Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Section 1
What is a Word?
Thecatsatonthemat
What is a Word? A single group of letters that are used together with a particular meaning. (LDOCE)
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?
The meaning of a word may vary, depending on its immediate context. Meaning is also dependent on the tone or stress.
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]
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.
you
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:
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.
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 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.
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)
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
Compound Words
A compound word consists of two or more free morphemes: textbook carry box lecture hall wooden spoon talking bird
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 .
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)