Inleiding Taalkunde
Docent:
Paola Monachesi
Blok 4, 2000/2001
Contents
1 Morphology
2
2 The structure of words
2
3 Word and morpheme classes
3
4 The distribution of words
4
5 Analyzing morphological structure
4
6 Variation in Morphology
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6.1
Conditioned variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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6.2
Free variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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6.3
Portmanteau morphology and suppletion . . . . . . . . . . . .
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1
1
Morphology
2
The structure of words
• Morphology is the study of words and their structure.
• Words are meaningful linguistic units that can be combined to form
phrases and sentences.
• Words are not the smallest units of meaning.
• The boys picked wildflowers in the churchyard for the beautifully dressed
Marta
• How can the words in the sentence above be decomposed?
• How many morphemes (i.e. smaller units) does it contain?
• Where are the morpheme boundaries?
• What is the difference between Marta and -s ? (free morpheme vs.
bound morpheme; lexical morpheme vs. grammatical morpheme).
• Terminology: simple vs. complex words; uninflected words vs. inflected
and derived words.
• disenchanting : division into root, prefix and suffix (i.e. affixes).
3
Word and morpheme classes
• Affixes may be described in terms of the class or category of the word
they combine with and the category of the new word they form.
• Example of affixes: anti-, un-, re-, dis-, -ment, -ize, -ism, -ful, -ly, -er,
-s
• Which class of words do these affixes combine with?
2
• Sometimes the word class of a word changes when an affix is added and
sometimes it does not.
• It is possible to identify members of certain word classes in terms of
what affixes can be used with them: (i.e nouns with plural with -s,
adjectives with comparative with -er, verbs form a singular present
with -s, past with -ed and present participle with -ing.)
• The set of the words made from a single root is called paradigm.
• Example of the English verb paradigm: regular vs. irregular verbs.
4
The distribution of words
• The distribution of a word may indicate its word class.
• Examples of different frames: a singular noun, an adjective, prepositions.
• The use of certain types of morphemes can be illustrated with sentence
frames.
• Examples: plural suffix, past tense suffix.
• Inflectional morphemes are those whose presence is driven by sentence structure.
• Inflectional morphemes usually do not change the class of the resulting
word.
• Derivational morphemes increase the vocabulary, they are a way
for new words to enter the language. Their occurence is not related to
sentence structure.
• Derivational morphemes usually involve a change of class in the resulting word.
• Give examples of derivational morphemes from previous list.
• Terminology: open vs. closed class; lexical vs. function words.
3
5
Analyzing morphological structure
• Segmentation of Swahili sentences:
Ninasoma
Anasoma
Tunasoma
Nilisoma
Alisoma
Nitasoma
Tutasoma
‘I am reading’
‘He/she is reading’
‘We are reading’
‘I read’ (past)
‘He/she read’
‘I will read’
‘We will read’
• Which morphemes are part of these words?
• What do they mean?
• Where are the morphemes boundaries?
Ninasema
Tulisema
Atasema
Watasema
‘I am speaking’
‘We spoke’
‘We will speak’
‘They will speak’
• Which morphemes are new?
• What do they mean?
Anamfukuza
Ananifukuza
Tulimfukuza
Walitufukuza
‘He is chasing him’
‘He is chasing me’
‘We chased him’
‘They chased us’
• Which morphemes are new?
• What do they mean?
• Segmentation of sentences in Tolkapaya Yavapai
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Chtul-ma
’-chtul-ma
M-chtul-ma
’uu-ma
’uu-ma
M-’uu-ma
‘He/she washes’
‘I wash’
‘You wash’
‘He/she sees’
‘I see’
‘You see’
• Which morphemes are part of these words?
• What do they mean?
Chtul-ch-ma
‘They wash’
’-chtul-ch-ma
‘We wash’
M-chtul-ch-ma ‘You (plural) wash’
’uu-ch-ma
’uu-ch-ma
M-’uu-ch-ma
‘They see’
‘We see’
‘You (plural) see’
• What is the difference between the two sets of sentences?
• Morpheme boundary between two morphemes can be identified if a
morpheme can intervene in that position.
• Make a table with the subjects.
• If the verb changes in keeping with the number, person or gender of a
subject, this is referred as subject-verb agreement.
• What does the morpheme -ma mean?
Chtul-ma
’uu-ma
‘He/she washes’; ’He washed’, ’She washed’
‘He/she sees’; ‘I saw’
5
Chtul-ha
’uu-ha
’uu-ch-ha
‘He/she will wash’
‘I will see’;
‘We will see’
• Give example with glosses.
• Prefixes and suffixes follow a certain order. They seem to fill slots in a
template.
• Give template.
6
Variation in Morphology
6.1
Conditioned variation
• Conditioned variation occurs if in one environement the morpheme appears and in another it doesn’t or it might involve a difference in pronunciation.
(i) cat/cat[s] vs. cad/cad[z];
(ii) tap/tap[s] vs. tab/tab[z];
(iii) Reebok/Reebok[s] vs. bog/bog[z];
s and [z] are two allomorphs of the English plural morpheme, that is two
different forms which are used in different phonological contexts.
6.2
Free variation
• Free variation is morphological variation in which no conditioning environment can be stated.
• Example from the Zapotec language spoken in San Lucas Quiavini’
(Oxaca), Mexico.
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R-a’ihsy-eb
R-zhihby-eb
’He (formal) sleeps’
’He (formal) gets scared’
R-a’ihsy-iny/ni’ ’He (reverential) sleeps’
R-zhihby-iny/ni’ ’He (reverential) gets scared’
• iny and ni’ are two allomorphs of the reverential morpheme.
6.3
Portmanteau morphology and suppletion
• It is not always possible to divide a word into morphemes.
• He decided to buy flowers for Marta vs. He thought of buying flowers
for Marta.
• We decided to buy flowers for Marta vs. Marta decided to buy flowers
for us.
• A morpheme which contains more than one non-segmentable meaningful element is called portmanteau.
• Irregular related forms such as we us are called suppletive. Ohter examples are: be and were or good and well.
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