ENGL 386
Fall 2015/2016
KAU/ Rabigh
Girls section
1.1 What is morphology?
Is the study of word formation, including the ways new words are coined in the languages of
the world, and the way forms of words are varied depending on how they are used in
sentences.
- (splinch, relove) examples to clarify the use of morphology, page2.
)‫الخ‬... ‫في اللغة العربية مثال توجد كلمات جديدة كثيرة (طبِلُو – أمسك جوك‬
So how do we create these words? And how do we judge a word if it's a word or not?
- Throughout this book, you will be looking into:
1. How you form and understand new words. 2. How speakers of other languages do the
same.
Note: please read the challenge box in every chapter.
1.2 What is a word? Page, 3 & 4
One or more morphemes that can stand alone in a language.
- What is a morpheme?
The smallest unit of language that has its own meaning. For example, book-happy-re
- If the English word has one morpheme then it's called (simplex word) e.g. giraffe, but if it
has more than one morpheme it's called (complex) e.g. prewash-intellectual.
1.3 Words and lexemes, types and tokens. Page 4
How many words occur in the following sentence?
My friend and I walk to class together, because our classes are in the same building and we
dislike walking alone.
Word tokens= count every single word. So in this sentence there're 21 words/tokens.
Word types= count repeated words as one word. So here we will have 20 words/types.
Lexemes= families of words that differ only in their grammatical endings or grammatical
forms. So in this sentence there're 16 words/lexemes.
1.4 But is it really a word? Page 5
- Where do you look for new words or unfamiliar words?
- is (aalii) a word? How do you know?
- Do all dictionaries got the same words?
Ms. Rasha Ali
Chapter one
1
ENGL 386
Fall 2015/2016
KAU/ Rabigh
Girls section
‫ في اللغة العربية هل (طبلو) تعتبر كلمة؟ لماذا؟‬‫ هل عبارة (أمسك جوك) موجودة في قواميس اللغة العربية؟ لماذا نستخدمها؟‬- cot potato vs. crib potato. Please go back to your book and read more about them.
- What is mental lexicon?
A sort of internalized dictionary that contains an enormous number of words that we can
produce, or at least understand when we hear them.
- What is a word formation rules?
A system in our brain which allows us to create and understand new words when we
encounter them. Like in Arabic we have something called
( ‫( أوزان االفعال‬
1.5 Why do languages have morphology? Page 6 & 7. Please go back to your book and read
more
a.Category-changing
b.Meaning-changing
c.Both category and meaning changing
- Why have rules of lexemes formation? It allows for a measure of economy in our mental
lexicons: we can recycle parts, as it were, to come up with new words.
- Each lexeme can have a number of word forms.
- What is an inflection? The change of the form of a word so that it fits into particular
grammatical context. For example, the inflections of "walk" are "walks, walking, walked …"
- languages have wildly differing amounts of inflection.
English has little inflection
Latin, Russian, ancient Greek and old English have more inflection
Mandarin Chinese has zero inflections. So how can they talk about numbers or tenses?
They use separate words, for example, I see past one giraffe. Read more in page 7
Ms. Rasha Ali
Chapter one
2