Lec. 1
What is Morphology?
Word Structure
What is morphology?
The study of the internal structure of
words / the study of word formation,
 In the 19th century, morphology & the
reconstruction of Indo-European (LatinSanskrit-Persian- Germanic)
 Sound system & word-formation patterns
 A synchronic discipline

What is a word?
native speakers have intuitive knowledge
of how to form new words.
 E.g. ‘splinch’ = to step on broken glass
 E.g. code (n)/codify (v) Blair (n)/ Blairfy (v)
 E.g. rewash/ reheat/ relove? reexplode?
redie?

What is a word?
A person
 a word is stretch of
letters that occurs
between blank
spaces.
 a word is something
small that means
something.

A linguist
 a morpheme is the
smallest unit of
language that has its
own meaning.
 E.g. giraffe, red, re-,
-ize, etc.

1. What is a word?

A word is one or two morphemes that
can stand alone in a language.
Simple words & Complex words

Simple words
giraffe
 sit
 pistachio
 Michael
 oops
 just


Complex words
opposition
 prewashed
 blackboard
 inseparable
 orphanage

Exercise
While reading, an English book, you come
across the word ‘pockled’? What would you
do?
 ‘pockle’ or ‘pockled’ ?
 Dictionary: lexeme/ lexical items
pockle, pockled, pockling, pokles,

‫وردة‬
‫ أورد – تورد –وردتين – وردتان‬- ‫ورود – وردات‬
1.1.The Lexeme

We shall refer to the ‘word’ in the sense of
the abstract vocabulary item using the
term lexeme. The forms eats, eating &
eater are all different realisations/
representations/ manifestations of the
lexeme EAT.
1.1.The Lexeme
Lexemes share a core meaning although
they are being spelled & pronounced
differently.
 Lexemes are the words listed in the
dictionary

Exercise
Group words that belong to the same
lexeme:
sleep – saw – catch – jump – seeing – eyes
– seen – slept – caught – jumped –boy –
boys – see –tallest – sleeps – woman –
sleeping – jumps – tall – catches –– taller –
catching – jumping – sees - women
1.2.The word-form

We may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a
particular physical realisation of a specific
lexeme in speech or writing., i.e. a
particular word-form.
1.2. Word-form




The physical
word-form

The realisation of
the lexeme
see – sees- seeing –
saw – seen
sleep, sleeping,
sleeper, slept, sleeps
catch, catches,
catching, caught,

SEE

SLEEP

CATCH
1.3.The grammatical word

The word is a representation of a lexeme
that is associated with certain
morphosyntactic properties
(morphological + syntactic), such as noun,
adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc.
Exercise
Identify the 2/ 3 distinct grammatical words
represented by the word cut:
Usually I cut the bread on the table
 Yesterday, I cut the bread in the sink


* Jane has a cut on her finger
Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest units of
meaning.
 Morphology is the study of wordstructure.
 E.g.
 unfair – untidy – uncle – unjust - under

Morphemes
The term morpheme is used to refer to
the smallest, indivisible units of semantic
content or grammatical function from
which words are made up.
 A morpheme cannot be decomposed into
smaller meaningful units, or units that
mark a grammatical function.

Exercise
-er
 player / caller / pretender
 -ness
 Kindness / cleanliness / goodness
 ex ex-wife / ex-minister
 pre Pre-war / pre-wash / pre-school

Morphemes & meaning
It is possible to combine several
morphemes together to form more
complex words.
 E.g.
 uncleanliness
 unfaithfulness
 reincarnation

Morphemes & meaning
Meaning & morphemes:
speakers may have different mental
lexicons, based on their personal
experience

helicopter – pteropus - diptera
(pter=wings)
 Bible – bibliography – bibliophile
 (bibl=book)

Identification of morphemes

What is true of science in general is also
true of linguistics (Chomsky; 1957)

It is not possible to establish mechanical
techniques for the identification of
morphemes

But, there are a number of reasonably
reliable & widely accepted techniques
proposed
by
linguists
working
in
morphology
2.1. the principle of Contrast
We contrast forms (words) that differ in :
 1. phonological shape
 /e/ vs. /i/
ten & tin / six & sex

2. meaning (meaning & grammatical)
 The girl plays vs. the boy plays
 The girl plays vs. the girl played

2.2 morphemes & morphs

Morphemes are the smallest difference
in the shape of a word that correlates
with the smallest difference in word or
sentence meaning or in grammatical
structure.
2.1. morphemes & morphs

The analysis of morphemes begins with
the isolation of morphs.

A morph is a physical form representing
some morpheme in a language. It is a
recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme)
or sequence of sounds (phonemes).
morphemes & morphs






morpheme
By comparing these morphs with the same forms in other words we find
that they all have their own meaning: work + s (marks the 3rd person
singular), work + ed (a marker for past tense), work + er (a
marker for "person who does the activity expressed in the verb”), work +
house (a special house). All these words are made up of at least two
meaningful units. We call these morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful
unit of a language. The branch of linguistics which deals with these
morphemes is called morphology.
morph
Lets consider the elements in words like (she) works, worked, worker,
workhouse, we find in a first step in the analysis recurrent forms: work, -s, ed, -er, house. These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of
an element, a segment, which is not yet classified.
Source:
http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/New
words.pdf
Exercise
Identify the morphs:









I parked the car
We parked the car
I parked the car
He parks the car
She parked the car
She parks the car
We park the car
He parked the car
The morphs are:
Exercise
Identify the morphs which represent the
past tense morpheme in English:
1. /d/ the verb ends with a voiced sound except /d/

clean, weigh, enjoy, burb…
2.
/t/
the verb ends with a voiceless except /t/
park, miss, watch, …
3.
/id/
the verb ends with /t/ or /d/
mend, paint, hand, wait, …
Allomorphs

If different morphs represent the same
morpheme, they are grouped together
and they are called allomorphs

Sometimes the difference in form is not
associated with a difference in meaning
/d/, /t/, & /id/
 /s/, /z/, & /iz/

morphemes, morphs, & allomorphs
Allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in
English
Morpheme
‘past tense’
morph
/id/
morph
/d/
morph
/t/
Allomorphs of the plural morpheme in English
Morphemes
‘plural’
morph
/s/
morph
/z/
morph
/iz/
Identification of morphemes

The central technique used in the
identification of morphemes is based on
the notion of distribution; the total set
of contexts in which a particular linguistic
form occurs.
Classification of morphs
We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs
of the same morpheme if they are in
complementary distribution:
 If morphs:
1. represent the same meaning or serve
the same grammatical function, and
2. are never found in identical contexts

The allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in
English are in complementary distribution
Morpheme
‘past tense’
morph
/id/
morph
/d/
morph
/t/
Exercise
Identify the allomorphs of the negative
morpheme
1. impossible, impatient, immovable

1.
intolerable, indecent, intangible, inactive,
inelegance
1.
incomplete, incompatible, ingratitude
Notes

If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the
choice of allomorphs used in a given
context is phonologically conditioned
(assimilation).

Spelling is a very poor guide to
pronunciation in many languages (e. g.
English)