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NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY
Morphology Analysis of Bangla Speakers Who Uses English
as a Second Language
UMMEY JOYNOB MIM
ID: 1812956015
MAINUL ALAM
ID: 1911929015
ENG 312: Morphology and Syntax
Assistant Professor Dr. Shapla Parveen
Department of English and Modern Language
14 September 2021
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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………….03
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………….04
2. Background……..……………………………………………………….06
2.1 Rational of the Study……………….................................................06
2.3 English and Bangla Morphemes……………………………………07
3. Research Methodology………………………………………………….08
4. Data Analysis ……………….…………….……………………………10
4.1 Analysis of words………………………………………………….10
4.2 Difference between Bangla and English Morpheme…………………...17
5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………….18
6. References.……………………………………………………………...19
7. Appendix…………………………………………………………………20
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Abstract
This research aims to show that "Morphological Analysis of the usage of morphemes in the
spontaneous speech of young Bangla speakers of English as a second language," particularly
among the young generation. It also analyses the morphological structure of the words from the
responding students.
The research findings that morphological structure of the words based on the topics and concepts
discussed in class. This paper suggests that this phenomenon neither poses a severe threat nor
adversity impacts on morphological structures. While comparing and contrasting the English and
Bangla sentences, we can find some similarities and many differences.
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Introduction
The term “Morpheme” was coined by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in c. 1880. It is based on
Greek morph- 'form' and the suffix -eme, on the analogy of the term phoneme (Morpheme Glottopedia, 2028). The concept "morpheme" is not uncontroversial. A number of linguists
dispute the explanatory power of the morpheme as a theoretical construct and also dispute the
notion that the morpheme has any psychological reality (cf. Bochner).
A morpheme is a short segment of language. It claims three basic criteria like a word or a part of
a word that has meaning, cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing
its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder, and has relatively the same stable meaning in
different verbal environments. Morphemes are composed of two separate classes called bases or
roots and affixes. Now we can say a morpheme is a small grammatical unit of a language by
which meaningful words are formed. For example, a cat is one morpheme. Cats are two
morphemes, cat and plural -s. The -s express the meaning 'many' or 'more than one in this
example. The morphemes are of two types as Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes. A free
morpheme that has a particular meaning and can be formed independently is called a free
morpheme. For example: free, man, music, etc. Morphemes can be categorized into two subtypes as Lexical morphemes, Grammatical and functional morphemes. The lexical morphemes
have independent meaning(Hakim, 2021). The lexical morphemes define nouns, adjectives, and
verbs—for example, cat, honest, boy, girl, good, food, etc. The functional morphemes are those
morphemes that consist of functional words in a language, such as prepositions, conjunctions,
and determiners etc.. The second bound morpheme is called a bound morpheme, which doesn't
have any independent meaning and can be formed words with the help of free morphemes. For
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example, less, ness, pre, un, en. Bound morphemes can be divided into two sub-classes as Bound
roots and Affixes. Even more, Affixes can be categorized into five sub-classes according to their
position in the word and function in a phrase or sentence like Prefixes, Infixes, Suffixes,
Derivational, Inflectional (Hakim, 2021).
In context, therefore, morphological analysis can help anybody to infer the meaning of some
words and, at the same time, to learn new words. Morphology can help language students to
familiarize themselves with lexical derivations and with the meaning of morphemes. They will
be able to distinguish, for instance, that the suffixes "-ment" or "-ness" form a noun or that the
suffix "-ly” forms an adverb. Direct intend of studying of morphology is an effective means to
help understand and apply word structure for decoding, spelling, and vocabulary study (Wilson,
2005). According to new research, one of the most important reasons for studying morphology is
that it is the lowest level that carries meaning. That is, for educators and researchers interested in
more than just decoding and pronunciation, morphology can be a key link to understanding how
students make meaning from the words they read (Ventris Learning, 2021).
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Background
1.1 The rationality of the Study:
Language is a gift to communicate our feelings and thoughts with each other. Humans have been
able to speak, create and translate languages for centuries. In which, every human uses the same
type of way. That helps us experience this earthly life. Much of the enjoyment, entertainment,
and education come through language. Human are the only animal species that possess language
ability.
1.2 English and Bangla Morphemes:
Barber (1999) asserts, “It is language, more obviously than anything else that distinguishes
humankind from the rest of the animal world" (p. 1). According to a particular school of
linguists, the unique language ability of human beings is the outcome of nature which is
genetically coded among human species. For that purpose, there are many languages created.
English and Bangla have their own style in morphology, syntax, nouns, pronouns, and verbs.
English is a SVO (Subject + Verb + Object) language whereas Bengali is a SOV (Subject +
Object + Verb) language. This basic difference in word order often creates errors for the wrong
placement of verbs and adverbs in a sentence. Hence, English and Bangla sentences with
transitive verbs differ significantly.
The Bangla lexicon has many compound words, i.e., words with more than one root word, can be
created new words from almost any combination of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. We have
presented a morphological parser for Bangla compound words, which handles the ambiguities
resulting from inflection deletion combined with the morphological rules for simple words found
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in the literature. A nominal or pronominal inflection is an affix that is added to a noun or
pronoun. Example: “Vaiyer." In this paper, we have used the Roman alphabet to represent
Bangla characters.
Measure words in Bangla and English
BANGLA
MEASURING
TRANSLATION
ENGLISH
ΝΌΈ-ͲΛ ΡΛΚΉΙ
NINE-MW BIRD
NINE BIRDS
ΡΛͼΉ-ͿΟΝ ЅΉΙΚΉΟΚ
FIVE-MW TEACHER
FIVE TEACHERS
ΚΟΈ-ͲΛ ΒΑLΙЅ
HOW MANY-MW PILLOWS
HOW MANY PILLOWS
N: B: WE USE GREEK CHARACTERS FOR BANGLA LANGUAGE.
When measuring words in English, we add affixes at the last of the word, but in the Bangla
language, the affixation occurs in the middle of two words.
Analyzing the morphology of English and Bangla ("Bengali Grammar," & "English Language,"
n.d.), it is evident that both languages possess some morphological similarities and
dissimilarities. The English morphology is noun-based, where Bangla Morphology is verb-based.
In Bangla and English, the objective case is used for pronouns serving as direct or indirect
objects. Even in Nouns as unlike English, Bangla nouns are also inflected for case, including
nominative, objective, genitive (possessive), and locative. When a definite article of Bangla such
as -ta (singular) or -gula (plural) is added, as in the table above, Bangla nouns are also inflected
for number, unlike English. When it's about measuring words, the nouns in Bangla must also be
accompanied by the appropriate measure word. Unlike English, nouns in Bangla cannot be
counted directly by adding the numeral directly adjacent to the noun. However, omitting the
noun and preserving the measure word is grammatical and not uncommon in Bangla.
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Methodology
For primary research recruitment, we recommended a girl responder. The respondent girl is from
Bangla medium and studying at Rajuk Uttara Model College. Her age is 18. She talked in a
natural, spontaneous way about favorite traveling spot. For this research paper, we recorded her
speech and transcribed the audio-recorded data. After collecting data, we selected 15 words from
the transcribed data that seemed interesting to do the morphological analysis. These words are
mixed up as English and Bangla.
For our secondary research, I plan to use the resources of the library and will also consult a few
books and autobiographies that talk about morphology and comparing as well contrasting Bangla
and English morphemes. We will also browse the internet and use standard search engines like
Google.
The list of selected word and responded sentences:
1. Especially in the evening, park authorities start to show various types of cosplay.
2. I saw that they filled the chicken with pumpnuts.
3. হুমম! এত ো কিছু ত ো বললোম কিন্তু ু কম হয়ত ো ভোবতছো আকম এিটো foodaholic person হতয়
তিোন food name বলকছ নো তিতনো!
4. Most of them entered the disco.
5. Wait! I’ll show some photos of that ape which I clicked.
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6. If you want to know about my favorite tourist spot that's undoubtedly the Disneyland,
Hong Kong.
7. But there is a good bistro called Butcher House.
8. In the gaming zone, people can race with ATV bikes.
9. I went Disneyland last year with my sister Zara and my uncle's son Tanim.
10. They oven it for some time.
11. My cousin scored a hit in the race
12. Wait! I will show the photos of that ape which I clicked.
13. োকনমও আমোর মত ো ঘুরত অতনি পছন্দ িতর।
14. So, রো হত হত অনেক মােুষ জমোতয় িরত থোতি।
15. সে আসতল এত ো ভোতলো মযোজজি তেখোয় তে তার মযোজজি তেতখ মুগ্ধ হতয় কিতয়কছলোম
We have a transcript of the audio file, then analyze each data that we find interesting. From the
transcription, we find several types of morphological processes. We do not analyze all of them;
we focus on some interesting data and find out the process. Last, we summarize the differences
between English and Bengali morpheme, which we also find out from the audio file.
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Data Analysis and Discussion
In English, there are several types of word-formation processes. Word formation is a process or
result of forming new words derived from the words or group of words with the same roots.
Word formation is the branch of morphology that studies the derivate structure of existing words
and the patterns on which a language builds the new words.
In our research paper, we analyze some types of morphology processes found in the transcript of
audio viva about the favorite tourist spot.
Blending:
The combination of two seperate meaningful forms to produce a single new term is called the
process of blending. Blends words are created from non-morphemic parts of two already existing
items.
We know that blending is a process when the beginning part of one word will join with the
ending part of another word. So, this morphological process needs two different types of words,
then they break down, and last, of all, they join with the beginning and ending part to form a new
meaningful word. In this process, the word meaning is also changed.
First of all, we look upon the word “Cosplay’’. Cosplay is a blend word because two morphemes
come from two different meaningful words.
C
O
S
T
U
C
M
O
E
S
P
P
L
A
L
Y
A
Y
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According to the rules of blending, we find that cosplay is a blend word. Because we take the
morph ‘’cos’’ from costume and attach it with ''Play''. Here costumes and play have different
meanings and also have different grammatical orders (noun and verb). The word ‘’Play'' has only
one morpheme, so it attaches as a whole word. The costume is a product of makeup or something
and play means to do for enjoyment. But cosplay has an entirely different meaning from these
two words.
Same as ‘’Cosplay'' we can identify another word, ''Pumpnuts’’ as a blend word. Because the
word ‘’Pumpnuts'' is created from two different types of words: ''Pumpkin'' and another is
''Peanuts''. We take the morph ''Pump'' from ''Pumpnuts'' and attach it with the ending morph of
''Peanuts''. Here, the word ''Pumpnuts'' has different meanings: peanuts and pumpkin, so that we
can say ''Pumpnuts'' is also a blend word.
From the script, we find a new interesting which can be denoted as a blend word. The word is
''Foodholic''. From the sentence, we imply that ''Foodaholic'' means addicted to food or interest
in food. But a person interested in food is called a foodie, so the word ''Foodaholic''means a little
bit strange. The person makes this word by himself because that type of word is rare in the
dictionary. But we can identify this word as a blend word.
F
O
O
D
A
L
C
O
H
O
L
I
C
Here the word ‘’Food’’ attach with the ending part of the word ‘’Alcoholic’’ (Food+Holic) =
Foodaholic. We find that two different parts of the buzz created a new meaningful word. Here
''Food'' means any nutritious substance that people eat to maintain life, and ''Alcoholic'' means
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addicted to alcohol. These two words have different meanings, which form the new word
through the blending process. So, we denote that ‘’’Foodaholic’’ is a blend word.
Clipping:
Clipping is a process that shortens the polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables. In
this process, we reduce the syllable of one word, which contains more than one syllable. From
the transcript, we find out that that girl uttered words containing more than one word, but she
spoke it in a short form. In the transcription we find two word such as ‘’Disco’’ and ‘’Photos’’
The first one is ‘’Disco’’ which means a club where people dance to pop music. Here the word
''Disco'' actually contains more than one syllable. The complete form of ''Disco'' is
''Discotheque''. Discotheque is a polysyllabic word, but the speaker utters it as a short form. The
speaker reduces the second syllable of the word, which goes through the process of clipping.
The second one is a bit complex, which goes through the clipping process and the inflectional
morphology process.
P
H O
P
H
T
O G R A
O
T
P
H
O
So we find that the word ''Photo'' clipped from the word ''Photograph''. But the word is not just
''Photo''; it is ''Photos''. So there is an inflectional process. The inflectional process does not
change the meaning of a word, but sometimes it changes the category. For example, it makes a
word singular to plural.
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N
N
Photo
Af
S
Inflectional tree structure of PHOTOS
So, we see that the root word photo attached with the inflectional suffix does not change the word's
meaning. But the word becomes plural from singular form. So, we decide that the word (photos) is
a clipped word and goes through the inflectional process.
Acronym:
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. For example, the
CD is an acronym for ''Compact disk". When we took the interview from the speaker, she used
an acronym that is "ATV''.
ATV is an example of an acronym. If we elaborate on the word, we find ATV means ‘’Allterrain Vehicle’’.
So, it is found out that the speaker used the acronym when she gave the interview. Though the
interviewer is not a native English speaker, she used these types of words with comfort.
Compounding:
The combining process of two words which produces a new meaningful word called
compounding. We find some compound words in the interview transcription, but we just focus
on two words that we find interesting including ‘’Disneyland’’ and ‘’Butcher House’’
Disneyland is a compound word where ''Disney'' is the name of a person and ''Land'' defines the
place or surface of the earth.
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N
N
N
DISNEY
LAND
Here, we find that two nouns words combine together and make a new meaningful word. So we
can say that ''Disneyland'' is a compound word.
Now a question will arise. Is Disneyland an exocentric compound or endocentric?
If the
headword conveys the central meaning of a compound word, that is an endocentric compound.
Here Disneyland means a place of Disney or a place which owned by Disney. So we can say that
Disneyland is an endocentric compound because it follows its head word's meaning.
The second one is ''Butcher House," which is not only a compound word also an interaction of
derivation with compounding. The root of this compound word is ''Butch'' then other morphemes
attach with it. But the morphological process is a bit complex for this word.
N
N
Adj
BUTCH
Af
-ER
N
HOUSE
In the morphological process, we find that the root ''Butch'' is an adjective that attaches with the
suffix (–er) then it is derived as a noun word caller ''Butcher''. Last, of all, it attaches with
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another new word (House) and becomes a compound word. So we decide that ''Butcher House''
is not a simple compound word but also an interaction with derivation.
''Butcher House'' is an exocentric compound because the word's actual meaning is derived from
the headword. If you hear the word ''Butcher House'' it likes a house where a butcher lives. But
read the whole sentence, we understand that here ''Butcher House'' represents a bistro name.
Inflection:
The morphology process is mainly divided into two parts such as derivation and inflection.
Inflection affixes do not change the meaning of a word, but they indicate the grammatical
function of a word. They used to show the category of tense, number, etc. There are eight types
of inflection affixes. We find a sentence where a word is going through the inflection process.
N
N
Af
Uncle
‘S
Here we find that ''Uncle's" is used as a possessive noun. The suffix (–s) does not change the
meaning of the word uncle, but it changes the grammatical category. For example, a noun change
into a possessive noun.
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Problematic case:
We found a word that is tough to identify as any morphology process.
1. Wait! I will show the photos of that ape which I clicked.
At first look, the word clicked may be identified as a process of inflection. But we know that
click is the sound of the camera shutter; if we think deeply, it will be onomatopoeia. Another
problem we find out the word ''Clicked'' is used here as a verb. So it is tough to identify which
type of morphology process occurs in this word.
Considering the situation, it looks like an inflection process, but the basic theory said click is
onomatopoeia. So, we consider it as a problem case.
Conversion:
When a word changes its grammatical function without any reduction of morpheme, that called
conversion.
1. They oven it for some times.
We know that ''Oven'' is a noun class word. But in this sentence, it is used as a verb. According
to the conversion rule, when a word changes its grammatical class without any reduction, it calls
the conversion process. So, the conversion rule is applied in this sentence.
The same process we find in another sentence
2. My cousin scored a hit in the race.
Here ''hit'' is used as a noun word, but it is a verb. The conversion rule is also applied in this
morphology process.
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Different between Bangla and English Morphological process:

োকনমও আমোর মত ো ঘুরত
অতনি পছন্দ িতর।
We know English verb varies depending on the person and number of the subjects. For example,
I play tennis. He plays tennis. But in the Bangla morpheme, no such variation occurs in relation
to the number of person.
For example: Tanim ghuraghuri korte posondo kore
In English: Tanim likes to travel. Tanim is a third-person singular noun, so it changes the verb
class. But in Bangla, the verb class does not change. (Posondo) does not change for third-person
singular number nouns. So we can say, in Bangla, there is no morphological inflection of verb
forms in relation to the third person singular number.

So, রো
হত
হত
অনেক মােুষ জমোতয়
িরত
থোতি।
In English, when we use the plural number, we also change the main word with the determiner.
For example: man
many men. In Bengali, the plural marker is used as a pre-determiner
before or after the noun as inflection. But we do not change the headword. Manush still remains
as manush. But in English, we will change it man to men.

সে আসতল এত ো ভোতলো মযোজজি তেখোয় তে তার মযোজজি তেতখ মুগ্ধ হতয় কিতয়কছলোম
In English, third-person singular pronoun varies in terms of gender, such as he/she, him/her, etc.
But there are no such variations in the Bengali language. Both genders share the same types of a
pronoun like (she, take, tar).
N:B: We use italic letters for Bengali words.
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Conclusion
A morphological description of Bangla and English is presented in this paper, crucial linguistic
documentation, and a valuable foundation for research in other related areas, computational
linguistics, and Second language acquisition. The paper has attempted a morphological
description since this variety is commonly used and represents a considerably large Banglaspeaking population. As a Bengali we have faced more difficulties to learn English. So our
suggestion is if we do not limited only in English morphology analysis also analyze the Bengali
language it is easy for us to compare the different between two language and we can easily cover
those problems. The linguistic documentation of the array is an essential prerequisite for further
research. Research frame works need to accommodate the colloquial forms whenever the studies
are likely to involve any variety other than the standardization.
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References
Morpheme - Glottopedia. (2028). Glottopedia. http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Morpheme
Hakim, A. (2021, May 14). Morpheme | Definition, Types And Examples. English Finders.
https://englishfinders.com/what-is-a-morpheme/
Mandal, R. (2016). SOME MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN BENGALI. Academia.
https://www.academia.edu/6509278/SOME_MORPHOLOGICAL_PROCESSES_IN_BENGAL
Ekwueme, J. (2020, July 23). The Contributions of Morphology and Syntax to the Study and Use
of
the
English
Language.
ResearchGate.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343151670_The_Contributions_of_Morphology_and_
Syntax_to_the_Study_and_Use_of_the_English_Language
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APPENDIX
ট্রোতভকলিং বলত তিতল আমোর শখ। তিননো আকম অতনি তবকশ ঘুরোঘুকর িরত পছন্দ িকর,
especially my main attraction is outside the country. If you want to know about my
favorite tourist spot that's undoubtedly the Disneyland, Hong Kong.
It sounds ridiculous aww! কিন্তু এটোই সক য তে ১৭-১৮ বছর বয়তসও কিজকনলযোন্ড আমোতি খুব
আির্ণষ িতর। Even though, I went Disneyland there last year with my sister Zara and
my uncle's son Tanim. হোহোহো! আসতলই োকনম এিেম আমোর মত োই। োকনমও আমোর
মত ো ঘুরত অতনি পছন্দ িতর। If you go there in the evening Disney also attractive to
you. The evening atmosphere is just marvelous. সন্ধ্যোর সময় বোহোকর রতের আতলোত
চোরপোশ অতনি সুন্দর লোতি। Especially in the evening park authorities start to show
various types of cosplay. So, রো হত হত অনেক মােুষ জমোতয় িরত থোতি। Most
of them enter to the disco, ওটো বলত তিতল অতনি interesting zone. Opps! I forget to
say about the circus zone which i like most. আমোর এখতনো মতন আতছ োকনম এর
চোপোচোকপত , আমরো ক নটো টটতিট কিতনকছলোম। In the circus there was a ape. If you give
a banana it show you the dance, you also heard ooo oo o. Wait! I will show the photos
of that ape which i clicked. But i remember a person who is a magician. সে আসতল
এত ো ভোতলো মযোজজি তেখোয় তে তার মযোজজি তেতখ মুগ্ধ হতয় কিতয়কছলোম। হুমম! এত ো কিছু
ত ো বললোম কিন্তু ু কম হয়ত ো ভোবতছো আকম এিটো foodaholic person হতয় তিোন food name
বলকছ নো তিতনো! Actually I don’t find any traditional food there. But there is a good bistro
called Butcher House. ওরো এিটো traditional food serve িতর called filled chicken. They
make it in front of you so you can see the process. I saw that they filled the chicken
with pumpnuts and they oven it for some times. Unfortunately I did not find it so tasty.
But I found another exciting zone in the park. In the gaming zone people race with ATV
bike. We also bought three tickets for racing. My cousin scored a hit in the race.
Actually Disneyland has many other rides and entertainment zone. It is not just for child
even adult person also can enjoy here. So, এটো আমোর favorite tourists spot.
Audio file: