IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Neologisms
Neologism
Word class?
Meaning?
Clues that helped you
decide
1. agflation
2. avoision
3. babycino
4. birther
5. bromance
6. celanthropy
7. clickjacking
8. fantabulous
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
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You can find links to related articles on ia902.blogspot.com
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
What is morphology? A feline exploration
From Collins Cobuild Essential English Dictionary (1998):
cat
cats
catcall
catty
cattier
cattiest
And what about: catlike, catfish, catnap, catnip, catwalk
Or: cat’s eyes, cat food, catkin, cat-o-nine-tails
Or even: a game of cat and mouse
How can we define a word?
1. Do the hyphens in cat-o-nine-tails make it just one word?
2. Some people might write “cat food” as two words, some as one? Who’s right?
3. In spoken English, in the statement “we’ve run out of cat food”, will we hear a boundary
between “cat” and “food”? What about when “cat food” appears in an exchange like “No, not
dog food. I need cat food!”? Should this affect its status?
4. Would it help a learner to think of “a game of cat and mouse” as one word?
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5. What do you think of Katamba’s definition of words as “the smallest unit that syntax
manipulates”?
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
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From Steven Pinker’s Words and Rules
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Morphology: the study of word structure
Definitions of morphemes:
Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in written English (Katamba and Stonham, 2005).
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A morpheme is “that part of a word which is endowed with psychological autonomy and is for the very
same reason not further divisible” (in Aronoff, 1994).
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Morphology and phonology
Plural nouns
1. What allomorphs are used in English to make nouns plural?
2. How are the mophs –s and –es pronounced?
Consider the following plural nouns, taken from Culpepper et al (2009):
bees
dogs
cribs
ways
buns
bells
buses
judges
foxes
badges
watches
mazes
socks
bits
steps
proofs
paths
myths
Verbs
1. In English verbs, what are the roles of the morph –ed?
2. How many different ways is –ed pronounced?
Affixes and word stress
1. Where’s the stress in semi-circle, personality, refugee, mountaineer, Portuguese, cigarette,
picturesque?
2. Where’s the stress in unpleasant, marketing, comfortable, anchorage, refusal, widen, wonderful,
birdlike, powerless, hurriedly, punishment, happiness, poisonous, glorify, otherwise, funny,
childish, demolish?
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3. Where’s the stress in magnet and magnetic, advantage and advantageous, photograph and
photography, proverb and proverbial, climate and climatic, perfect and perfection, injury and
injurious, tranquil and tranquillity, reflex and reflexive?
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Difficulties for the learner
from Thornbury, S. 2005 Uncovering Grammar : How to Help Grammar Emerge. MacMillan, p.18:
One researcher, for example, found that learners pass through a stage when they tend to attach the ending –ing to
action verbs, irrespective of tense. They seem to be using –ing simply to mark the presence of a verb: I going work
by bus; I eating every day Burger King, etc. Clumsy as this may seem, it marks an important step from using purely
lexical means to using more grammatical ones. At first the -ing ending is applied indiscriminately to all verbs.
But over time, the learners in the study started to restrict the use of –ing to certain contexts, and mainly as a
marker of ‘pastness’: Yesterday I no working. Other favoured contexts for –ing were in subordinate clauses (He the
man who I talking him) and verbal complements, ie constructions where one verb follows another, eg I want
working and I can doing any job.
Why –ing? The researcher hypothesized that, of all the possible word endings in English, -ing is the most easily
identified: it is a whole syllable and it is phonetically simple and regular. As grammaring processes start to emerge,
-ing is a convenient tool for flagging ‘verbiness’, or, more specifically, ‘action’. At first, all verbs are flagged. Then
the learner starts to discriminate between varying degrees of distance: present and past. The later use of –ing in
the more relatively specialised contexts of pastness, subordinate clauses and verbal complements suggests
learners are aware of the more grammaticized nature of these contexts and nee dto flag them accordingly. Not
yet aware of how these specialized meanings are signalled, they use the all purpose –ing, as if to say “here be
grammar”.
1. Does the phenomenon presented by Thornbury here seem familiar in relation to students that
you have taught?
2. Is Thornbury’s argument well-supported in the extract above?
Compositionality
In morphology, we can work out the meaning of words we haven’t met before. However, we need to be
careful. What’s the meaning of the following words:
- Seeker, writer, driver, cooker, looker?
Noncompositional words are therefore problematic. Consider the unfortunate wording of this sign in a
Chinese hotel:
The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
Conversion
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Because conversion is common in English (nouns become verbs and vice versa), syntactic make-up may
not reflect syntactic category, e.g. hoover, upmarket
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Difficulties for the teacher
Below are examples from essays by international students in response to a question about the
differences between choosing a subject for undergraduate study, and choosing a subject for
postgraduate study:
1. An interest subject give them more power to improve themselves.
2. Some of us think “no interest, no power”, which means they can’t study hard in a no-interesting
major.
3. Some people have responsibilities to socialty.
4. It may not be too much to say that postgraduate students’ purposes are job.
5. A lot of prospective undergraduate students may tend to be based on their own interests to
think about their studying fields.
6. The following example will be clear this.
7. That is a common phenomena for the Chinese student, when they are in an important timepoint
in their life.
8. A subject field for undergraduate study provides easily opportunities for people to get well-paid
jobs.
9. For the postgraduate students, no thing can’t more important than their interesting for the
subject.
10. Some parents believe that if their relatives have a well-educated and a good career job, they
probably want to this case for their children.
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To what extent can analysis of morphological features of English help these students?
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
Difficulties for everyone!
Which is the correct plural form?
Option 1
Option 2
cowboys
cowsboy
cowgirls
cowsgirl
breakfasts
breaksfast
christmases
christsmas
businesses
busiesness
girl from Ipanemas
girls from Ipanema
mother-in-laws
mothers-in-law
gin and tonics
gins and tonic
tablespoonfuls
tablespoonsful
work of arts
works of art
hole in ones
holes in one
passerbys
passersby
governor-generals
governors-general
POWs
POW
Preference?
irrational
irrevocable
irregular
improper
impure
impartial
imprudent
impartial
unlovable
unlikable
unrealistic
unruly
unrenewable
unpopular
unparalleled
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illogical
illegal
illicit
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Can phonology help us to explain the morphological features of English at work in these examples?
IA902 Practical Description of English : A Brief Introduction to Morphology
References
Aronoff, M. 1994 Morphology by itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. MIT Press
Culpeper, J. et al (eds) 2009 English Language: Description, Variation and Context. Palgrave Macmillan
Halliday, M.A.K. and Greaves, W.S. 2008 Intonation in the Grammar of English. Equinox
Katamba, F. 2005 English Words. 2nd Edn. Routledge.
Katamba, F. and Stonham, J. 2005 Morphology. 2nd Edn. Palgrave Macmillan
Pinker, S. 1999 Words and Rules. Phoenix
Roach, P. 2009 English Phonetics and Phonology : A Practical Course. 4th Edn. Cambridge University Press
Thornbury, S. 2005 Uncovering Grammar : How to Help Grammar Emerge. Macmillan
Further reading
Ilson, R. 1983 “Etymological information: can it help our students?” ELT Journal 37/1
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Pierson, H. D. 1989 “Using etymology in the classroom”. ELT Journal 43/1