {-s} as in "girls"
7. Comparative: {-er} as in "quicker"
8. Superlative: {-est} as in "quickest"

Differences Between Derivational and Inflectional Affixes

There are six primary differences between inflectional and derivational affixes:

1. Historical development.
2. Distribution across words.
3. Range of application.
4. Order of appearance: Inflectional suffixes always follow derivational suffixes (e.g., "commitments" is valid while "*commitsment" is not).
5. Effect on syntactic category: Derivational affixes can change the category, while inflectional ones cannot.
6. Number of allowable affixes: English typically limits the number of inflectional affixes on a word (e.g., "lovelierest" and "taughting" are ungrammatical).

It is important to note that phonetically identical morphemes can serve different functions. The suffix "-s" indicates plural in "tables" (inflectional) but 3rd person singular in "eats" (inflectional). The suffix "-ing" can indicate a gerund/noun in "Walking is fun" or a progressive verb in "I am walking." The suffix "-er" can create a noun meaning "one who does" in "driver" (derivational) or a comparative adjective in "bigger" (inflectional).

Hierarchical Structure and Tree Diagrams

Words are not mere linear sequences of morphemes; they possess an internal hierarchical structure. In the word "unsystematic," the hierarchy is defined by specific rules: Noun "system" + "-atic" $\rightarrow$ Adjective "systematic," then "un-" + Adjective "systematic" $\rightarrow$ Adjective "unsystematic." The structure must follow valid intermediate forms; for instance, "*unsystem" is not a valid word, so the hierarchy cannot begin by adding "un-" to "system."

In the word "rehospitalizes," the inflectional suffix "-s" must follow the derivational suffixes. The root "hospital" (N) is turned into the verb "hospitalize" (V) by the suffix "-ize," and then "re-" attaches to the verb to form "rehospitalize." Finally, the inflectional "-s" is added.

Hierarchical structure also resolves ambiguity. The word "unlockable" has two meanings depending on the hierarchy:

• a) [un + [lock + able]]: "Not able to be locked."
• b) [[un + lock] + able]: "Able to be unlocked."

Tree diagrams for complex words follow these rules:

1. Unbelievable: [Adj [Prefix un] [Adj [Verb believe] [Suffix able]]]
2. Motivation: [Noun [Verb [Root Motiv] [Suffix ate]] [Suffix ion]]
3. Microorganism: [Noun [D.Aff micro] [Noun [Noun organ] [D.Aff ism]]]