Introduction to Contemporary Linguistics October 14, 1998 Morphology: the structure of words OVERVIEW: 1. What is a "word"? 2. Morphemes 3. Morphological rules ============================================================= 1. What is a "word"? >Every language has a word for "word," but the precise meaning can differ: rG a character, a single unit of writing that usually represents one unit of sound (a syllable) and one unit of meaning (sort of) and sometimes is a whole "word". >In the pinyin romanization system, Mandarin words are separated by spaces, just as in English writing. [OVERHEAD] >Although most Chinese people think of r as a "word," even "ordinary people" know that this is not always true. [OVERHEAD] >Word: the smallest free lexical unit in a language. >Free: it doesn't have to appear next to the same things all the time, so it's "free" to "move around" by itself: "banana" is one word because it can appear next to many different things in a sentence: The banana tastes good. The soft, brown banana is rotten. But "bana" and "na" are not separate words, since they must always appear together: *The bana yellow na tastes good. >Lexical unit: a unit in the lexicon (the mental dictionary) >Like a dictionary, the lexicon records the arbitrary (unpredictable) form-meaning pairs that you just have to memorize. >Form: the physical shape (sound, writing, or hand movements) of the word. >An arbitrary form-meaning pair is called a sign or symbol: [OVERHEAD] & [bk] "book" [English] & [u'] [Mandarin] >Which of these are single words? >Check if you can separate the parts. >Think about whether the meaning is 100% predictable. (1) } (7) l (2) }M (8) l (3) } (9) (4) } (10) (5) }l (11) (6) } (12) J >Example (12) is one word, because it cannot be "split" when you interpret its meaning: J "egg of a chicken" (one word) J "egg of a chicken" (phrase) j[J] "big egg of a chicken" OR [j]J "egg of a big chicken" j[J] "big egg of a chicken" NOT *[j]J "egg of a big chicken" >Two basic kinds of words >Content words, or open class words () words with lots of semantic content (very meaningful); you can invent new words of this class (open class); includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. --from "Jabberwocky", by Lewis Carroll (in Alice through the Looking-Glass) BݡBjBѮvBѪB ... >Function words or closed class words () words that don't really have "meaning", but instead have grammatical functions (they build the syntactic structure); you cannot invent new words of this class; includes conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. Fip morning, uck ep happy birds Tut fly uck sing onk ep field. Ack lovely brole ep words, Uck ep brown worms healed????? ҥHBܡBFBBBLBӡBoBbB... 2. Morphemes >Words often contain more than one sign (form-meaning unit): books = book + s (= & + MORE-THAN-ONE) anteater = ant + eat + er antidisestablishmentarianism = anti + dis + establish + ment + ary + an + ism l = + l ƾǮa = + + a >These minimal units of meaning are called morphemes (from Greek morphe "form") >"Morpheme" does NOT mean character (r), or parts of a character, or syllable (`)!!! r has two characters, two syllables, and two morphemes. has two characters, two syllables, but only one morpheme (because you can't separate the word into smaller form-meaning units) @I (in Beijing Mandarin) has three characters, two syllables, but three morphemes ("one" + "dot" + "little") has one character, one syllable, but two morphemes (= F + ) >Sometimes it's hard to tell how many morphemes you have because the meaning of each part isn't clear: (1) receive (5) ~ (2) perceive (6) b} (3) resist (7) dq (4) persist (8) @ >There are two basic kinds of morphemes: >A root is the heart of a word; the morpheme that gives the word its central meaning: unhappiness ("happy" is the root) >Roots are usually free: they can appear as independent words (like "happy") >But not always: lBѮF * >An affix is a bound morpheme (it always must be stuck to another morpheme to form a word) that is not the root: >Suffix: goes after the root walking teacher A ǡBǮa >Prefix: goes before the root unhappy iRH >Infix: goes inside the root >Tagalog (Austronesian, Philippines) um affixes before first vowel: Root Subject focus Meaning aral umaral 'teach' sulat sumulat 'write' gradwet grumadwet 'graduate' >English slang: fucking affixes before the first main stress: Root Emphatic form fantstic fan-fucking-tstic Philadlphia Phila-fucking-dlphia >Other kinds of affixes are even more interesting: >Reduplication: a kind of affixation where the affix is a copy of the root, or of part of the root. >What do these different kinds of reduplication mean? (1) HHBѤѡBjjpp (2) ݡ]@^ݡBQװQ (3) bbBεΪAA (4) BffBjj >Tonal morphemes: a meaning difference is marked by a change in tone on the root: >Luganda (Nigeria) tsml 'she/he reads for us' tsml 'she/he who reads for us' >Prosodic morphemes: a meaning difference is marked by a difference in stress or overall shape: >English: noun verb rbel rebl ddress addrss >Arabic: singular plural meaning nafs nufuus 'soul' rajul rijaal 'man' >Many examples of this are found in sign languages like ASL [OVERHEAD] >Some words have more than one root: they are compounds. >snowman, ice cream, linguistics teacher, anteater, ... >rBB߲zyǡBDBťBh֡B... >Compounding is the most common kind of morphology across the world. In some languages (e.g. Chinese), it is the dominate form (67% of Chinese words are compounds). >Compounds come in two kinds: >Headed: one root is the head (the one that expresses the most important meaning) >In English and Chinese, the head is on the right for nouns: snowman >Thus switching the two roots around can drastically change the meaning! [OVERHEAD] >Headless: neither root is more important: overhead, Walkman jpBĵBΨm 3. Morphological rules >Morphemes obey rules: they can only be put together in words in certain ways: [BC CARTOON OVERHEAD] ant + eat + er *eat + ant + er >The rule for the suffix -er: Verb + er Noun "person or thing that does Verb" dance dancer compute computer ant *anter >The rule for the suffix Noun + Noun "more than one Noun" (the noun must be a person...?) A A Ѯv Ѯv *ݭ * >Two basic kinds of morphological rules: >Derivation: creates a new word, often with unpredictable changes in the meaning, or unpredictable gaps (where a word doesn't exist where it should) happy happiness unhappy happily sad sadness *unsad sadly silly silliness *unsilly *sillily compute computer (unpredictable meaning) y y yǮa >Derivation often (but not always) changes the syntactic category (nouns to verbs, verbs to nouns, ...) >Compounding is a kind of derivation. >Inflection: modifies an existing word so that it fits into the sentence properly: The cat likes to sleep. The cats like to sleep. *This semester I am teach Introduction to Linguistics. >Inflection cannot change the syntactic category (because that would create a new word, not merely fit an old word into a sentence) >Chinese has much less inflection than English, but it still has some: LBFB̡B... >Do any sentences sound ungrammatical? (1) a. ڤwgݡC b. ڤwgݹLC c. ڤwgݤFC d. ڤwgݹLFC (2) a. ǥ̳ͭܦC b. ǥͳܦC c. ǥ̫ͭܦC d. ǥͫܦC >Other languages have much more inflection than English: e.g. German [OVERHEAD] >A morphological universal: DERIVATION IS ALWAYS "BEFORE" INFLECTION. (first create words, then fit them into the sentence) >English: I have two compute-er-s. *I have two compute-s-er. *SHOES STORE (plural before compounding) >Does Chinese show the same kind of pattern...???