Morphology Syntax - Coursebook - Tài liệu tham khảo Tiếng Anh ( TA8 ISW) p2 | Đại học Hoa Sen
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INTRODUCTION 1 INTRODUCTION1
1.1 WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?
The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright,
and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 1832) – , who coined it early in the
nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‗shape,
form‘, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology refers to the study
of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the configuration
and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology refers to the mental system involved in
word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with w r
o ds, their internal structure, and how they are formed.
1.2 THE EMERGENCE OF MORPHOLOGY
Although students of language have always been aware of the importance of
words, morphology, the study of the internal structure of words did not emerge as a
distinct sub-branch of linguistics until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, its
importance has always been assumed, as attest ed by its central role in Panini's
fourth-century BC grammar of Sanskrit, the Astadhyayi, for instance.
Early in the nineteenth century, morphology played a pivotal role in the
reconstruction of Indo-European. In 1816, Franz Bopp published the results of a
study supporting the claim, originally made by Sir William Jones in 1786, that
Sanskrit, Latin, Persian and the Germanic languages were descended from a common
ancestor. Bopp's evidence was based on a comparison of the grammatical endings of words in these languages.
Between 1819 and 1837, Bopp's contemporary, Jacob Grimm, published his
classic work, Deutsche Grammatik. By making a thorough analytical comparison of
sound systems and word-formation patterns, Grimm showed the evolution of the
grammar of Germanic languages and the relationships of Germanic to other Indo - European languages.
Later, under the influence of the Darwinian theory of evolution , the philologist
Max Muller contended, in his Oxford lectures of 1899, that the study of the evolution
1 The content of this part is adapted from Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2011). What is Morphology? (2nd Ed.) Wiley
Blackwell and Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave. 2 INTRODUCTION
of words would illuminate the evolution of language just as in biology, morphology,
the study of the forms of organisms, had thrown light on the evolution of species. His
specific claim was that the study of the 400 -500 basic roots of the Indo-European
ancestor of many of the languages of Europe and Asia was the key to understanding
the origin of human language (cf. Muller, 1899, cited in Matthews, 1974).
Such evolutionary pretensions were abandoned very early on in the history of
morphology. Since then morpholo gy has been regarded as an essentially synchronic
discipline, that is to say, a discipline focusing on the study of word -structure at one
stage in the life of a language rather than on the evolution of words. But, in spite of
the unanimous agreement among linguists on this point, morphology has had a
chequered career in twentieth-century linguistics, as we shall see.
1.3 MORPHOLOGY IN AMERICAN STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
Adherents to American structural linguistics, one of the dominant schools of
linguistics in the first part of the twentieth century, typically viewed linguistics not
so much as a 'theory' of the nature of language but rather as a body of descriptive and
analytical procedures. Ideally, linguistic analysis was expected to proceed by
focusing selectivel y on one dimension of language structure at a time before tackling
the next one. Each dimension was formally referred to as a linguistic level. The
various levels are shown in [1.1]. [1.1] Semantic level: deals with meaning Syntactic level: deals with sentence-structure Morphological level: deals with word-structure
Phonology (or phonemics): deals with sound systems
The levels were assumed to be ordered in a hierarchy, with phonology at the bottom and
semantics at the top. The task of the analyst producing a description of a language was seen as
one of working out, in separate stages, first the pronunciation, then the word-structure, then
the sentence-structure and finally the meaning of utterances. It was considered theoretically
reprehensible to make use of information from a higher level, for example, syntax, when
analysing a lower level such as phonology. This was the doctrine of separation of levels.
In the early days, especially between 1920 and 1945, American structuralists grappled
with the problem of how sounds are used to distinguish meaning in language. They built upon
nineteenth-century work, such as that of Dufriche-Desgenettes (Joseph, 1999) and Baudouin
de Courtenay (1895), and further developed and refined the theory of the phoneme (cf., Sapir,
1925; Swadesh, 1934; Twaddell, 1935; Harris, 1944).
As time went on, the focus gradually shifted to morphology. When structuralism was in
its prime, especially between 1940 and 1960, the study of morphology occupied centre stage.
Many major structuralists investigated issues in the theory of word-structure (cf. Bloomfield,
1933; Harris, 1942, 1946, 1951; Hockett, 1952, 1954, 1958). Nida's coursebook entitled
Morphology, published in 1949, codified structuralist theory and practice. It introduced
generations of linguists to the descriptive analysis of words. INTRODUCTION
The structuralists' methodological insistence on the separation of levels that we noted
above was a mistake […]. Despite this flaw, there was much that was commendable in the
structuralist approach to morphology. One of the structuralists' main contributions was the
recognition of the fact that words may have intricate internal structures. Whereas traditionally
linguistic analysis had treated the word as the basic unit of grammatical theory and
lexicography, the American structuralists showed that words are analysable in terms of
morpheme. These are the smallest units of meaning and/or grammatical function. Previously,
word-structure had been treated together with sentence-structure under grammar. The
structuralists viewed morphology as a separate sub-branch of linguistics. Its purpose was 'the
study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words' (Nida, 1949: 1).
4 WHAT IS A WORD? 2 WHAT IS A WORD? 2
The assumption that languages contain words is t aken for granted by most
people. Even illiterate speakers know that there are words in their language. True,
sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treated as words.
For instance, English speakers might not agree whether all right is one word or two
and as a result disputes may arise as to whether alright is the correct way of writing all
right. But, by and large, people can easily recognise a word of their language when
they see or hear one. And normally their judgements as t o what is or is not a word do
coincide. English speakers agree, for example, that the form stlody in the sentence The
stlody cat sat on the mat is not an English word - but all the other forms are. 2.1 THE LEXEME
However, closer examination of the nature of the 'word' reveals a somewhat
more complex picture than painted above. What we mean by 'word' is not always
clear. As we shall see in the next few paragraphs, difficulties in clarifying the nature
of the word are largely due to the fact that the term 'word' is used in a variety of
senses that usually are not clearly distinguished. In taking the existence of words for
granted, we tend to overlook the complexity of what it is we are taking for granted. Exercise 1
What would you do if you were reading a book and you encountered the
'word' pockled for the first time in this context?
He went to the pub for a pint and then pockled off.
You would probably look up that unfamiliar word in a dictionary, not under
pockled, but under pockle. This is because you know that pockled is not going to be
listed in the dictionary. You also know, though nobody has told you, that the words
pockling and pockles will also exist. Furthermore, you know that pockling, pockle, pockle s
and pockled are all in a sense different manifestations of the 'same' abstract vocabulary item.
2 The content of this part is adapted from Fromkin, V. A. (ed.) (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory.
Oxford: Blackwell; Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave and Kuiper, K., &
W. S. Allan (1996) An Introduction to English Language: Sound, Word and Sentence. London: MacMillan. WHAT IS A WORD?
We shall refer to the 'word' in this sense of abstract vocabulary item using the
term lexeme. The forms pockling. pockle, pockle
s and pockled are different realisations
(or representations or manifestations) of the lexeme POCKLE (lexemes will be written
in capital letters). They all share 3 core meaning although they are spelled and
pronounced differently. Lexemes are the vocabulary items that are listed in the
dictionary (cf. Di Sciullo and Williams, 1987). Exercise 2
Which ones of the words below belong to the same lexeme? see catches taller boy catching sees sleeps woman catch saw tallest sleeping boys sleep seen tall jumped caught seeing jump women slept jumps jumping 2.2 WORD-FORM
As we have just seen above, sometimes, when we use the term 'word', it is not
the abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning, the lexeme, that we
want to refer to. Rather, we may use the term 'word' to refer to a particular physical
realisation of that lexeme in speech or writing that is, a particular word-form. Thus,
we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different words. In this sense,
three different occurrences of any one of these word -forms would count as three
words. We can also say that the word-form see has three letters and the word-form
seeing has six. And, if we were counting the number of words in a passage, we would
gladly count see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different word-forms (belonging to the same lexeme).
2.3 CONTTENT WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS
Languages make an important distinction between two kinds of words —content words
and function words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are the content words. These words
denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas that we can think about like
children, anarchism, soar, and purple. Content words are sometimes called the open class
words because we can and regularly do add new words to these classes. A new word,
steganography, which is the art of hiding information in electronic text, entered English with
the Internet revolution. Verbs like disrespect and download entered the language quite
recently, as have nouns like byte and email.
Different languages may express the same concept using words of different grammatical
classes. For example, in Akan, the major language of Ghana, there are only a handful of
adjectives. Most concepts that would be expressed with adjectives in English are expressed by
verbs in Akan. Instead of saying "The sun is bright today," an Akan speaker will say "The sun brightens today."
There are other classes of words that do not have clear lexical meaning or obvious
concepts associated with them, including conjunctions such as and, or, and but; prepositions
such as in and of; the articles the, a/an, and pronouns such as it and he. These kinds of words
are called function words because they have a grammatical function. For example, the articles
6 WHAT IS A WORD?
indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite — the boy or
a boy. The preposition of
indicates possession as in "the book of yours," but this word indicates many other kinds of relations too. What do you mean? Ho H w o ’ w s ’ s y o y u o r u r 5 0 5 0 0 - We W l e ll,l ,b a b s a e s d e d o n o n wo w r o d r d h i h s i t s o t r o y r y pa p s a t s tp e p r e f r o f r o m r a m n a c n
I know I’ll use “the” about 25 tim pa p p a e p r e r c o c m o i m n i g n ? g ? I’ I m ’ m r e r a e d a y d y a a
“and” at least 15. “in”, “if”,”it” a qu q a u r a t r e t r e r d o d n o e n . e .
“but” should give me another 30-
Toss in the usual “is”, “was”, “wi
verb assortment and I’m sitting
comfortably at 120-plus words be I even start. Th T e h e k e k y e y t o t o w r w i r tiitn i g n g Yo Y u o u ne n v e e v r e r a a h i h s i t s o t r o y r y e s e s s a s y a y i s i s fa f i a li l to t o Th T a h n a k n s k . s .Wh o Wh ' o d d w e w e kn k o n w o i w n i g n g y o y u o r u r am a a m z a e z e m e m . e . fi f g i h g t h ti n i n W o W r o l r d l d W a W r a r I , I , es e s s a s y a y h i h s i t s o t r o y r . y . by b y t h t e h e w a w y a ? y ?
"Fox Trot" copyright © 2000 Bill Amend. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Function words are sometimes called closed class words. It is difficult to think of new
conjunctions, prepositions, or pronouns that have recently entered the language. The small set
of personal pronouns such as I, me, mine, he, she, and so on are part of this class.
[…]These two classes of words have different functions in language. Content words
have semantic content (meaning). Function words play a grammatical role; they connect the
content words to the larger grammatical context. WHAT IS A WORD?
2.4 WORDS AND THEIR GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
[…] In a dictionary the words of a language are classified by grammatical
category. In this section we will look at grammatical cate gories and how words may
be assigned to particular categories. The reason for examining this property of words
first is that the later section in this chapter, where we look at the internal structure of
words, depends on being able to identify a word's grammatical category.
[…] Before looking at the specific grammatical categories of English lex emes we
need to look in a little more detail at the way they change their form. Look, for
example, at the lexeme TRY. Depending on how it is functioning it can take any of the
following forms: try, tries, tried, trying, as in the following sentences: The horse must try,
The horse tries, The horse tried, The horse is trying. We can call each of these forms a
grammatical word form of the lexeme, since it is the grammar of English which
requires the lexeme TRY to have these different forms in different syntactic contexts.
The grammatical endings which create these different grammatical word forms are
termed inflections. The form of the lexeme to which they are attached is termed the
. The processes whereby words come to have internal structure such as a stem
and inflection are morphological processes, the morp hology of words having to do
with their internal structure. Since inflections are associated with both the
morphological structure of words and the syntactic functions of words, the categories
for which words inflect are often called morphosyntactic catego ries. Tense, which
accounts for the past-tense inflection -ed in tri-ed, is an example of a morphosyntactic
category. Properties such as present tense or past tense are therefore morphosyntactic properties.
The categories which we will look at in this sect ion are four major lexical
categories: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. We will be looking at the
morphosyntactic categories for which they inflect. At the section‘s conclusion we
will briefly look at prepositions, although these do not have any chara cteristic grammatical endings. 2.4.1 Nouns
Traditionally, a noun is a naming word; typically the name of a pers on place, or
thing. For example, snake, rat, alligator, Fred, chainsaw, lawnmower are all nouns.
For each of the above words we can find a set of objec ts to which the word is
normally used to refer (although the name of a partic ular snake, rat, or alligator may
be Fred or Freda for those with whom the animal is on intimate terms). Exercise 3
Consider the following nouns. Do they pose any problems for our definition of a noun?
anger, fame, cyclops, Zeus, Hamlet, Lilliput, furniture
It is impossible to point to an object in the physical world to which these words
refer. Anger is a feeling and fame is an abstract quality; cyclops, and Zeus are both
mythical beings; Hamlet is a fictional character, whi le Lilliput is a fictitious place.
8 WHAT IS A WORD?
Furniture is not a person or a place or a thi ng either, or even a set of objects. In fact it
isn't any particular thing but class of things. Unlike alligators, where we can say of a
particular alligator, ‗That's an alligator,‘ we cannot say when pointing to a chair,
'That's a furniture.' So although their meaning may be useful in identifying some
nouns, we must look elsewhere for some supporting facts about nouns if we are to
become more familiar with them and be able to tell whethe r a particular word is a
noun. To do that we will look at the inflections whic h nouns characteristically take.
Most nouns inflect for the morphosyntactic category of number and, as such,
have a plural form like -s or -es. For example: snapper snappers bee bees rosella rosellas box boxes
Some nouns mark their plural in other ways, for exampl e: foot feet mouse mice louse lice child children ox oxen
Other nouns never mark their plurals overtly: sheep sheep deer deer
while some nouns never occur without the plural marker, for example scissors and
trousers. These are facts about the form of nouns. If a word has plural form, then it
belongs to the category
noun. (Note that the reverse does not follow: namely, that if a
word has no plural form then it is not a noun.)
Notice that although words like sheep and deer do not take an ending to indicate
that they are plural, they do have a plural form. It happens to be identical to their
singular form. On the basis of this we can see the necessity to make a distinction
between a lexeme and a grammatical word. There are two grammatical words with the
word form sheep. One is the singular form of the lexeme SHEEP and the other the
plural form. So SHEEP is a noun because it has a plural form.
We can also identify nouns by looking at the words that typically appear with
them in a sentence or phrase. Most nouns appear with either a(n) or the, or refer to
things that can be counted, for example: a wombat the wombat three wombats a barbecue the barbecue one barbecue […] WHAT IS A WORD?
2.4.2 Adjectives
Traditionally adjectives ascribe a property or quality to an object, for example: the ripe apple the evil alligator
Adjectives may take two different endings, giving three forms, for example: big bigger biggest tall taller tallest
The adjective without the ending is called the standard form and repre sents the
positive degree of comparison. The one with the -e
r ending is the comparative, and is
used when we compare two objects for the same property. For example:
My dad is taller than your dad.
The -est ending is called the superlative (literally: raised above), and is
superlative used when we are comparing three or more objects for the same prop erty. For example:
Your dad may be taller than my dad but Raewyn's dad is the tallest.
Not all adjectives take the -e
r and -est endings; some use more and most. For example: evil more evil most evil incredible more incredible most incredible
The morphosyntactic category which has the morphosyntactic prop erties of
comparative and superlative is called comparison. The unmarked form of the adjective
shows the positive morphosyntactic property of this category. In other words,
adjectives which show comparison show it in three forms: the simple positive form,
the comparative form, and the superlative form. Exercise 4
Co nsi de r th e f oll owi n g li st of ad je cti ves , an d d iv id e t hem i nt o thr ee
gro ups : tho se w hi ch tak e t he -e
r and — est en di ng s, tho se wh ic h t ak e
more an d most, an d t h ose w hi ch tak e nei th er o f th e ab ov e.
hig h, wi de, d ead , red , med ica l, u gl y, nar r ow, ab sol ut e, pa in ful , fin al
Those adjectives that have comparative and superlative fo rms are called
gradable, while those that do not are called non-gradable. What we mean by gradable
is that there are degrees of the particular property rather than just the presence or
absence of it. A medical bill cannot be more or less medical, at least as far as the
English language is concerned.
As to their function, English adjectives may appear either bef ore a noun or after
a form of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, being or been), for example:
10 WHAT IS A WORD? the ripe apple the apple is ripe the evil alligator the alligator is evil
Not all adjectives may appear in both of these positions. Some may only appear
before nouns, while others may only appear after a form of the verb to be. Exercise 5
Consider the following list of adjectives. Which may appear only before a noun,
which may appear only after the verb to be, and which may appear in both positions?
older, elder, hungry, ill, red, ugly, afraid, utter, incredible, loath. Exercise 6
Below is a portion of a short story with its adjectives in itali cs. What
would the description be like without the adjectives?
His name described him better than I can. He looked like a great,
stupid, smiling bear. His black matted head bobbed forward and his long
arms hung out as though he should have been on all fours and was
only standing upright as a trick. His legs were short and bowed, ending
in strange, square feet. He was dressed in dark blue denim, but his feet
were bare; they didn't seem to be crippled or deformed in any way, but
they were square, just as wide as they were long.
(John Steinbeck, ‗Johnny Bear‘)
If you remove the adjectives which come after forms of to be, the sentences
become ungrammatical. When you remove all the adjectives which come before
nouns, as well, there is virtually no description left. 2.4.3 Verbs
The grammatical class of verbs may be divided into two groups - lexical verbs
and auxiliary verbs. The class of auxiliaries is quite small, and contains the
following: has, had, have, be, is, are, was, were, do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will,
would, may, might, and must. […] In this section we will concentrate on the class of lexical verbs.
Traditionally verbs are defined as denoting actions or states, for example eat,
drink, run, speak, forgive, understand, hate. The first four of these verbs denote actions,
that is, in doing these things we perfo rm some physical action, while the final three
denote states, that is, we can 'do' these things without performing any physical action.
English verb lexemes have more grammatical words associated with them than
either nouns or adjectives. Each verb lexeme has five as sociated grammatical words. WHAT IS A WORD?
The changes in form associated with each grammatical word, listed below, are often
brought about by adding an inflection to the verb. V V-s V-ed V-ing V-en call calls called calling called
Let us look at the morphosyntactic categories that give rise to these different
grammatical words and word forms. The first category is tense All English verbs can
take tense and there are two tenses: past and present. The present tense form of CALL
is call and the past tense form is called. You may ask what happens to the future in
English. The future is not indicated by a word form but can be indicated by other
means, such as the auxiliary verb will as in will call.
The next inflected form, the one ending in -s, indicates a number of
morphosyntactic categories. It is found only if the verb to which it is attached is in
the present tense, the noun in front of it in a sim ple two-word sentence must be
singular and can be substituted for by he, she, or it, for example:
he, she, it, the postman, Mary/calls in the mornin g.
Such nouns are in what is termed the third person: not the speaker, who is the
first person, or the person being addressed, the second person, but the person or
thing spoken about, the third person. So here we have an inflection which indicates
the state of not one morphosyntactic category but three: tense, number and person.
The V-ing and V-en forms are called participles. The V-ing form is the
progressive participle and the V—en form is called the perfect participle. […] The
simple form of verbs without any endings is called the infinitive. It is often
introduced by the word to, for example, to call.
Verbs like call are regular, and regular verbs form the majority of verbs in
English. For regular verbs the past tense form and the perfect participle form are
identical. So how can we tell that these identical forms represent different
grammatical words? In part because they have different functions in phrases and
sentences, but also because, in the case of irregular verbs, the forms are different.
There are about 200 irregular verbs: V-stem V-s V-ed V-ing V-en meet meets met meeting Met put puts put putting Put write writes wrote writing written bring brings brought bringing brought […]
We can now note that not all changes of word form are by way of in flection,
that is the addition of an ending. Some morphosyntactic categories are realised in
particular lexemes by changes to the stem of the lexeme.
12 WHAT IS A WORD? 2.4.4 Adverbs
The class of adverbs may be divided into two groups: degree, and general
adverbs. Degree adverbs are a small group of words like very, more, and most. They
must always appear with either an adjective or a general adverb, for example: She runs very quickly. *She runs very.
This sculpture is more beautiful. *This sculpture is more.
General adverbs are a large class, and may appear without a degree adverb. For example: She runs quickly.
Traditionally, adverbs tell us how (manner), where (place), or when (time) the action
denoted by a verb occurs. For example: She runs quickly. How The cat sat here. Where They left yesterday. When
Adverbs have no inflected forms, although they do take comparison like adjectives,
but by using the more and most forms, for example more quickly, most quickly.
Many of adverbs end with -ly, for example quickly, quietly, properly, instantly, seemingly, stupidly.
The sharp-eyed reader will notice that the -ly ending which forms adverbs is
attached to adjectives. It is not an inflection since it does not relate to any
morphosyntactic categories such as tense or number. We s hall have more to say about
such word-forming endings in the next section.
2.4.5 Prepositions
The last major syntactic category we will look at in this chapter is preposi tion.
Prepositions are words such as in, out, on, by, which often indicate locations in tim e or space, or direction.
While nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are members of open classes
because the classes they belong to are very large, and while it is possible to add new
items to any one of these open classes, prepositions are members of a c losed class.
Other closed classes of words are conjunctions, for example and, but, because, or,
determiners, for example a, an, the, these, those; and the class of auxiliary verbs we
looked at earlier in this chapter. It is not possible to add new member s to the closed
classes. In fact, there is no record of anyone ever adding a new conjunc tion to the
language. Because the function of these words requires us to look more closely at the
grammar of sentences we will leave discussing them until Part II, whe re we look at sentence structure. MORPHEMES 3 MORPHEMES 3
3.1 MORPHEMES: THE SMALLEST UNITS OF MEANING
Morphology is the study of word-structure. The claim that words have structure
might come as a surprise because normally speakers think o f words as indivisible
units of meaning. This is probably due to the fact that many words are
morphologically simple. For example, the, fierce, elephant, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito,
etc., cannot be segmented (i.e., divided up) into smaller units that are themselves
meaningful. It is impossible to say what the -quito part of mosquito or the -erce part of fierce means.
But very many English words are morphologically complex. They can be broken
down into smaller units that are meaningful. This is true of words like desk-s and boot-
s, for instance, where desk refers to one piece of furniture and boot refers to one item
of footwear, while in both cases the -s serves the grammatical function of indicating plurality.
The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units o f semantic
content or grammatical function from which words are made up. By definition, a
morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller units which are either meaningful by
themselves or mark a grammatical function like singular or plural number in the
noun. If we divided up the word fee [fi:] (which contains just one morpheme) into, say,
[f] and [i:], it would be impossible to say what each of the sounds [f] and [i:] means
by itself, since sounds in themselves do not have meaning.
How do we know when to recognise a single sound or a group of sounds as
representing a morpheme? Whether a particular sound or string of sounds is to be
regarded as a manifestation of a morpheme depends on the word in which it appears.
So, while un- represents a negative morpheme and has a meaning that can roughly be
glossed as 'not' in words such as un-just and un-tidy, it has no claim to morpheme
status when it occurs in uncle or in under, since in these latter words it does not have
any identifiable grammatical or semantic value, because -cle and -der on their own do
not mean anything. (Morphemes will be separated with a hyphen in the examples.)
Lego provides a useful analogy: morphemes can be compared to pieces of Lego
that can be used again and again as building blocks to form di fferent words.
Recurrent parts of words that have the same meaning are isolated and recognised as
manifestations of the same morpheme. Thus, the negative morpheme un- occurs in an
3 The content of this part is adapted from Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2011). What is Morphology? (2nd Ed.) Wiley
Blackwell; Fromkin, V. A. (ed.) (2000) Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell; and
Katamba, F., & Stoneham, J. (2006) Modern Linguistics: Morphology. Palgrave 14 MORPHEMES
indefinitely large number of words, besides those listed above. We find it i n unsafe,
unclean, unhappy, unfit, uneven, etc.
However, recurrence in a large number of words is not an essential property of
morphemes. Sometimes a morpheme may be restricted to rela tively few words. This is
true of the morpheme -dom, meaning 'condition, state, dignity', which is found in
words like martyrdom, kingdom, chiefdom, etc. (Glosses, here and elsewhere in the
book, are based on definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary OED.)
It has been argued that, in an extreme case, a morpheme may occur i n a single
word. Lightner (1975) has claimed that the morpheme -ric meaning 'diocese' is only
found in the word bishopric. But this claim is disputed by Bauer (1983) who suggests
instead that perhaps -ric is not a distinct morpheme and that bishopric should be listed
in the dictionary as an unanalysable word. We will leave this controversy at that and
instead see how morphemes are identified in less problematic cases. Exercise 7
List two other words that contain each morpheme represented below. a. -er as in play-er, call-er
-ness as in kind-ness, good-ness b. e - x as in ex-wife, ex-minister
pre- as in pre-war, pre-school
mis- as in mis-kick, mis-judge (i)
Write down the meaning of each morpheme you identify. (If you are in doubt,
consult a good etymological dictionary.)
(ii) What is the syntactic category (noun, adjective, verb, etc.) of the form which
this morpheme attaches to and what is the category of the resulting word?
Your answer should confirm that, in each example in exercise 7, the elements
recognised as belonging to a given morpheme contribute an identifiable meaning to
the word of which they are a part. The form -e
r is attached to verbs to derive nouns
with the general meaning 'someone who does X' (where X indicates whatever action
the verb involves). When -ness is added to an adjective, it produces a noun meaning
'having the state or condition (e.g., of being kind)'. […]
. Finally, the morphemes ex-
and pre- derive nouns from nouns while mis- derives verbs from verbs. We can gloss
the morpheme ex- as 'former', pre- as 'before' and mis- as 'badly'.
So far we have described words with just one or two morphemes. In fact, it is possible to
combine several morphemes together to form more complex words. This can be seen in long
words like unfaithfulness and reincarnation, which contain the morphemes un-faith-ful-ness
and re-in-carn-at-ion respectively. […] MORPHEMES
3.2 MORPHEMES, MORPHS AND ALLOMORPHS
The morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the
smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure.
The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A morph is a
physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound
(phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes) Exercise 8
Study the data in the following sentences and identify the morphs. 8a. I parked the car. 8b. We parked the car. 8c. I park the car. 8d. He parks the car. 8e. She parked the car. 8f. She parks the car. 8g. We park the car. 8h. He parked the car.
The answer to exercise 8 is given below Morph Recurs in ‗I‘ 8a and 8c ‗she‘ 8e and 8f ‗he‘ 8d and 8h ‗the‘ in all the examples ‗car‘ in all the examples ‗park‘
in all the examples, sometimes with an –ed suffix,
sometimes with an –s suffix and sometimes on its own ‗-ed‘
suffixed to park in 8a, 8b, 8e, 8h ‗-s‘ suffixed to park in 8d, 8f
[..] Each different morph represents a separate morpheme, but this is not
always the case. Sometimes different morphs may represent the same morpheme.
For instance, the past tense of regular verbs in English which is spelled -e d is realised in speech by /
/, /d/ or /t/. The phonological properties of the last segment
of the verb to which it is attached determine the choice: [3.1] It is realised as:
a. / d/ if the verb ends in /d/ or /t/ e.g. 'mend' /mend/ 'mended' / /
'paint' /pe nt/ 'painted' /pe nt d/
b. /d/ after a verb ending in any voiced sound except /d/
e.g. 'clean' /kli:n/ 'cleaned' /kli:nd/ 'weigh'/we / 'weighed' / /
c. /t/ after a verb ending in any voiceless consonant other than /t/
e.g. 'park' /pa:k/ 'parked' /pa:kt/ 'miss'/ / 'missed' / / 16 MORPHEMES
If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they ar e grouped together and
they are called allomorphs of that morpheme So,/ d/, /d/ and /t/- are grouped together
as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English.
The relationship between morphemes, allomorphs and morphs can be
represented using a diagram in the following way: e.g. Morpheme ―past tense” Allomorph Allomorph Allomorph morph morph morph / d/ /d/ /t/
We can say that: (1) / d/, /d/ and /t/ are English morphs; and (2) we can group
all these three morphs together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme.
The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the
notion of distribution, that is, the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic
form occurs. We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they
are in complementary distribution. Morphs are said to be in complementary
distribution if: (1) they represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical
function; and (2) they are never found in identical contexts. So, the three morphs /- d/,
/-d/ and /-t/ which represent the English regular past tense morpheme are in
complementary distribution. Each morph is restricted to the contexts specified in
[3.1]. Hence, they are allomorphs of the same morpheme.
3.3 TYPES OF MORPHEMES
3.3.1 Roots and Stems
Morphologically complex words consist of a root and one or more affixes. A root is a lexical
content morpheme that cannot be analyzed into smaller parts. Some examples of English roots
are paint in painter, read in reread, and ceive in conceive. A root may or may not stand alone
as a word (paint does; ceive doesn't).
A stem is a base unit to which another morphological piece is attached. The stem can be
simple, made up of only one part, or complex, itself made up of more than one piece.
Now consider the word reconsideration. We can break it into three morphemes: re-, consider,
and -ation. Consider is called the stem. H r
e e it is best to consider consider a simple stem.
Although it consists historically of more than one part, most present-day speakers would treat
it as an unanalyzable form. We could also call consider the root. A root is like a stem in MORPHEMES
constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to
morphologically simple units. For example, disagree is the stem of disagreement, because it
is the base to which -ment attaches, but agree is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the
stem to which dis- attaches and the root of the entire word.
3.3.2 Free and Bound Morphemes
Our morphological knowledge has two components: knowledge of the individual
morphemes and knowledge of the rules that combine them. One of the things we
know about particular morphemes is whether they can stand alone or whether they
must be attached to a host morpheme.
“L OO KS LIK E WE SPEND MOST OF OUR T
INGING. YOU KNOW, LIKE SLEEPING, EATING, RUNNING, CLIMBING”
"Dennis the Menace" ® copyright © 1987 by North America Syndicate. Used
by permission of Hank Ketchum.
Some morphemes like boy, desire, gentle, and man may constitute words by them-
selves. These are free morphemes. Other morphemes like -ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans-,and
un- are never words by themselves but are always parts of words. These affixes are
bound morphemes. We know whether each affix precedes or follows other mor-
phemes. Thus, un-, pre- (premeditate, prejudge), and bi- (bipolar, bisexual) are prefixes.
They occur before ether morphemes. Some morphemes occur only as suffixes,
following other morphemes. English examp les of suffix morphemes are -ing (e.g.,
sleeping, eating, running, climbing), -er (e.g., singer, performer, reader, and beautifier), -ist
(e.g., typist, copyist, pianist, novelist, collaborationist, and linguist), and -ly (e.g., manly,
sickly, spectacularly, and friendly), to mention only a few. 18 MORPHEMES
3.3.3 Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes
[…] Morphemes can be divided into two major functional categories, namely
derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. This reflects a recognition of
two principal word-building processes: inflection and derivation. While all
morphologists accept this distinction in some form, it is nevertheless one of the most
contentious issues in morphological theory. We will briefly introduce you here to the
essentials of this distinction.[…]
3.3.3.1 Derivational Morphemes
Inflectional and derivational morphemes form words in different ways.
Derivational morphemes form new words either:
(i) by changing the meaning of the base (or stem) to which they are attached, for
example, kind vs un-kind (both are adjectives but with opposite mean ings); obey vs
dis-obey (both are verbs but with opposite meanings). Or:
(ii) by changing the word-class that a base (or stem) belongs to, for example, the
addition of -ly to the adjectives kind and simple produces the adverbs kind-ly and
simp-ly. As a rule, it is possible to derive an adverb by adding the suffix -ly to an adjectival base (or stem).
[…] Sometimes the presence of a derivational affix causes a major grammatical
change, involving moving the stem from one word-class into another, as in the case
of -less which turns a noun into an adjective. In other cases, the change caused by a
derivational suffix may be minor. It may merely shift a stem to a different subclass
within the same broader word-class. That is what happens when the suffix -ling is
attached to duck above.
Further examples are given below. In [3.2a], the diminutive suffix -let is attached
to nouns to form diminutive nouns (meaning a 'small something'). In [3.2b], the
derivational suffix -shi
p is used to change a concrete noun stem into an abstract noun (meaning 'state, condition'): [3.2] a. pig ~ pig-let b. friend ~ friend-ship book ~ book-let leader ~ leader-ship
The tables in [3.3] and [3.4] list some common derivational prefixes and
suffixes, the classes of the stems to which they can be attached and the words that are
thereby formed. It will be obvious that in order to determine which morpheme a
particular affix morph belongs to, it is often essential to know the s tem to which it
attaches because the same phonological form may repre sent different morphemes
depending on the stem with which it co-occurs.
Note: These abbreviations are used in the tables below: N for noun, N (abs) for
abstract noun, N (conc) for concrete noun, V for verb, Adj for adjective, and Adv for adverb. MORPHEMES [3.3] Prefix Word-class of Meaning Word-class of Example input stem output word in- Adj ―not‖ Adj in-accurate un- Adj ―not‖ Adj un-kind un- V ―reversive‖ V un-tie dis- V ―reversive‖ V dis-continue dis- N(abs) ―not‖ N (abs) dis-order dis- Adj ―not‖ Adj dis-honest dis- V ―not‖ V dis-approve re- V ―again‖ V re-write ex- N ―former‖ N ex-mayor en- N ―put in‖ V en-cage [3.4] Suffix Word-class Meaning Word-class of Example of input stem output word -hood N ―status‖ N (abs) child-hood -ship N ―state or condition‖ N (abs) king-ship -ness Adj
―quality, state or condition‖ N (abs) kind-ness -ity Adj ―state or condition‖ N (abs) sincer-ity -ment V
Result or product of doing the N govern-ment
action indicated by the verb‖ -less N ―without‖ Adj power-less -ful N ―having‖ Adj power-ful -ic N ―pertaining to‖ Adj democrat-ic -al N
―pertaining to, of the kind‖ Adj medicin-al -al V ―pertaining to or act of‖ N (abs) refus-al -er V ―agent who does whatever N read-er the verb indicate‖ -ly Adj ―manner‖ Adv kind-ly 20 MORPHEMES
To sum up the discussion so far, we have observed that derivational affixes are
used to create new lexemes by either: (i) modifying significantly the meaning of the
stem to which they are attached, without necessarily changing its grammatical
category (see kind and unkind above); or (ii) they bring about a shift in the grammatical
class of a stem as well as a possible change in meaning (as in the case of hard (Adj)
and hardship (N (abs)); or (iii) they may cause a shift in the grammatical subclass of a
word without moving it into a new word-class (as in the case of friend (N (conc)) and friend-ship (N (abs)). Exercise 9
Study the data below that contain the derivational prefix en- a. Stem New word b. Stem New word cage en-cage noble en-noble large en-large rich en-rich robe en-robe rage en-rage danger en-danger able en-able
(i) State the word-classes (e.g., noun, adjective, verb, etc.) of the stem to which en- is prefixed.
(ii) What is the word-class of the new word resulting from the prefixation of en- in each case?
(iii) What is the meaning (or meanings) of en- in these words?
Consult a good dictionary, if you are not sure.
You will have established that the new word resulting from the prefixation of en-
in exercise 9 is a verb. But there is a difference in the input stem. Sometimes en- is
attached to adjectives as seen in [3.5a], and sometimes to nouns, as in [3.5b]: [3.5] a. Adj stem New Verb b. Noun stem New Verb able en-able robe en-robe large en-large danger en-danger noble en-noble rage en-rage rich en-rich cage en-cage
Interestingly, this formal difference correlates with a semantic distinction. So,
we conclude that there are two different prefixes here which happen to be
homophonous. The en- in [3.5a] has a causative meaning (similar to make'). To enable
is to 'make able', to enlarge is to 'make large', etc., while in [3.5b] en- can be
paraphrased as 'put in or into'. To -encage is to 'put in a cage' and to endanger is to 'put
in danger' etc. (Notice the very special nature of en- in these cases - unlike most
prefixes in English, which never affect the class of the form to which they attach, en-
may change the class from adjective (e.g., large) or noun (e.g., cage) to verb.)