MORPHOLOGY
The study of how morphemes combine into words.
Morpheme-the smallest grammatical unit that has a form and meaning.
Reopened- has 3 morphemes: re (meaning-again); open and ed-indicating past tense
Tourists – tour/ist- (a person who does something)/-s –indicating plural
Simple vs. complex words
Simple – cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units; e.g. house
Complex – can be analyzed into constituent parts; e.g. teachers
Free and Bound morphemes
Free – can stand by themselves as single words, e.g. open and tour
Bound- cannot stand alone; they are attached to another form, e.g. re-, -ist, -ed, -s.
All affixes are bound morphemes in English
The basic word is called stem (root):
Undressed
Un –(prefix/bound) dress (stem/free) -ed (suffix/bound)
Other elements are called affixes
Free morphemes:
a) lexical morpheme- words that carry the content of messages that we convey; set of
ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs; e.g. boy, man, house, tiger, look; an “open”
class
b) functional morphemes – and/but/when/because/on/near/above/in/the/that ; basically,
these are functional words such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns.
They are described as “closed’ class of words, because we almost never add new
members to this class
Bound morphemes:
a) derivational morphemes: ness/ ful
b) inflectional morphemes: -s/-ed/-ing
Inflection vs. derivation:
a) Inflection doesn’t change grammatical category
b) Derivational affixes are closer to the stem word – neighborhoods – neighbor – hood
(der.) – s (inf.)
c) Inf. Affixes have few exceptions (-s fro plural but ox-oxen/ men); derivational affixes
apply to a restricted class of stems (-ize can combine only with certain nouns to form a
verb) e.g. hospitalize/ terrorize but *clinicize/ horrorize
-er can be both a derivational m. to teach vs. teacher; or inflectional; old/older
The
girl
’s
wild
ness
shock ed
the
(functional) (lexical) (inflectional) (lexical) (derivational) (lexical) (infl.) (functional)
teach
er
s
(lexical) (derivational) (infl.)
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Morphs – actual forms used to realize morphemes; we also have allomorphs of a particular
morpheme:
Morpheme “plural”-in cats and in sheep and men; these are all allomorphs of a single
morpheme; sheep, e.g., has zero-morph; men has an irregular morpheme
Words and word-formation processes:
The ability to adopt new words and the ability to change the existing ones go to show that
word-formation processes do exist and do apply.
a) coinage: the invention of totally new words; e.g. trade names for company products:
Kleenex, Xerox, aspirin, nylon, zipper, Teflon
b) borrowing: taking over words from other languages: alcohol(Arabic), boss (Dutch);
croissant (French); piano (Italian); pretzel (German); Tycoon (Japanese); yogurt
(Turkish); zebra (Bantu)
from English: suupaamaaketto (Supermarket in Japanese) rajio (radio); Hungarian-sport,
klub and futbal; French talk about le stress; le whisky, le weekend
Loan-translation (or calque):
A direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language: French un
gratteciel/ German “Wolkenkratzer” = Eng. “sky-scraper”; Spanish speakers talk about
“perros calientes’ (literally hot dogs); Am.”boyfriend”=Jap. “boyifurendo”
c) compounding – joining of two separate words to produce a single form; the second
element is the head and it determines the grammatical category; e.g. bookcase,
fingerprint, sunburn, wallpaper, doorknob, textbook, wastebasket, waterbed;
grzybobranie, etc.
d) blending – combining two separate words to produce one single term: smog
(smoke+fog); brunch (breakfast +lunch); Chunnel (channel/tunnel); Franglais
(English/French); cancerise (dance and exercise)
e) Clipping: a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form: facsimile –
fax; gasoline-gas; brassiere-bra; fanatic-fan; perm/plane/sitcom (situation comedy);
prof (professor); doc, auto, lab, bike, burger, porn
f) backformation – a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form another word
of a different type(usually a verb) e.g. television-televise/ donation-donate/ option-opt;
emotion –emote/ enthusiasm-enthuse; babysitter-baby-sit; resurrection - resurect
Hypocrism – a longer word is first reduced to a single syllable, then –y or –ie is added to
the end; e.g. movie (moving pictures); telly (television); Barbie (barbecue); bookie
(bookmaker); brekky (breakfast); hankie (handkerchief); Chrissy pressies?
g) conversion – a change in the function of a word: a noun may become a verb: a bottleto bottle/ a butter-to butter;
verbs-nouns; e.g. guess-a guess; must-a must; spy-a spy;
phrasal verbs-nouns; e.g. to print out/ to take over; a printout/ a takeover
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verbs-adjectives: see through/ stand up – see-through material/ a stand-up
comedian(wystepujacy solo)
nouns assume adjectival or verbal function: the ball-park (stadion baseballowy); a
ball-park figure
up/down –verbs: They up the prices; We down a few brews.
h) acronyms – formed from the initial letters of the set of words: VCR (“video cassette
player); ATM; PIN; NATO, NASA(National Aeronautics and Space Administration);
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization);
LASER; RADAR
i) derivation: affixes: prefixes (un; in; im etc.) and suffixes (full, less, ness, etc.);
infixes: Absogoddamnlutely/ funfuckingtastic/ unfuckinbelievable
reduplicative affix – it duplicates all or part of the stem; e.g. takbuh (‘run”) and
‘tatakbuh’ (“will run”) (partial reduplication)
full reduplication – iji (well) vs. iji iji (very well)
ablaut – the replacement of a vowel with a different vowel, e.g. sing – song; abide,
abode etc.
Cranberry morphemes – problematic ones, e.g. huckleberry; berry is a free
morpheme, but cran isn’t.
Multiple processes:
a) delicatessen – 1) borrowing from German 2) clipping to deli
b) yuppie – 1) “ young urban professional’ an acronym 2) suffix –ie -hypocrism
Phonological constraint – e.g. –en can only be added to monosyllabic words and words
that end in an obstruent; e.g. white –whiten/ soft – soften/ mad – madden; *abstract –
abstracten/ *blue – bluen
Onomatopoeic words – like e.g. buzz/ sizzle/ cuckoo
Stress shift – in ‘crease (V) vs.’ increase (N)
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