Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Language is nothing but a set of human habits, the purpose of which is
to give expression to thoughts and feelings, and especially to impart,
announce them to others.
As with other habits it is not to be expected that they should be
perfectly consistent ()
Otto Jaspersens Essentials of English Grammar

Language is a body of words and systems for their use common to a

people of the same community or nation (); it is communication by voice,
using arbitrary symbols in conventional meanings ();
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds
and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or
region for talking or writing in ()
Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary

Language is human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas,

feelings, and desires by means of a system of sound symbols.
OUP Dictionary of Current English

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Linguistics
Linguistics (also called philology) is the science that studies language. There are
applied l., sociolinguistics, theoretical l., computational l., historical l., theoretical, etc.
Language strata (levels):
PHONOLOGICAL
LEVEL

Morphological
sub-level
Phoneme

LINGUSTIC
UNITS

SEMANTIC
LEVEL

GRAMMATICAL LEVEL

Morpheme

Word

Syntactic
sub-level
Phrase

Clause

GRAMMATICAL UNITS

Sentence

Lexeme

LINGUISTIC
UNITS

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Linguistics
Linguistic units:
Phoneme
has no meaning; it is the formal representation of a sound and it is consisted of the
distinctive features (kill/kiss l/s); in the written form of the language it is
represented by one or more letters; it belongs to the phonological level of
description.
Lexeme
is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that corresponds to a set
of forms taken by a single word. It is the so-called dictionary word.
e.g. go consists of words: go, goes, going, went, gone. All these different words
represent only one lexeme. It belongs to the semantic level of description.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Morphology
is a sub-branch of linguistics which deals with the internal structure of words.
The elementary unit of analysis in morphology is a morpheme and the highest
in hierarchy is a word.
The term morphology derives from the Greek words morphe meaning form
and logia meaning reasoning, learning, so morphology would mean the study
of form.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts

MORPHOLOGY

Inflectional m.

Derivational m.
(Word-formation)

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Morphology
Morphology is traditionally divided into:
INFLECTIONAL Morphology
Inflection is the process which creates word-forms of a lexeme (and not a new
lexeme), it does not change the part of speech of the input word, it has a
regular meaning (so that it can be formulated in an algorithmic way) and which
is fully productive (with possible minor exceptions) and highly generalized.
DERIVATIONAL Morphology (WORD-FORMATION)
Derivation is the word-forming process that results in the formation of new
words by affixation. The output word is called a derived word.
Word-form is a form which is an orthographic or phonological representation of
a lexeme. The word-forms: do, does, doing, did, done realize and represent the
lexeme DO.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Morphology
MORPHEME
is the smallest semantically meaningful unit of any language.
According to the position it takes, a morpheme can be:

a base (or stem; it is free and can stand alone (boy, toy, dog, etc.))

an affix (which is bound and cannot stand alone (boys, toys).

Affixes are divided into:

Prefixes (placed in front of the base (stem) (im-possible)
Infixes (placed inside the base or stem (there are two common IE infixes:
-m-, -n- hidden in many English words: stand/stood, climb/cliff, etc. They
have been unproductive for ages)
Suffixes (placed behind the base or stem (work-er, good-ness))

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Morphology
The meaning of a morpheme can be lexical and grammatical, so all
morphemes can be divided in two fundamental groups:

LEXICAL

INFLECTIONAL

Lexical morphemes:
water (H2O), moon (a celestial body which moves round the Earth once in a
month), pre- in pretested (before), -er in worker, etc.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Morphology

Inflective m:
- s1
in boys (plural, common case)
- s2
in boys (singular, possessive case)
- s3
in works (person: 3rd, tense Simple Present Tense, voice active,
aspect indefinite, mood indicative)
- ing in working (The Present Participle and Gerund)
- ed1 in worked (tense: Simple Past, voice (stanje) active, aspect (vid)
indefinite, mood (nain)- indicative, no formal indication of person and number)
- ed2 in worked (The Past Participle)
- er
in taller (the comparative degree)
- est
in tallest (the superlative degree)
Unproductive: - en1 in oxen (plural, common case, = -s1)
- en2 in taken (The Past Participle, = -ed2)
- ren in children (plural, common case, = -s1)
-O
in deer, put etc. (-O, = -s1, -ed1, -ed2)

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Contrastiveness
Contrastiveness (Contrastive Analysis) is a detailed synchronic comparison of
the structure of a native language and a target language. (see WWE, p.114)
At the level of lexis, contrastive analysis aims at discovering the features of
sameness and difference in the semantic structure of correlated words in a pair
of languages which are contrasted or in a pair of variants (dialect, register,
style) within one and the same language.
Contrastive analysis is based upon two basic principles on which language is
based: the principle of structure and the principle of contrastiveness.
e.g. Sat (srp.) watch, clock

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Minimal Pairs
Two words identical in all respects but one. (see WWE, p.111)
e.g.

bottle-washer (purpose)
folding-machine (agentive)

bottle-washer (agentive)
folding-door (instrumental)

The semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others
containing identical morphemes is referred to as differential meaning.
candle-lighter (agentive)

candle-lighter (instrumental)

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Paradigm
Paradigm is a set of language forms (words or morphemes) which are possible
alternatives at every point of a selection axis of language structure. ( see WWE. p.155).
e.g.

go, goes, going,

get, obtain, receive
un-, im-, in-, il-, irthe book is on the table, the monitor is on the table, the candle is on the
table, the mouse is on the table, the wallet is on the table, etc.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Paradigms can be:
Inflectional - which refer to all word-forms which share the same grammatical
meaning but differ in their endings (e.g. toy-toys, share the grammatical meaning of
number but they differ as to the presence of a plural marker)
Lexical which refer to sets of words which share the same root morpheme
(e.g. house (n), house (v), housing, housekeeper, housekeep, housekeeping, houseboat,
household, householder, housemaid, housemaster, house-owner, house-party,
houseplant, housewife, etc.)
- booklet, coverlet, cutlet, droplet, froglet, starlet, etc.;
- decentralize, decouple, decommission, demobilize, etc.;
- sleep, sleeper, sleepers, sleep-in, sleepiness, sleeping, etc.;
- man, mannish, manly, etc.;
- tooth, toothache, toothbrush, toothless, etc.;
- happy, happiness, happily, happy-go-lucky (careless), happy hour, etc.;

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Two-member paradigmes
Two members of inflectional paradigm can be realized by homonymous
word-forms;
e.g.

played Simple Past and Past Participle;

playing Gerund and Present Participle

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts

Word meaning
Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning recurrent (reversible)
in identical sets of individual forms of different words.
(e.g. the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs: played, ridiculed,
interrupted, did, went, made, hit, put, assembled, etc.,
the case meaning in: mothers, generals, producers, womens, etc.,
or number meaning in nouns: toys, stories, dragons, parents, fish, deer,
women, geese, teeth, phenomena, curricula, bases, etc.)
Word-forms have one and the same grammatical meaning if they can be found
in identical distribution.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts

Word meaning
Lexical meaning is the component of meaning proper to the word as a
linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word.
e.g.

word-forms: push, pushes, pushing, pushed, etc.

Morphology of the English Language

1 Basic Concepts
Word
A rule-of-thumb definition: it is the smallest language unit which has a
definite morphological structure and meaning and which can be used in
isolation.
Orthographic definition: it is any sequence of letters bounded on either side
by a space or punctuation mark.
Pronunciation principle definition: uninterrupted sequence of sounds
between potential pauses.
Combinatory principle definition: it is a unit which can freely combine with
other units of the same order.
Semantic definition: word is defined as a unit which has particular meaning.
Historical continuity definition: it is something which one generation of
language speakers passes on to another generation as a word.