Introduction to Linguistics 3
The Lexical System
Prof. Jo Lewkowicz
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Review of week 2
1.
2.
What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?
How do we make speech sounds? What is the process of speech
production?
3. What is meant by the statement that the sound system is rule governed?
4. What are minimal pairs? How do they differ from allophones?
5. Make a list of 5 minimal pairs
6. How do we describe consonants? Why do we describe vowels in a
different way? What are diphthongs?
7. What does IPA stand for? Why is it an important tool for those studying
language?
8. What is segmental phonology? What is suprasegmental phonology?
9. How many tones are used in spoken English? What function does
intonation play in spoken English?
10. English is a stressed-timed language. What do we mean by this?
2
The Word
• How many words are in the following utterances?
How many different words are in each utterance?
–
–
–
–
–
–
Go home!
We need some more butter.
We’re going home soon.
They’re living on a shoe-string
They are having problems with cash flow
He who laughs last, laughs loudest
• Why is it difficult to explain what a word is?
3
One or more than one word?
• Should the words underlined be counted as one word or two?
– I will act this part while he acts the part of King Lear.
– Please take a seat. / Please be seated?
– He went to the bank to cash some money. / He went to the river bank.
• A word (lexical unit) is the smallest unit of speech that has meaning
and can stand alone.
• A word family is made up of the root word plus all the other words
that can be made from it, e.g. store, storing, stored
• A lemma consists of a key word plus its add-ons or inflexions that
are the same part of speech, as in act, acting & acted. But actor
forms another lemma as it is a different part of speech (noun) from
act (verb).
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Word tests
• The potential pause test
– Can you pause where there is white space on the
page?
– Does not work for contractions and multi-syllable
words such as nationhood
• The indivisibility test
– Can you add additional words in the spaces?
– Interpolation points will mark word boundaries
• The stand-alone test
– Can the word stand alone as a complete utterance?
– Does not work for all words e.g. articles
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Types of words
• Content words
– Carry meaning
– Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
– Open set, new words are constantly being added and old
ones disappear
– Examples of new words: blog, Iraqnophobia
• Function words
– Tie content words together showing how nouns and verbs
relate to one another
– Articles (a, an, the), prepositions (on, in, of), pronouns (he,
she, them) & conjunctions (and, but, although, nor)
– Closed set
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Word class
• Group the following words according to their
word class:
table
green
honesty
old
quickly
bring
eat
and
an
therefore
bright
smoothly
them
from
so
book
fast
his
onto
remember
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The structure of words
• Morphology
– The study of the internal structure of words
• Words can be broken down into morphemes
– Free morphemes: words that can stand alone and
that carry meaning, e.g. happy, good, read
– Bound morphemes: attachments to words that
extend the meaning of a word. They cannot stand
alone in a sentence, e.g. ‘ed’ (past tense), ‘ly’
adverb – walk-ed; shy-ly
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Types of morphemes
• Free morphemes
– Open set
– Root of the word
• Bound morphemes
– Can be described by their position to the root of the word
• Prefixes – appear in front of free morphemes, e.g. il –logical; disapprove; anit-establishment
– ‘re’ can also be a prefix as in relive; redeliver but it is not always a prefix
as in relate which does not mean late again or revive as there is no word
vive
• Suffixes – appear after the free morpheme, e.g. walk-ed; late-ly;
late-ness
– Affixes refer to either prefixes of suffixes
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Inflectional morphemes
• in English a small set of bound morphemes, all suffixes
that change the word, but not its grammatical class
-s
-s
-ing
-ed
-ed
-er
-est
-’s, -s’
plural morpheme
3rd person sing. present
progressive
past tense
past participle
comparative
superlative
possessive
dogs
lives
living
lived
had lived
taller
tallest
Adrian’s, the Jones’
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Derivational morphemes
• Large set of bound morphemes, including prefixes (which
do not change the grammatical class of the root, e.g.
disregard, multinational) and suffixes (which usually do
change the grammatical category, e.g. movement,
government, happiness)
• Common derivational morphemes include:
-ize, -able, -tion, -sion, -cion, -ate, -ness, -ity, -er, -ent, -ive,
-tial, -ed, -ic, -ly, dis-, un-, il-, in-, pre-, bi-, post-
– Can add more than one derivational morpheme on to a
word as long as it remains comprehensible,
e.g. nation, nationalist, nationalists
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Breaking down words into morphemes
• How many different words can you make from
the root ‘appear’? Here are a few:
– disappear
– appearance
– appears
• Identify the bound morphemes, their type and
their function
• Break down the word
antidisestablishmentarianism into its constituent
parts
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Dimensions of a word
•
•
•
•
•
•
Spelling
Pronunciation
Morphology
Syntax
Meaning
Pragmatics
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Additional features of words
• Need to recognise that the same word may have a
number of different meanings, e.g. bank (homonym),
or different nuances but the same underlying meaning,
e.g. neutral (polysemous word)
• A word does not always have the same phonological
form e.g. go – went
• When classifying words we need to think of them in
terms of word families
• There is often a close relationship between the sound
system and the lexical system, e.g. in the pronunciation
of the ‘ed’ past form of words such as drip (voiceless),
sob (voiced) & elect, end (root ends in /t/ or /d/)
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Pronunciation of past tense and plurals
• How would you pronounce the underlined
sounds?
– booked, praised, booted, bonded, branched, laughed,
ended, rated, failed, lingered.
– What rule can you derive from the pronunciation?
• How would you pronounce the underlined
sounds?
– books, praises, boots, bonds, branches, laughs, ends,
rates, fails, lingers, leases, bushes.
– What rule can you derive from the pronunciation?
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Creation of new words
• Numerous ways in which new words are created including:
– compounding, i.e. putting two existing words together: compact
disk, tree-hugger, songwriter
– affixation, i.e. adding a prefix or suffix to a word: anit-Bush,
SMSing, pro-choice
– conversion, i.e. transforming one part of speech into another: to
out-outing; to green-greening
– clipping , i.e. using a short form of the word: flu, roo, barbie
– generification, i.e. using the proper name for the product to
refer to it: biro, Kleenex
– acronomy, i.e. when the acronym becomes the word by which
the thing is known: scuba=self contained underwater breathing
appatatus; radar=Radio detection and ranging
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Cataloguing words
• Dictionaries
– 1st English dictionary drawn up by Samuel Johnson working
with a team, took 10 years, completed in 1746 with over
400,000 words plus definitions
– Currently dictionaries drawn up by committees which
determine which words to include and which to leave out
– Even with the technical resources today, no dictionary can
be fully comprehensive
• Corpora
– Computers have allowed us to record data on real
language as it is written or spoken
– Corpora allow us to study not only the word but also the
context in which it appears
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Examples 1 from a written corpus
001.
002.
003.
004.
005.
006.
007.
008.
009.
010.
n their rise to military prominence, Custer was a BELIEVEr in blood and guts warfare. During the Ci
s concerning the nature of religion were, Adams BELIEVEd, some of the major keys to the understa
let the experience shape itself. Midi Garth also BELIEVEs in subjective continuity that begins with
Commons, on February 27, 1945, he had always BELIEVEd to be "just and right", but he did not wa
nic of grief she accepted Jonathan's dictum, and BELIEVEd in her desperation that she had been c
amen, I say to you, he who hears my word, and BELIEVEs him who sent me, has life everlasting, a
Westminster) was an outstanding Handler and BELIEVEd a Junior should have an opportunity to
man as one of mere potentiality or capacity and BELIEVEs that Adam and Eve were created as chi
tic switch i the budget during this recovery and BELIEVEs it "even more unlikely that the Federal
y the last 10 per cent are genuine Christians and BELIEVErs in democracy. But these Western count
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The grammar system
• Grammar = the specification of how words
are formed and combined to enable the
communication of meaning
• Formation of words = morphology
• Ordering and combination of words = syntax
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