Ch.

3 Morphology:
The Words of Language
The Words of Language

• In spoken language we don’t pause between most

words

• So when you hear a sentence in a language you

don’t know, you won’t be able to tell where one
word ends and the next begins

• Most English speakers can pick out all of the words

in Thecatsatonthemat because they can identify all
those words
The Words of Language

• These boundaries between words can be played with for humor, as in

the credits for NPR’s Car Talk:

• Copyeditor: Adeline Moore

• Pollution Control: Maury Missions
• Legal Firm: Dewey Cheetham
The Words of Language

• Lexicon: Our mental dictionary of all the words we

know

• Lexicographers aim to create written records of our

lexicons (dictionaries)

• Dictionaries describe the spelling, standard

pronunciation, definitions of meaning, and parts of
speech of each word

• They may also prescribe language use

Content and Function Words

• Content words: the words that convey conceptual

meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.)
• Open class: new types of content words can be added all the time
• E.g. a new noun called a flurg would be fine

• Function words: the words that convey grammatical

meaning (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.)
• Closed class: new function words are very rarely added to a language
• English does not have a gender-neutral third person singular
pronoun, and rather than adopt a new pronoun, many people use
they instead of choosing between he and she.
Content and Function Words

• The brain treats content and function words

differently

• Some aphasics are unable to read the function words in

and which but can read the content words inn and witch.

• Content words may be inadvertently switched in speech,

but there is no documentation of function words being
switched in this way

• Children often omit function words from their speech

when learning their first language (“doggie barking”)
Morphemes

• Morphology: the study of the structure of words

and the rules for word formation

• Morpheme: the minimal units of meaning

• Morphemes can be words on their own, and/or can often

be combined with other morphemes to make words
• E.g. the word book has one morpheme
• E.g. the word books has two morphemes:
book + -s
N plural marker
Morphemes

• Discreteness
(consisting of distinct or unconnected elements)
In all languages, sounds combine to make morphemes,
morphemes combine to make words, and words combine
to make sentences

• Creativity: We can combine morphemes in new ways to

create new words that can easily be understood
• writable
• rewritable
• unrewritable
Bound and Free Morphemes

•Free: morphemes that can stand alone

E.g. love is a single morpheme that can be uttered with no other morphemes
connected to it

•Bound: morphemes that cannot stand

alone, but must be attached to other
morphemes
E.g. un- and -ish are bound morphemes because they cannot stand alone
Affixes

• Prefixes: bound morphemes that attach to the beginning of a root

• E.g. un- as in untie

• Suffixes: bound morphemes that attach to the end of a root

• E.g. -ness as in kindness
Bound and Free Morphemes

• Infixes: morphemes that are inserted inside a root

• Bontoc (Phillippines):
fikas “strong” fumikas “to be strong”
kilad “red” kumilad “to be red”

• Circumfixes: affixes that attach to both the

beginning and the end of a root
• Chickasaw (USA):
• chokma “he is good” ikchokmo “he is not good”
• lakna “it is yellow” iklakno “it is not yellow”
Roots and Stems

• Roots: the morpheme base upon which other

morphemes are attached to create complex words: un-
love-able

• Stems: once an affix has been attached to a root, the

result is called a stem to which more morphemes may be
attached: un-lovable

• Affixes: morphemes which attach to roots and stems: un-

love-able
Roots and Stems

• Bound roots: Roots that cannot stand alone and

can only occur in combination with other
morphemes

• -ceive: receive, conceive, perceive, deceive

• Huckleberry, lukewarm, cranberry

Rules of Word Formation

• Derivational morphemes
• Inflectional morphemes
Rules of Word Formation

• Derivational morphemes change the meaning

and/or part of speech of a root

• Adding –un to the word do changes the meaning

drastically

• Adding –ish to the noun boy creates the adjective boyish

• Derivational morphemes carry semantic meaning

and are like the affix version of content words
Rules of Word Formation

• When a new word is created through derivation,

other possible derivations may be blocked
• Communist exists, therefore we can’t have Communite or
Communian

• Some derivations trigger pronunciation changes,

while others do not
• specific  specificity and Elizabeth  Elizabethan
vs.
• bake  baker and wish  wishful
Rules of Word Formation

• Inflectional morphemes have only grammatical

function (similar to function words) and never
change the part of speech of the root

• waited, waits, waiting

• Inflectional morphemes are always suffixes in

English and always follow any derivational
morphemes
• commit + ment can become commit + ment + s but not
commit + s + ment
Rules of Word Formation

• Inflectional morphemes are productive, meaning they apply

freely to almost any appropriate base

• Most nouns will take the inflectional suffix –s to make a plural noun

• Only some nouns will take the derivational suffix –ize to make a verb
Rules of Word Formation

• Some languages use case morphology, where the

grammatical relations of nouns are marked with
inflectional morphemes
• Türkcelle bağlan hayata.
Bağlan hayata Türkcelle.
Hayata Türkcelle Bağlan.
• In Russian, the sentence “Maxim defends Victor” can
have a variety of word orders:

• This is because the –a in Viktora marks the object of the

sentence, regardless of the word order
Hierarchical Structure of Words

• Morphemes are added to a base in a fixed order

which reflects the structure of a word

• unsystematic = un + system + atic

Hierarchical Structure of Words

• The example of unsystematic represents the application of two

morphological rules:
• Noun + -atic  Adjective
• un- + Adjective  Adjective

• In the case of unsystematic, this is the only possible hierarchy, as

*unsystem is not a word
Hierarchical Structure of Words

• The hierarchical structure of words can help

disambiguate ambiguous words:
• unlockable could mean:
1)“not able to be locked” or 2) “able to be unlocked”
Rule Productivity

Derivational affixes are productive to different extents:

• -able can be affixed to any verb to create an adjective

• un- is most productive for adjectives derived from verbs and words with
polysyllabic bases
• unsimplified, unenlightened, and unhappy, but not *unsad, *unbrave, or *untall
Rule Productivity

• Exceptions and Suppletions:

• Not all words undergo regular morphological processes (e.g. Irregular

verbs and nouns such as; feet, went, sing, children)
• These words must be learned separately since rules don’t apply to them

• When new words enter the language, regular morphological rules

generally apply to them
• The plural of fax became faxes rather than faxen vs ox => oxen

• Borrowed words may retain borrowed morphology

• Latin datum and data (rather than *datums)

• Some words have no change when made plural or past tense

• sheep (singular) and sheep (plural)
• hit (present tense) and hit (past tense)
Hierarchical Structure of Words

• Lexical Gaps (Accidental Gaps): words that could be in a language but

aren’t

• Some permissible sound sequences have no meaning (e.g. blick)

• Some combinations of morphemes are never used (e.g. curiouser)

Other Morphological Processes

• Back-formations: new words can be created through misanalysis of

morpheme boundaries

• pease  pea
• bikini  monokini
• editor  edit
• television  televise
Portmanteau

• A portmanteau is a word or morpheme whose form and meaning are

derived from a blending of two or more distinct forms, e.g., smog
from smoke and fog.
• Liger, from lion and tiger
• Brangelina, from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Brexit, from Britain and exit
Blending

• Blending
• A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping.
An example is smog, which comes from smoke and fog, or brunch,
which comes from 'breakfast' and 'lunch'.
• One subcategory of blending is the reduction of a word to one of its
parts, e.g., fax (facsimile), flu (influenza) and bot (robot). Such clipped
words may not retain their original meaning. For example, "playing
a video game against a bot" is not the same as "playing a video game
against a robot".
Calque

• A calque is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by

literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.

• "Calque" itself is a loanword from the French noun calque ("tracing;

imitation; close copy");
• The word "loanword" is itself a calque of the German word Lehnwort,
just as "loan translation" is a calque of Lehnübersetzung.
Neologism

• A neologism is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase

that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not
yet been fully accepted into mainstream language
• Google (v)
• Laser (from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation)
• LED (Light Emmitting Diode)

• The use and over-use of brand names is another example of

neologism creation. The terms "coke" or "cola" may be used in
reference to any Coca-Cola like beverage regardless of brand. Kleenex
is used in reference to any facial tissue.
Retronym

• A retronym is a word created to differentiate between two words,

where previously no clarification was required.
• Advances in technology are often responsible for the coinage of
retronyms. For example, the term "acoustic guitar" was coined at the
advent of electric guitars and analog watches were thus named to
distinguish them from digital watches.
• Abbreviation
Acronym

An acronym is a word or name formed as an abbreviation from the

initial components in a phrase or a word, usually individual letters.

• NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

• LASER – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
• RADAR - Radio Detection And Ranging

• and sometimes syllables

as in Benelux – Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg
Other Morphological Processes

• Compounds: joining two or more words together to

make a new word (e.g. landlord)

• The rightmost word in a compound is the head, which

determines its meaning and part of speech
• Noun + adjective = adjective (headstrong)

• The stress on English compounds falls on the first word

• greenhouse vs. green house

• Two-word compounds are the most common, but there

may not be an upper limit
• Dr. Seuss’s “Tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle”
Other Morphological Processes

• The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meaning of

its parts

• Blackboard
• Cathouse
• Turncoat
“Pullet Surprises”

• We can use our knowledge of morphemes and

morphological rules to guess the meaning of words
we don’t know

• Our guesses may be wrong but they are based on

morphological (mis)analysis

• deciduous “able to make up one’s mind”

• bibliography “holy geography”
• gullible “to do with sea birds”