Morphology: Study of Words

Section 1

W.W.W. Word Wide Web

What is a Word?

Thecatsatonthemat

What is a Word? A single group of letters that are used together with a particular meaning. (LDOCE)

One or Many Words?

Fly fly Noun flies Fly fly Verb flying flies flew flown

What is a Word?

Do you consider these as one or many different words? 1. help 2. helps 3. helped 4. helping

What is a Word?
What about these? helpful helpline help box helping hand

What is a Word?
happy likely desirable unhappy unlikely undesirable

If we assume that the most basic unit of meaning is the word, what do we say about the parts of words like un-, which has a fixed meaning?

Word = A Single Piece of Meaning?

unfaithfulness laptop lap dog seaside sea shore its raining cats and dogs

Words fixed meaning?

Does the word book have the same meaning in these sentences? Reading books helps develop personality. Please book a seat for me. Is my booking confirmed? My life is an open book.

Homophones Sound alike Different Meanings

Homonyms Same Spelling Different Meanings

Why are movie stars so cool? Because they have so many fans! Why did the teacher wear sunglasses? Her students were too bright! Why did the king draw straight lines? Because he was the ruler!

Words fixed meaning?

Okay. Okay? Okay!

The meaning of a word may vary, depending on its immediate context. Meaning is also dependent on the tone or stress.

So, What is a Word?

Linguists define words as Language chunks which recur as self-contained units and have distinct syntactic behaviour. I fly home tomorrow / I flew back yesterday = same word Birds fly / The fly buzzed = 2 different words I offered her a seat / She seated herself. = same word

Knowing a Word
Knowing its sound (pronunciation) Knowing its spelling (orthography) Knowing its meaning [bear/bare - same sound but different meanings so different words] [sofa/couch - same meaning but different words]

Knowing a Word
Knowing its grammatical form (noun, pronoun, verb etc.) [I love you. / You are the love of my life.] Knowing how to use a word. [Respected Sir / Dear Sir]

Implications for Teaching

Work in groups of three and discuss the implication of these ideas in English language teaching.

Section 2

Morphology

What is Morphology?
Morphology is the level of linguistic study concerned with the internal structure of words and rules of word formation. It is concerned with the study of rules governing the formation of words in human language. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

Cats
The word cats consists of two morphemes and one syllable: cat, and -s, a plural marker for nouns. Note that a morpheme like "-s" can just be a single phoneme and does not have to be a whole syllable.

Unladylike
The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables. Morpheme breaks: un: 'not' lady: '(well behaved) female adult human like: 'having the characteristics of' None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy, even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables. Note that each syllable has no meaning on its own.

Technique
The word technique consists of only one morpheme with two syllables. Even though the word has two syllables, it is a single morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.

What is a Morpheme?
Count the number of morphemes in the sentence: Everyone enjoys teaching hard working students.

Morphemic Analysis of Words

Every one enjoy s teach ing eager and hard work ing student s

I would like to thank every one of

you

Content Words and Function Words

Count the number of Fs in the following sentence. FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

One generally tends to note the content words first.

Lexical Morphemes
Lexical morphemes (or content words) are free morphemes that have independent dictionary meaning of their own. These are all the words listed in dictionary entries. race red reed

Grammatical Morphemes
Grammatical/Functional/Syntactic morphemes are free morphemes. Grammatical morphemes refers to words such as a/an, the, some, that, on, in ,at, or, but etc. which do not have an independent meaning of their own. These morphemes acquire a meaning only when used with other free morphemes.

Grammatical Morphemes are also collocations, fixed expressions or chunks like these which do not have independent meaning:

However Nevertheless Despite In spite of In view of Instead of On the other hand

Identify the Lexical and Function Words

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. reduced inside into beside besides an between trouble 9. together 10.where 11.how 12.from 13.enjoy 14.John 15.mother

Free and Bound Morphemes

Free Morphemes
Free morphemes can stand on their own and have a meaning.

Free Morphemes
The following words are free morphemes: school, student, boy, girl, child, teach, lecture Most free morphemes are content or lexical words as they usually carry meaning. However note the function words: is, has, on, does, been

Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes cannot stand on their own, and make meaning. They attach to a free morpheme to add meaning.

Bound Morphemes
The following are examples of bound morphemes: -ment, -en, -ing, -ed, -ness, -full, mis-, un-, -ly Bound morphemes can also be called grammatical indicators because they can indicate or change the grammatical behaviour of a word. The word form with the correct bound morpheme must be used depending on the context and the position of the word.

Example: *The lecturer glad praised God.

The lecturer gladly praised God.

Inflectional Bound Morphemes

Inflectional affixes perform grammatical functions. They are added at the end of a word to create new words. Generally, they indicate: Number: boy/boys Tense: work/ works/worked/working Comparison: hard/harder/hardest

Allomorphs
Just like phonemes, morphemes also have variants [different versions]. Allomorphs are the variants of a morpheme. Allomorphs are a set of morphs which consist of different versions of the same morpheme. boy/boys, bus/buses, copy/copies, man/men kill/killed, beg/begged, go/went sing/singing, write/writing, run/running

Derivational Bound Morphemes

A derivational morpheme is a type of bound morpheme which generates new words by changing the class of the word or forming new words.

Derivational Affixes
These affixes can alter the meaning of the words to which they are attached. -hood (child / childhood)
Shahrukh is my childhood friend. He is not a child anymore.

-ex (wife / ex-wife)

Shahrukhs wife is Gauri. He does not have an ex-wife yet.

Derivational Affixes
Some derivational affixes can change the function (or part of speech) of the word to which they are attached. entertain (V) entertainment (N) correct (V) correction (N) teach (V) teacher (N) sad (N) sadly (Adv) beauty (N) beautiful (Adj)

Use different forms of the word entertain to complete the sentences.

1. My wife likes .. visitors at her house. 2. She is a good .. . 3. She . them to good food and . music. 4. Cyberjaya is not a place for good .

Use different forms of the word entertain to complete the sentences.

1. My wife likes to entertain visitors at her house. 2. She is a good entertainer. 3. She entertains them to good food and entertaining music. 4. Cyberjaya is not a place for good entertainment.

Derivational Bound Morphemes

1. Deriving Nouns from Verbs Verb Noun break breakage revive revival explore exploration govern government inform informant

Derivational Bound Morphemes

2. Adjectives from nouns Noun Adjective care careful fruit fruitless love lovable friend friendly Malaysia Malaysian

Derivational Bound Morphemes

3. Nouns from adjectives Adjective Noun kind kindness rapid rapidity fragrant fragrance hostile hostility

Derivational Bound Morphemes

4. Verbs from adjectives Adjective Verb weak weaken solid solidify

Derivational Bound Morphemes

5. Adjectives from verbs Verb Adjective wash washable digest digestive satisfy satisfactory 6. Verbs from nouns Noun Verb special specialise

Derivational Bound Morphemes

They change the meaning or word class e.g. govern + ment = government They indicate semantic relations in words e.g. the morpheme ful in hopeful and the morpheme less in waterless. The derivational bound morpheme operates in a closed circuit kind of relationship. For example, we cannot say *lookful or *milkless The derivational bound morpheme comes before the inflectional morpheme. For example, teach-er-s, hope-ful-s

Free and Bound Morphemes

Identify the free and bound morphemes in these words: laptop seaside unfortunately saves raining cats mismatch projector Think of at least ten words with the bound morphemes at the beginning or at the end of the words.

Word Formation

Affixation
Affixation is a morphological process of attaching an affix to the root or base of a word. An affix is a type of bound morpheme that is always attached to the root or base of a word.

Prefix
A prefix is the type of affix that occurs before the root or base of a word. insensitive unkind impossible disable In Un Semi Im Dis-

Suffix
This is the type of affix that occurs after the base or the root of a word. teacher helpful boyish fatherhood -er -ful -less -ish -hood

What are Root / Stem Words?

Root or Stem is another term used for describing free or bound morphemes. The root word cannot be sub-divided and is combined with bound morphemes to form new words. improper (proper) uninterrupted (interrupt) permit/submit/admit (-mit) economy/economic/economics (econom-) Note: The root does not always exist as a free morpheme. Example receive, reduce, repeat

Compound Words
A compound word consists of two or more free morphemes: textbook carry box lecture hall wooden spoon talking bird

Types of Compound Words

Closed compounds (Words written together) textbook flowerpot Hyphenated compounds merry-go-round well-being Open compounds (Words written separately) school bus decision making chocolate chip cookies

Compound- complex words

A compound-complex word is that which consists of two or more free morphemes and one or more bound morphemes. textbooks overtaken brother-in-law

Compound Words
Explain the possible meaning of the compound words: old-furniture salesman old furniture salesman

Blending
Blending: similar to compounding, but parts of the free morpheme involved are lost (Usually, 1st part of the 1st word + end of the 2nd word) brunch (breakfast + lunch) motel (motor + hotel) smog (smoke + fog) newscast (news + broadcast)

Blending
Work in groups of three and think of some blends in English and Malay. texting, camcorder, emoticon, globish, infotainment, mopad, sitcom, telegenic cerpen, tadika .

Clipping: Shortening of a longer free morpheme

auto lab bike sub ad porn Prof Doc Kathy Liz Ron condo

Reduplication
Reduplication: Full or partial repetition of a free morpheme; sometimes with a variation so-so bye-bye dilly-dally zigzag mishmash

Word Coinage
Completely New Words aspirin, nylon, kleenex, teflon, zipper google, pooch, facebook Extensions of existing words hamburger: cheese burger, veggie burger, fish burger, tofu burger broadcast: telecast, webcast marathon: walkathon, talkathon, danceathon alcoholic: workaholic seminar: webinar

Word Borrowing
A language may borrow from another language, words for which there are no equivalents in it. These may be words for objects, social, political, and cultural institutions and events or abstract concepts which are not found in the culture of that language.

Word Borrowing
Historically, English has borrowed tremendously from other languages. - alcohol (Arabic) - boss (Dutch) - croissant (French) - lilac (Persian) - piano (Italian) - pretzel (German) - robot (Czech) - tycoon (Japanese) - yogurt (Turkish) - zebra (Bantu)

Loan Words
Direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. English technology Malay teknologi English computer Malay komputer English boyfriend Chinese nan pengyu Malay teman lelaki

Acronyms
Acronyms abbreviate (shorten) a longer term by taking the initial letters. A. Follow pronunciation: NATO, TOFEL, AIDS, MUET, UNESCO B. If unpronounceable, say each letter: ATM, IQ, MRT, MTV, CD, UFO, SMS C. Sound out each letter to avoid confusion: WHO, UNO (Note PIN number)