Words vs sentences
Meaningful building-blocks of language
highest
Sentence (consists of one or more clauses)
Clause (consists of one or more phrases)
Phrase (consists of one or more words)
Word (consists of one or more morphemes)
lowest
Morpheme
Simple vs complex words
elephant
crime
elephants
whisper
vegetable
life
Whats the difference?
whispers
vegetables
morpheme
crimes
lives
morphemes
Simple vs complex words
cont.
elephant
crime
vegetable
whispers
vegetables
life
morpheme
MONOMORPHEMIC
crimes
whisper
Simple words
(one morpheme
ONLY!)
elephants
Complex
words
morpheme +
morpheme(s)
POLYMORPHEMIC
lives
morphemes
What about the list below?
plain
part
carel
ess
secur
e
care
willing
fortunat
e
predict
able
Simple or complex?
Based on previous examples:
How to define a morpheme?
Take into account two main characteristics :
a) a morpheme must be identifiable from one word to
another
b) contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole
word
and also, some other ones:
c) it cannot be divided into further units
d) it can vary in length (from one single letter to a whole
word)
e) morphemes are recyclable units. One of the most
important properties of the morpheme is that it can be
used again and again to form many words.
Thus, a morpheme can be defined as the
smallest meaningful morphological unit of a
language that cannot be further divided or
Some examples:
c
a
r
e
helpfulne
ss
carel
ess
helpf
ul
carelessn
ess
h
e
l
p
tr
u
st
trustwort
hy
untrustworthy
How many morphemes in the words above?
Morphe
mes
Bound
Free
How to distinguish the different morphemes in a
word?
helpfulness
carelessness
untrustworthy
In how many morphemes can we break down the
words above?
Remember the distinction between words,
morphemes and lexical items?
The most basic distinction is bound vs free
morpheme
Bound morpheme is a morpheme that does not
have a meaning on its own.
Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on
its own and has a full/ complete meaning.
In writing we can divide morphemes by hyphens
as below:
Help-ful-ness
care-less-ness
un-trust-worthy
The easiest way for non-native speakers of English
si to check the dictionary and see which
Some more examples
Help
Helper
Helpful
What about the ones below???
a. read-able
b. leg-ible
hear-ing
audi-ence
en-large
magn-ify
Helpfulness
perform-ance
rend-ition
Helplessnes
white-ness
clar-ity
dark-en
obfusc-ate
seek-er
applic-ant
Helpless
ajority of the cases, in English words there is one free morpheme BUT no
noted from column b! That is why morphemes in b are sometimes categ
Combining forms
cra
n
stra
w
ber
ry
bla
ck
blu
e
The morphemes above: bound or
free?
Types of morphemes
morphemes are equally central to the formation of a word.
of two types: roots and affixes.
the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is th
t must always be present.
ord has at least one root and they are at the centre of word derivational processe
rry the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derive
mes such as chair, green, ballet, father, cardigan, America, Mississippi are
nd they all happen to be free forms, i.e. independent words.
ther hand, there are roots like seg in segment, gen in genetics, brev in brevity, o
berry which cannot stand alone as words. They are called bound root morphem
d bases, as distinct from free root morphemes or free bases.
bound roots found in English today are of classical origin, some of them are of
ic origin.
Consider: permit, commit, submit OR receive, perceive, conceive.
Morphe
mes
Bound
(Affixes)
Free
(Roots)
must be noted that although roots are usually free it is not always the ca
Consider the ones below:
teacher, clipper, toaster, faster,
stronger, kinder - er
kindly, decently, firmly, strongly,
vehemently, slowly ly
honorable, predictable, washable,
readable, doable able
horrible, responsible, visible, discernible
ible
wonderful, spiteful, dreadful, hateful,
mouthful ful
hopeless, thoughtless, fearless,
Consider OTHER ones below:
defrost, dethrone, dehydration- de
disagree, disadvantage, dishonest - dis
transfer, translate, transcontinental trans
predict, prepare, preheat - pre
postwar, postscript, postdate
malcontent, maladjusted, malnutrition
substitute, subtraction, subway
Affixes at the begining of a morpheme
are called
PREFFIXES
Morphemes and their allomorphs
Different pronunciations of one morpheme is called allomorphy
and the variants of that
morpheme are called allomorphs.
Allomorph are subject to:
a) Phonological
conditioning,
b) Morphological (also known as
grammatical) conditioning, and
c) lexical conditioning
c) Lexical
conditioning
Phonological conditioning
The choice of allomorph for a particular morpheme is determined by the local
phonological context i.e. the choice of allomorph is predictable on the basis of
he pronunciation
For example:
English plural
Stacks, cats, hats - s
Birds, dogs, frogs z
Bushes, boxes, nurses iz
indefinite article
an - before vowels
a - before consonants
Allomorphs of the regular past tense morpheme
id/ after d,t : hated
t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked
d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged
im/ before bilabial sounds : impossible
il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal
in/ elsewhere : independent
Morphological conditioning
e choice of allomorph is determined by particular morphemes, not just by their
onunciation or phonological context i.e. it may be dependent on the presence of
particular grammatical element.
ESENT
alk
ss
asp
eep
weep
ake
ke
PAST
walked
kissed
grasped
wept
swept
shook
took
ALLOMORPH
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[-t]
[- k]
[- k]
Lexical conditioning
The choice of allomorph is unpredictable, thus memorized on a word-by-word
basis.
E.g. the plurals ox-oxen, Sheep- sheep, child - children are lexically
conditioned because they cannot
be predicted from general knowledge about English morphology or
phonology.
Exercises (homework)
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 5
