Grammatical Aspects of
Language
Morphology: The Words of
Language
The Wug Experiment
The Wug Experiment
The Wug Experiment
The Wug Experiment
The Wug Experiment
Morphology
(This is a really famous
experiment, by the way!) 
The Wug Test
• Footage of a child taking the wug test
• Jean Berko Gleason (the inventor of the wug
test) administers the test to an adult
Morphology
• The study of the structure of words
• The rules of word formation
• How do we store all these words in our brains?
Morphology
• How do we know when one word stops and the
other starts?
• Lexicon: an individual’s mental dictionary
Your mental lexicon
• Take the word play. In your notebook, write
down the following:
–
–
–
–
How you’d pronounce it (phonetically)
As many definitions as you can think of
The spelling
Use it in two sentences, using it slightly
differently each time.
Your mental lexicon
• The brain catalogues:
– Pronunciation
– Meaning
– Related words (synonyms, antonyms, close
semantic relationships)
– Spelling
– Alternate pronunciations or spellings
– Grammatical category (noun, verb, etc.)
Content Words
and Function Words
• Content words
• Function words
Content Words
and Function Words
• Count the number of Fs in this sentence:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF
YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF YEARS.
Write down the number; don’t say it out loud.
Content Words
and Function Words
• There are six (most people only count three)
• Most people skip over at least one function
word
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF
YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF YEARS.
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of
Meaning
“They gave it to me,” Humpty Dumpty
continued, “for an un-birthday present.”
“I beg your pardon?” Alice said with a puzzled
air.
“I’m not offended,” said Humpty Dumpty.
“I mean, what is an un-birthday present?”
“A present given when it isn’t your birthday,
of course.”
--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Inflection
• An inflected language: changes words slightly
to change meaning.
• English depends on inflection and syntax
Inflection vs. Sytax:
Latin vs. English
In English, word order changes the meaning:
The boy gives the girl a rose.
The girl gives the boy a rose.
Inflection vs. Syntax
Latin vs. English
In Latin, words can be in any order. The inflection
(the way the word changes) changes the meaning.
Puer / Pueri / Puero / Puerum = boy
Puella / Puellae / Puellam = girl
Rosa / Rosae / Rosam / Rosarum = rose
Puer puellae rosam dat = The boy gives the girl a rose
Puellae rosam puer dat = The boy gives the girl a rose
Puellae puer rosam dat = The boy gives the girl a rose
Rosam dat puer puellae = The boy gives the girl a rose
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of
Meaning
• Morpheme: a basic unit of meaning that can’t
be broken down into a smaller unit of
meaning.
• Can be a root, prefix, or suffix
• Morphology: The study of how words can be
put together.
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of
Meaning
• If a singer sings and a flinger flings, why
doesn’t a finger fing?
– Singer is two morphemes (sing + er)
– Finger is only one morpheme (it can’t be broken
down into any more morphemes)
• All languages are discrete
Morphemes: The Minimal Units of
Meaning
• Free morphemes
• Bound morphemes
Morphemes in other languages
• Different languages attach morphemes
differently
• Isthmus Zapotec (a native Mexican language)
– Attaches prefix ka- to make a word plural
zigi (chin)
zike (shoulder)
diaga (ear)



kazigi (chins)
kazike (shoulders)
kadiaga (ears)
Morphemes in other languages
• In English, we don’t change anything (about
the word) to change a verb to a noun.
– I like to dance vs. There’s a dance on Friday
• Turkish
– add suffix –ak to change a verb to a noun
Dur (to stop) 
Bat (to sink) 
durak (stopping place)
batak (sinking place / marsh or swamp)
Morphemes in other languages
• In English, we express reciprocal action by
saying each other (love each other, understand
each other)
• Turkish
– Adds –ish (after a consonant) or –sh (after a
vowel) to express reciprocal action
Anla (understand)
Sev (love)


anlash (understand each other)
sevish (love each other)
Morphemes in other languages
• Some languages have infixes, or morphemes
inserted into other morphemes
• Bontoc (Philippines)
Fikas (strong)
Kilad (red)
Fusul (enemy)



fumikas (to be strong)
kumilad (to be red)
fumusul (to be an enemy)
Does English have infixes?
Morphemes in Other Languages
• Circumfixes: morphemes that are attached to
a base morpheme at the beginning and end.
• Chickasaw (Native language of OK)
– A word is made negative by adding ik- to the
beginning, dropping the final vowel, and adding
an –o
Chokma (he is good)
Lakna (it is yellow)
Palli (it is hot)
Tiwwi (he opens it)




ikchokmo (he isn’t good)
iklanko (it isn’t yellow)
ikpallo (it isn’t hot)
iktiwwo (he doesn’t open it)
– English has a few examples of circumfixes
Roots and Stems
• Bound roots
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very
chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was
furling my wieldy umbrella . . . when I saw her. . . . She was a descript
person. . . . Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved
in a gainly way.
--Jack Winter, “How I Met My Wife”
• Why are some roots bound?
Roots and Stems
• You can add an affix to almost any word to
make a new word.
– If someone from Iowa is an Iowan, what would
you call someone from Nebraska?
– What’s the plural of sneet?
– If someone performed the act of gloobing
yesterday, what did they do?
Roots and Stems
• How did you know what to do?
– Your lexicon for every morpheme you know
includes the following:
• The pronunciation
• The meaning
• The rules for combining morphemes into complex
words