Implications from Morphology for Language learning By Du Jia （Rachel） What is Morphology? Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of linguistic study today. • The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology which means ‘the study of something’. • Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form of words. (Salmon 2000) What is a word? • Smallest independent units of language 1.do not depend on other words. 2.can be separated from other units 3.can change position. E.g.The man looked at the horses. • “s” is the plural marker, dependent on the noun horse to receive meaning • Horses is a word: can occur in other positions or stand on its own. Morphemes • Morphemes – the building blocks of morphology • Words have internal structure: built of even smaller pieces 1.SIMPLE WORDS: Don’t have internal structure (only consist of one morpheme) eg work, build, run. They can’t be split into smaller parts which carry meaning or function. 2.COMPLEX WORDS: Have internal structure (consist of two or more morphemes) eg worker: affix -er added to the root work to form a noun. • Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units of language. • To use a metaphor, morphemes can be considered the Lego of language: you can fit different parts together in new and interesting ways to form new creations (i.e. words). (Lee, 2015) • Free morpheme: a simple word, consisting of one morpheme. E.g. house, work, high, chair, wrap. They are words in themselves. Free VS Bound Morphemes • Bound morpheme: morphemes that must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning. • Eg: unkindness • UN- and -NESS are the bound morphemes, requiring the root KIND to form the word. • These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. There are two types of affixes: prefix (front of the base)= unsuffix (end of the base)= -ness Morphology Tree • The word 'antidisestablishmentarianis m' contains 6 morphemes (1 free, 5 bound) • True • False Derivational Morphology and Inflectional Morphology • "For English, [morphology] means devising ways of describing the properties of such disparate items as a, horse, took, indescribable, washing machine, and antidisestablishmentarianism. A widely recognized approach divides the field into two domains: lexical or derivational morphology studies the way in which new items of vocabulary can be built up out of combinations of elements (as in the case of in-describable); inflectional morphology studies the ways words vary in their form in order to express a grammatical contrast (as in the case of horses, where the ending marks plurality)." ("The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language," 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003) Derivational morphology Derivational morphemes are affixes which are added to a lexeme to change its meaning or function. They are used to make a new, different lexeme (for example, -ly changes the adjective sad into the adverb sadly). • Most derivational morphemes change the part of speech e.g. resemble ---resemblance. The majority of derivational morphemes that don't change the part of speech are prefixes, for example, adding unchanges the meaning of the adjective happy but it is still an adjective unhappy. When affixes are added to a base or stem, there is usually a specific order for adding them Inflectional Morphology • Inflectional morphemes are affixes which carry grammatical meaning. • cats or sailing • they function to ensure that the word is in the appropriate form so the sentence is grammatically correct. • All inflectional morphemes in English are suffixes and are added after any derivational suffixes. • The most common inflectional morphemes are used in verb inflection (for example, -ed in raced, -ing in racing, -s in races) but there are suffixes for noun inflection (for example, plural -s in horses and possessive 's in Norma's) and adjective inflection (for example, comparative er in faster and superlative -est in fastest). Productive affixes • Some kinds of affixes occur more freely than others. They are more productive than others. For example, the suffixes -able and ise and the prefix un- are quite productive as they can be easily used to make new words. Besides affixation, derivational and inflectional morphology, morphology also concerns about word formation (affixation, compounding, blending, clipping, coinage, acronym, abbreviation, etc. ). Compounding- do it yourself, copycat Blending-smog, brunch Clipping- demo, psych Coinage- google, skype Acronym- covid 19 Abbreviation- ASAP Borrowing- espresso, kowtow Linguistic Awareness • The term linguistic awareness refers to the individual sensible ability to grasp on particular linguistic activities like speaking and listening (Petrovska, 2011, pp. 1). • Petrovska (2011, pp. 2) mentions that phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and morphological awareness belongs to linguistic awareness. • Apel et.al（2014）explain that linguistic awareness skills consist of phonemic awareness, orthographic pattern awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness. Morphological Awareness Tong et.al (2011,4) state that morphological awareness is an individual attentive knowledge of the morphemic structure of certain words and the ability to reproduce and employ that structure. It includes the understanding of small unit of meaning, the understanding of affixes and the understanding of how affixes combined to roots. Apel (2014) suggests that morphological awareness is an important linguistic awareness ability that deserves of much attention in learning language because it plays important role in reading and spelling development. Implications from morphology for oral language • Morphological awareness enables the language learners to clarify the pronunciation of certain sound. For example, the boundary between the prefix “mis-” and the root “hear”, it is more likely that they would correctly pronounce the /s/ and /h/ separately, rather than incorrectly as a combination like “sh” as in “ship” (Zeh, 2017). • In spelling, morphological awareness helps the students to perceive and understand the long, unfamiliar word, spell the complex words and to remember its spelling easily. • Morphological awareness influences the other linguistic awareness, phonological awareness. If a child has an understanding of morphemes when speaking, this should assist them with spelling strategies. Once again, this is a result of understanding the meaning of the root word, pronouncing it correctly and not omitting the consonant when a bound morpheme is added. (e.g. demands, demanded, demanding) • Evidence has shown that children who use their knowledge of the morphological structure of words are able to increase the phonetic plausibility of spelling attempts from a young age (Treiman et al, 2006, cited in Larkin & Snowling, 2008). • When people are in a conversation, one with morphology competency can be aware of choosing the correct vocabulary to suit the audience. • The greater one’s understandings of morphemes and how they can be manipulated, the stronger their ability to create sentences, recall events and sustain conversations with more than one idea which flow. He can quickly notice what tense the conversation is being spoken in, which follows on to linking sentences appropriately, sequencing and continuation and flow of ideas. Implications from morphology for Reading and Writing • Morphological awareness is not only applicable for vocabulary improvement but also helpful for improving reading skill (reading ability and reading comprehension), writing development, and understanding speech production (Akbulut, 2017). • Kieffer et.al (Oz, 2014) add that the ability to decompose words into their small meaningful part not only promote their vocabulary mastery but also promote a greater reading comprehension as well as building up their skill in writing. • Oz (2014) writes that inflectional morphology consciousness elaborates the students’ grammatical competency; derivational morphology consciousness enlarges the students’ vocabulary knowledge. Significant grammatical competency and big vocabulary size are very helpful for the students’ writing activities. • Munro (2009) stated “it is morphemes that we use, as speakers of language, when we link individual words and parts of words into sentence meanings and conversations or recountings.” Therefore, it is necessary that children understand how words are formed so that they can understand them in context. • Kieffer and Lesaux (2011) show that knowledge of both inflectional and derivational has a unique beneficence in reading comprehension. Morphological awareness exposes the students on identifying words structure (affixes), derivation, inflection forms and identifying their meaning based on the morphological analysis. These activities are very helpful for the students when they are engaging with reading text. Implications from morphology for Vocabulary knowledge • Green (2009) wrote, “morphological knowledge can also enable children to substantially increase their vocabulary and comprehension skills by using the meanings of familiar base words and suffixes to infer the meanings of unfamiliar derivatives.” • Carlisle in Alsaeedi (2017) finds that having received instruction in morphological analysis, the students are able to deduce the meaning of unknown words. It can help the students to learn new vocabularies and even increase their vocabulary mastery. • Farzi (2018) states that vocabulary size plays a significance role in determining how well the performance of the second language learners in learning language skills such as reading, listening, and writing. Morphological awareness’s role in vocabulary comprehension occurs when language learners are able to break down certain complex word into its root and affix (prefix or suffix) to guess its meaning. • Vocabulary and morphemic awareness are very closely linked and Kieffer & Leaux (2007) state “students with larger vocabularies tended to have greater understanding of morphology.” As a result of children learning a range of different morphemes, this enables them to predict and understand the meaning of words better. It can also work in reverse, the stronger their vocabulary the more they understand about morphemes. • As quoted from Fasold (2006), one of the purposes of studying morphology is the innovation of words and the remaking of the existing ones. Obviously, the knowledge of morphology can be applied to improve vocabulary. Learners can derive the new word from the existing ones by using affixes (prefixes and suffixes). Besides, they can apply some word formations such as compounding, blending, clipping to coin the new words. Learning morphology can help the learners to identify and predict the meaning of the words when they have recognizable parts such as prefixes or suffixes. Affixes can lead the learners to comprehend the meaning of words, Numerous vocabulary size and ability of predicting meaning give significant contribution in English language skill such as reading, speaking, and writing. • Biemiller and Slonim in Akbulut (2017, pp. 10) emphasize that learners’ solid vocabulary knowledge affects their ability in reading comprehension. • Prepositions vs. Phrasal Verbs Background knowledge for phrasal verbs in English • phrasal verbs don’t make sense without an object. Many times the particle (the second part of the phrasal verb) cannot be moved. • For example: • 1. She picked up the pencil. • 2. He figured out the problem. • 3. She walked down the street. ---Down the street she walked. The sentence makes sense, so it’s a preposition. “She” is still the subject, and it’s still a complete sentence. • With phrasal verbs, you can’t reverse the order. • E.g. She picked up the pencil. • The pencil she picked up • Phrasal verbs are treated morphologically in much the same way as singleword verbs in English, with suffixes inflecting the verb for third person singular, past tense, or for progressive or perfective participles. The ‘verb’ part of the phrasal verb—the first word, which was originally a separate verb—is the part which receives any inflection. • (1) You try on the shoes. • (2) He tries on the shoes. • (3) I am trying on the shoes. • (4) He tried on the shoes. • (5) He tries the whiskey. • (6) I will try the whiskey. • (7) I crossed the street. • (8) I crossed out the misspelled word. • (9) While chewing gum, I blew a bubble. • (10) The construction worker blew up the condemned building. The parent verb for the phrasal verb is the same as the single-word verb; in each set, the verbs share the same inflection. The “verb” portion of phrasal verbs follows the same morphological patterns as other English verbs; it is homophonous with the parent verb, but due to the presence of its particle, it no longer has the same meaning. Semantic Transparency and Figurative Meaning All verb phrases can be divided into two subgroups: semantic transparency and figurative meaning. Thanks for your attention!
