What is Morphology?

Studies the structure of words and rules for forming words (word-formation rules)
cats (cat + s); rewording (re + word + ing) untrustworthiness (un+trust+worth+i+ness)
Two major areas:
inflectional morphology e.g (ask +s/ing/ed)
word-formation (derivational morphology (read + er) and compounding (horse + shoe)
Goals of Morphological Studies

Provide an elegant description of word structure

Capture significant generalizations concerning word structure in a language (not lists) e.g. a
general rule for plural or past tense formation

Psychologically real descriptions (those that match native speakers tacit morphological
knowledge

Develop a theory of morphology (part of linguistic theory universal grammar)

What is the basic unit of morphology?

The basic unit is the morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest (indivisible) unit with some
meaning or a grammatical function.

The morpheme s in toys or roads has a plural meaning (more than one)

The morpheme s in reads has a grammatical function (third person singular used in
agreement with a third person singular subject) (does it have meaning?)

What is a word?

A unit separated by spaces on a page (but problems with a language like Chinese)

A unit that is positionally mobile but internally stable

(1) a. John met Bill
b. Bill met John
(2) a. Un-charit-able
b. * charit-able-un/*able-charit-un

Word-Form & Lexeme

Difference between a word & a word-form

Are the following different words or different forms of a word?

go, goes, going, went, gone am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been

Lexeme (written in capital letters) to avoid the confusion that arises between the terms word
and word-form, we use the term Lexeme (which is equivalent to a dictionary entry); a
dictionary word is a Lexeme
cook, cooks, cooking & cooked are realisations of the lexeme COOK
go, goes, going, went and gone realise the lexeme GO

A Lexeme is a set of word-forms; an abstract concept

Identifying morphemes: criteria

Meaningfulness (a morpheme is the smallest unit with some meaning) or grammatical

function
un in un-kind = not; ness in happi-ness = state

Recurrence (a morpheme occurs in more than one word)

en in ox-en, childr-en, brethr-en; ing walk-ing, sing-ing, etc.

Interchangeability (a morpheme interchanges with other morphemes)

ed, ing, s are interchangeable (walk-s, walk-ing, walk-ed)
But cran-berry, rasp-berry, bil-berry (types of berries)

Allomorphy

A morpheme can be realized in more than one way (i.e. it can have different morphs)

A morph is a physical realization of a morpheme

A morpheme realized in different ways displays allomorphy (many morphs)

Allomorphy can be phonologically, grammatically or lexically conditioned

Allomorphy (Affixes)

English plural s
cats [s]; dogs [z]; horses [z]

Korean accusative case marker

ton money,

ton-ul money-acc

tali leg,

tali-lul leg-acc

Turkish possessive marker

dil language

dil-im my language

tuz salt

tuz-um my salt

Allomorphy (Roots)

Root allomorphy (2 realizations of a root)

English (change in vowel)
weep [i:] - wept [e]

sleep [i:] - slept [e]

German (change in consonant)

tage [g] days tag [k] day hunde [d] dog hund [t] dog
Allomorphy (Suppletive)

Morpheme realized by morphs that are not at all phonologically similar

Past participle ed/-en in English
take taken but walk walked
Human versus non-human plural in Persian an/ha
geda beggar geday-an beggars
gorbe cat

gorbe-ha cats

Weak & Strong Suppletive Allomorphy

Weak suppletive allomorphy (where some phonological similarity obtains)

buy bought; hold held

Strong suppletive allomorphy (where no phonological similarity obtains)

go went; good better; we us; French aller [ale] to go, vais I go

Allomorphy Conditioning

Phonologically conditioned allomorphy

English plural s cats, dogs & horses

Grammatically conditioned allomorphy

French aller [ale] infinitive; vais [ve] 1ps present and irai [ire] 1ps future

Lexically conditioned allomorphy

past participle ed or en (depends on individual items); plural ox-en/*oxes; sheep-

/*sheeps

Analysis of words

Roots & Affixes

Roots = free (lexical) morphemes (but not all roots are free e.g. dent in dent-al, -ceive in receive)
Affixes = bound (grammatical) morphemes

Affixes can be

- Prefixes (if they precede the root) e.g. re-count

- Suffixes (if they follow the root) e.g. glob-al
- infixes (if they occur inside a root) e.g. kanga-bloody-roo
- Circumfixes (if they precede and follow the root)
Root, Base & Stem

A form without an affix = root

A form with an affix = base

A form with an inflectional affix = stem

e.g. read (root) reader (read is a root & a base) readers (read is a root and a base;
reader is a stem)

Inflectional Affixes

provide grammatical information (-ed means past tense) and is syntactically determined

give different forms of a word (goes is a different form of the word go)

do not alter the class/category of a word

are productive (the plural -s on nouns)

are semantically predictable (the plural -s on nouns means more than one)

cannot co-occur (*goesing)

occupy peripheral position (*readser)

are only suffixes (*ingwalk)

form a small and closed set (see list above)

Derivational Affixes

provide semantic information (un- means not, re- means 'again)

give different words with different meanings

can alter the class of a word (happy (A) + -ness happiness (N))

are only partially productive (-dom with king-, earl- but not *queendom or
*barondom)

are not semantically predictable (cf. '-age in vicarage, orphanage and coinage)

can occupy non-peripheral position (writers, politicians) can co-occur (govern+ment+al',

direct + ion + al)

can be prefixes or suffixes (dis+respect, respect+ful)

form a large and potentially open set (see list )

Meaning of prefixes
Position

Category

Meaning

Prefix
un-/in-/dis-

+A

not

un-/dis-

+V

reversive

dis-

+V

not

re-

+V

again

en-

+N

put in

Meaning of derivational suffixes

Position

Category

Meaning

Suffix
- hood

+N

status/state

- ship

+N

state/condition

- ness

+A

quality/state/condition

- ity

+N

state/condition

- ment

+V

result of carrying out action denoted by V

- less

+N

without

- ful

+N

having

- ic/-al

+N

pertaining to

- al

+V

pertaining to

- er

+V

agent

- ly

+A

manner

Summary

Morphology is the study of words and word structures

The basic unit of morphology is the morpheme

Morphemes can be free or bound

Morphemes can occupy different positions in relation to a root

Bound morphemes (affixes) are inflectional or derivational

Morpheme & Morph

A morpheme is the smallest unit with some meaning or grammatical function

A morph is a realisation of a morpheme

A morpheme can be realised by more than one morph (allomorphy)

Allomorphy can be phonologically, grammatically and lexically conditioned

Allomorphy

Phonologically-conditioned allomorphy
Plural s in English in cats (s), dogs (z) and horses (is)
Accusative marker in Korean ul/-lul

Grammatically-conditioned allomorphy
definite and indefinite article in French
le soleil (the sun), la lune (the moon) and un chapeau(a hat), une chemise (a shirt)

Lexically-conditioned allomorphy
plural of infant infants (with s plural), child children (en plural), and sheep (zero
morpheme plural)
Plural in Persian -an for human nouns, -ha for nonhuman nouns e.g geda
geday-an (beggar); gorbe gorbe-ha (cat)

Structure of words
Words, like sentences, have internal structures if they are bimorphemic or multimorphemic

Note that in each case the affix determines the word class. Affix=head?
Head of a word

A word has a head just as a phrase.

A phrase like the little girl is a NP because its head is the noun girl

The affix -er in teacher function as the head of the word teacher because it determines the
class/category of the word.

How morphemes are combined

In multimorphemic words like uneventful or denationalisation, the

constituent morphemes are said to combine according to certain rules.

Word-formation processes

Two word-formation processes operate in English (and other languages)

Derivation
A derivational affix yields a new word when affixed to a root e.g. book ish ->
bookish

Compounding
Two or more free morphemes combine to yield a new word e.g. book + shop ->
bookshop; black + mail -> blackmail; house + hunt -> househunt

Compounds & Spelling

Compounds spelt as separate words E.g. take away, fun fair, pen knife

Compounds spelt as single words E.g. blackboard, textbook, cheeseplant

Compounds spelt as hyphenated words E.g. stir-fry, post-war, short-sighted

Tests for Wordhood

a green house versus a greenhouse
(a) Integrity- one of the elements cannot modified in isolation.
a greener house not *a greenerhouse
(b) Whole compound modification- the whole compound can has to be modified.
expensive tea set not *tea expensive set (impossible to reach inside compound)
(c) Stress- falls on different part in the word.
a green house but a greenhouse
(d) Spelling- if its one word hyphenated or otherwise.
(e) Will fit into a suitable grammatical slot i.e. noun in noun slot
I want a take(v) away(n) (take is not a single word as its in the slot of a noun.
Types of compound

N + N/V/A/P
Teapot, price check, headstrong, chin-up

V + V/N/A/P
Stir-fry, swearword, speakeasy, turnoff

A + A/N/V/P
White-hot, high school, dry-clean, blackout

P + P/A/N/V
Within, under-ripe, outdoor, overthrow

Characteristics of compounds

Consist mostly of open class words

Endocentric (have semantic head) one member is felt more important than the other, e.g.
handbag, bookshelf (non-lexicalised compounds)

Head is rightmost (determines category & meaning of word)

Exocentric (no semantic head) neither member is felt to be more important than the other,
e.g. without, breakthrough, pickpocket (head is outside of compound); red-eye (Result)

Compounding is a binary process

Compounds can never have more than two constituents (doesnt mean they cant have more
than one word) e.g. [[nuclear physics] expert]

The process of compounding is binary (only two constituents can combine), e.g.dog food
box

Bracketing Paradox

Problem with working out the hierarchical structure of compound lexemes

e.g. transformational grammarian (one who studies transformational grammar)
(a) [transformational [grammar ian]] On the basis of Form
i.

Affixes dont attach to phrases

ii.

-ian is lexically determined (-ian with grammar, music, etc; -ist with physic-, art-)

(b)[ [transformational grammar] ian]]

On the basis of meaning: one who studies transformational grammar
Summary

Bimorphemic and multimorphemic words have internal structure

Morphemes are combined in a binary manner

Compounding is a word-formation process

There are different types of compound

Linguistic Typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their
structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural
diversity of the world's languages.

Linguistic typology based on morphology

Linguistic typology based on syntax (e.g. word order patterns)

Observations on morphology across languages

Languages with little or no morphology at all (e.g. Chinese; Creoles)

(1) wo bu chang kan dianying
I not often see movies

Languages with considerable morphology (e.g. Eskimo)

(2) nigizuksaugaluaktuna I ought to eat.

Languages with some morphology (e.g. English, Turkish)

(3) el-

ler- im- de

in English hand(plu)-my-in in my hands

Parameters: Index of Synthesis & Index of Fusion

1. Index of Synthesis (how much morphology is made use of)
The following continuum appears to exist:
Isolating languages <--- Synthetic languages
(Chinese & creoles)

(Oneida American Indian, Wisconsin)

2. Index of Fusion(how easy it is to identify morphemes with morphs in a particular language)

The following continuum exists
Agglutinating------------------- Fusional
(Turkish)

(Nahuatl:)

(Greek)

(Aztec)
e.g. of fusion he writes ( this s carries the meaning of person, plurality and tense)
Language Typology

5 different types of language morphological types

Isolating or Analytic languages (Mandarin Chinese)

Agglutinating languages (Turkish, Swahili, Japanese)

Synthetic/Fusional languages (Greek, Sanskrit, Latin)
Polysynthetic or Incorporating languages (Greenlandic Eskimo, Tiwi (Australia))
Infixing languages (Semitic languages, Tagalog)
Morphological Properties of Isolating languages

each morpheme is a word

have complex tone systems

tend to use serial constructions

Strict word order

E.g of serial construction
me nya be edzo (Ewe Niger Congo)
I

know say(has the force of a complimentize) he-left

I know he left.

Morphological Properties of Synthetic languages

Words usually consist of several morphemes

Morpheme boundaries not always easy to determine

Commonly employ affixation to mark morphosyntactic categories (agreement, voice, tense,

aspect, mood, valence(how many arguments))
e.g. Latin

Mens- the tables (nominative & plural)

Mens- the tables (genitive & plural)

Morphological Properties of Polysynthetic languages

Have polymorphemic words instead of sentences

Ti-khwian-mu-ban (Southern Tiwa-US)
1s-dog-

see-pst I saw the dog

Have single words with two roots (incorporation)

men-mukhin-tuwi-ban
2Dual-hat-buy-PST

You two bought a hat.

Have complex agreement systems

(1)U-ide tow-keuap- wia ban

child-A 1s:C:A-shoe- give-PST I gave the child the shoes (Class (intimate,
inanimate and other classifications)
(2) U-ide tam-musa-wia-ban
child-A 1s:B:A-cat-give-PST I gave the child the cat.
Morphological Properties of Agglutinating languages

Morphemes are easily segmentable (clear morpheme boundaries)

(1) El-ler-im-de (Turkish)
hand-PLU-my-in

In my hands

(2) No-kali-mes (Nahuatl)

my-house-PLU

my houses

Morphological Properties of Infixing languages

Have affixes inside roots (i.e. infixes)

(the Semitic languages Arabic & Hebrew are typical infixing languages)
(1) kitab book
(2) bato stone

katib writer
Bontok (Philippines)

bumato is turning to stone

Implicational Universals: A few generalizations

If a language has inflection, it always has derivation (Greenberg Universal 29)

If a word has both inflectional and derivational affixes, then the latter are closer to the root
than the former
play-er-s but not * play-s-er

If a language has only suffixes, it will also have postposition (i.e. preposition after noun)
Ahmet Ayse icin kitab-i

aldi (Turkish)

Ahmet Ayse for book-ACC bought

Ahmet bought a book for Ayse
Relationship between morphological types
Languages can shift from one type to another.
e.g. Isolating

Agglutinating

Fusional

Isolating

Summary

Languages can be said to belong to different morphological types.

Five types are said to exist

Isolating or Analytic (Chinese)
Synthetic or Inflectional (Greek)
Polysynthetic (Greenlandic Eskimo)
Agglutinating (Turkish)
Infixing (Arabic)