Module 5 : Morphology: The World of Words
•Words are an important component of our mental grammar in our linguistic knowledge.
•Our knowledge of words constitutes a dynamic system in which we continually create new words and even expand their meanings into new areas. •Words encourage us to creatively use the language.
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and the rules governing their formation in a language. Developing an understanding of morphology would enable language learners to understand how words enter a language, what they consist of, and how prefixes, suffixes, and roots are combined to form them. Recent researches indicate that learners with knowledge of word-forming processes appear to have greater vocabulary and improved understanding of reading (Kefir and Lascaux, 2008; Kefir and Lascaux, 2012a/2012b), and better writing by extension. Morphology may also be a valuable teaching method to creatively build and use vocabulary for
learners.
WORDS AND THEIR STRUCTURE
• A child of six who starts school knows as many as 13,000 words, according to Pinker (1999, p. 3), and this number rises remarkably fast as he or she becomes exposed to new words around them from spoken language and print media.
• A typical high school graduate knows about 60,000 words; We should understand that, during our lives, we all learn new terms. In short, someone who has mastered a language has also learned a remarkably enormous “list of facts coded in the form of words” (Akmajian et al. 2010). Although not a complete one, this long list of words for every language called the lexicon (or mental dictionary), is an essential part of our linguistic knowledge.
• Acquaintance of a word is correlated with various kinds of information encoded in our mental dictionary. We may list the categories of knowledge we have mastered regarding a word as follows:
1.Pronunciation and Meaning
- For every word we know, we have learned a sound (pronunciation) and a meaning. Each word consists of a unit of sound value, so every word in our lexicon is stored together with a pronunciation and a meaning. A random association between sounds and meanings is often present based on chance rather than being designed or based on reason. Consequently, words with the same spelling and different meanings (e.g. bare and bear) and words with the same meaning and different sounds (for example, sofa and couch) can be found.
2. Grammatical Category
- Other details about a word is also stored, such as whether it is a verb, a Noun, an adjective, an adverb, a conjunction, or a preposition. Such information identifies the grammatical class of the word. For example, according to our understanding of its grammatical or syntactic class, in the sentences ‘I love Jinky’ and ‘Jinky is the love of my life’, the word love is a verb and a noun, respectively. We would not know how to create grammatically correct sentences unless we had that knowledge in our mental dictionary.
3. Orthography / Spelling
- Any literate speaker of a language also stores information on how the words they know are spelled. But not every speaker knows, or has to know, the etymology of a word he or she understands. We can often speak about the roots and background of terms like coffee or yogurt in everyday life, but this sort of contextual information embedded in our mental lexicon is not really indicative of our word knowledge.
CONTENT WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS
-Basically, there are two classes of words: content words and function words (also referred to as open-class words and closed-class words) English words uncle, manage, huge and rapidly are examples of content words. They belong to the major parts of speech that repcontent words and function words present ideas, actions, objects, and attributes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, They are often referred to as open-ended or open-class terms since we can add new words to this word class frequently.
Content Words Function Words
Nouns – table, small, serenity, dog
Verbs - jump, swim, talk, go
Adverbs -quickly, happily, blankly
Adjectives - fast, big, untidy, pretty Articles - a/an, the
Auxiliaries - can, will, might, must
Demonstrative - this, these, that, those
Quantifiers - few, many, little, some, most
Prepositions -in, on, with, from
Pronouns - he, she, they, we
Conjunctions - and, but, or)
Function words are those that do not have clear lexical meanings or obvious related concepts. They are lexically unproductive and usually invariable in form and are also called closed class. They belong to grammatical or function classes consisting of a limited number of fixed items, such as articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, prepositions, and conjunctions. unlike content words, these function words denote grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content. Basically, their function is to grammatically indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite (the teacher or a teacher). Similarly, the word and
grammatically functions as a connector of words and phrases, as in the combination of noun phrases the stars and the moon. In short, many new words such as nouns and verbs are likely to be encountered by language.
• Grammars of English also give a traditional list of word classes under the name of parts of speech: verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, pronoun, article, and interjection, following an approach that goes back to Latin. In language studies, we often need to talk about parts of speech so that we can make general and economical statements about the way the words of a language behave (Crystal, 1996, p. 206). For example, “A noun is a word that is used for naming a person, thing or concept.” You might refer to Çelik (2007, pp. 92-93) and crystal for detailed characteristics of English parts of speech.
THE TIE –BACK
• Understanding of a word includes different kinds of information we encode in our mental lexicon. When we say we know a word, we not only know the meaning or multiple meanings of it and its pronunciation, but we also know its spelling or orthography and grammatical category such as noun or verb. Any typical English dictionary should give at least a lexical entry information that contains spelling, standard pronunciation, definitions to represent one or more meanings of the word, and parts of speech. An average dictionary may also give additional information about the etymology of words, whether the word is nonstandard (such as ain’t) or slang, vulgar, or archaic.
Module 6 : Classification of Morphemes
• Word forms may include a Number of units.
• Plays, player, played and playing can be split into units; they are made up of one unit (play), and a number of other elements (like -s, -er, -ed, and –ing). All these elements are called morphemes, the minimal units of meaning or grammatical function that are used to form words. We may
presume from this description of a morpheme that units of meaning include forms like play and units of grammatical function include elements used to show tense or plurality. • In the news headline “Shopping center in San Juan reopens; the word reopens contains three morphemes.: open is a minimal unit of meaning, re- is another minimal unit of grammatical function that means “again”, and –s is the another minimal unit of grammatical function that marks agreement with singular third person. Another example is auditors. There are three morphemes in the word auditors: audit, –or, (agentive, ‘person who does something’), and -s (indicating plurality).
• One or more morphemes may represent a single word:
One morpheme gentle
Two morphemes gentleman (gentle + man)
Three morphemes gentlemanly (gentle + man + ly)
Four morphemes gentlemanliness (gentle + man + li + ness)
More than four Morphemes - Ungentlemanliness (un + gentle + man + li + ness)
•A single sound may represent a morpheme. For example, the morpheme a, meaning “without” as in amoral, is composed of a single sound. A morpheme may also consist of a single syllable, such a pink and –ish in pinkish, and two or more syllables, as in paper (two syllables), and crocodile (three syllables).
•Morpheme as a constant meaning. For example, the morpheme –er means “someone who does” as in words like painter, teacher, and singer. However, there is also the comparative morpheme –er, meaning “more” as in faster. Thus, the same sounds may represent more than one morpheme, meaning that different morphemes may be homophonous or pronounced identically.
Free and Bound Morphemes
Morphemes into two broad classes from the example given above: free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone as an independent, single word such as open and visit. A bound morpheme cannot normally stand alone and must be attached to another form. For instance, the plural morpheme -s can only ccur and make sense when it is attached to nouns, or the past tense -ed morpheme must be attached to verbs.
• All affixes in English are bound morphemes, including prefixes attached to the beginning office another morpheme (like re- in reinvent,), and suffixes attached to the end of another morpheme (such as -or in auditor, inventor, director). Some bound morphemes (e.g. cran-) are called “bound base morphemes” and they are not meaningful in isolation but have meaning when combined with other morphemes. For example, cran- must occur with berry (cranberry).
• Not all bound morphemes are affixes or bound bases. For example, in English forms such as ’ll, as in the sentence ‘I’ll take coffee, please’, ’ll is the contracted or shortened form of the auxiliary will. Thus, the term ‘ll is a bound morpheme and cannot stand as an independent word and must be attached to the preceding words (as in I’ll). Other contractions in are ’re (the contracted form of are, as in ‘They’re coming this afternoon) These contracted forms are bound morphemes.
• There are two other sorts of affixes that you will encounter, infixes and Circumfixes. Both are classic challenges to the notion of morpheme.
-Infixation is common in Southeast Asian and some Native American languages. Some linguists say that o in speed-o-meter and bar-o-meter, in Sister-in-law or mother-in-law, and a in now-a-days are infixes.
• The plural morpheme -s placed internally in words like mothers-in-law or passers-by is also interpreted like an infix-like element (Trask, 2000). But it seems that English has almost no true infixes. Inserting morphemes within other morphemes is not a productive process of affixation in English.
MODULE 6 TABLES.
• Circumfixes are affixes that come in two parts. One
attaches to the front of the word, and the other to the back. Circumfixes are controversial because it is possible to analyze them as consisting of a prefix ad a suffix that apply to a stem simultaneously.
•Like infixes, the existence of circumfixes challenges the traditional notion of morpheme (but not the definition used here) because they involve discontinuity (either in the word or in the affix.)
Lexical and Functional Morphemes
• All free morphemes can be divided into two classifications: lexical and functional morphemes. English lexical morphemes consist of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that all communicate the content of the messages speakers want to convey. Student, teacher, invest, save, quick, happy, and Honestly are examples of such lexical morphemes. Since we can add new lexical morphemes to English and other languages, they are also described as content words or open class of words. (Çelik, 2007, p. 94). • Functional morphemes primarily include functional English word like articles, prepositions, conjunctions, quantifiers, and pronouns. They are regarded as a closed class of words. To sum up, the meaning of lexical morphemes in and of themselves can easily be understood, but the meaning of functional morphemes can only be comprehended when they are used in a sentence with other words.
Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes
• English bound morphemes into two: derivational and inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes are used to create new words or to “make words of a different grammatical class from the stem. For example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ize changes the adjective normal to the verb normalize. Likewise, we can derive the adjectives helpful and helpless by adding the derivational morphemes -ful and -less to the noun help. Derivational morphemes are a powerful means of word formation in English.
• Inflectional morphemes are used to show some aspects of the grammatical function of a word. They may indicate if a word is singular or plural, whether it is past tense or not, or whether it is a comparative, superlative, or possessive form. In fact, inflection exists in many languages, but compared to other languages of the world, there is relatively little inflection in English. At present, there are only eight inflectional morphemes in the English language.
Table 2.2 Inflectional Morphemes of English
English
inflectional
morpheme Grammatical
function Example
s/ -es marks as more than one
added to nouns
plurality "When you play the game of thrones,
you win or you die. There is no middle gound.”
’s marks for ownership
added to nouns
possessiveness "They say night’s beauties fade at dawn, and the children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light.
er marks for
comparison, added to adj
comparative
“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”
est marks as superlative, added to adj
superlatives “Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
s marks to agree with singular third person
added to verb "'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen.’ The man who never reads lives only one.'"
d/-ed marks past tense
verb "We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."
Ing Marks present
Participle
Verb "The storms come and go, the big fish eat the little fish and I keep on paddling."
n/ -en marks past
participle “And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.”
•Differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes:
- First, inflectional morphemes can never alter the grammatical Category (part of speech) of a word. For example, tall and taller are both adjectives. The inflectional morpheme -er (comparative marker) simply creates a different version of the adjective tall. On the other hand, derivational morphemes often change the part of speech of a word. Thus, the verb read becomes the noun reader when we add the derivational morpheme -er. However, some derivational morphemes do not change
- Second, when a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix are added to the same word, they always appear in a certain relative order within the word. That is, derivational suffixes come first, followed by inflectional suffixes. Thus, the derivational -er is added to read, then the inflectional (-s) is attached to produce readers. When an inflectional suffix is added to a verb, we cannot add derivational suffixes any further. It is impossible to have a form like legalization, with inflectional -s being followed by the derivational -ation because inflectional morphemes occur outside derivational morphemes and attach to the base or stem. For these reasons, derivational Morphemes show the “inner” layer of words, whilst inflectional suffixes mark the “outer” layer of words.
- A third point worthy of being emphasized is that certain derivational morphemes function to create new base forms or new stems to which we can attach other derivational or inflectional affixes. Say, we use the Derivational -atic to make adjectives from nouns, just like in words systematic and problematic. Then, we can further add -al to these two words to create systematical and problematical. Similarly, the derivational suffix -ize is often added to create verbs from adjectives, as in modernize, and we can add the inflectional suffix -s (modernizes) to such -ize verbs. To wum up, we can say that certain derivational affixes create new words for a given class, but inflectional affixes are always added to existing words of given class.
Some Exceptions in English Morphology
• Some nouns form their plurals irregularly. Typical examples of such irregular plurals in English are knife – knives, ox – oxen, goose – geese, and child – children. There are also exceptions in the forms of the past tense verbs in English, like the words began (begin), broke (break), went (go), and ran (run). Both historical influences and the effect of borrowed words play a role. in accounting for such irregularities.
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