Morphology by Ohidur
—The study of the internal structure of
words, and of the rules by which words are
formed
—morph + ology = morphology—“the science
of word forms”
—the morphemic suffix “-ology” means
“science of” or “branch of knowledge
concerning”
—knowing a language implies knowing its
morphology
—like most linguistic knowledge, this is
generally unconscious knowledge
—The form (sounds and pronunciation) and
the meaning of a word are like two sides of
a coin
—The science and the study of the smallest
grammatical units of language, and of their
formation into words, including inflection,
derivation and composition
—study of the patterns of the word-forms
—studies—how the words are formed
—where they originate from
—what their grammatical forms are
—what the functions of prefixes and suffixes
in the formations of words are
—on what basis the parts of speech of a
particular language are formed
—how the systems of gender, number, plural,
etc. function
—how and why the word-forms change
—“a level of structure between the phonological
and the syntactic”
—complementary to syntax (grammar of sentences)
—grammar of words
—not only the synchronic (in a given time)
and a diachronic (across time) study of word-forms
(if only synchronic, called morphemics)
Morpheme
—derived from the Greek word “morphe”
meaning form
—two morphemes—impossible
—the minimul linguistic sign (an arbitrary
union of a sound and a meaning)
—every word—one or more morphemes
—homonyms (homophones)—bear and bare
Morphe
—minimal units of grammatical structure—minimal
(distinct) syntactical units that form
Words
—un faith ful ness —4 morphemes
—tele phone s —3 morphemes
—minimal units of meaning out of which meaningful
words are composed in various ways
—distinct linguistic form
—has a grammatical function
—not divisable or analyzable into smaller
forms (if divided, sequence of meaningless
noises—na tion / nati on)
—analyzing morphemes leads us straigth into
the realm of phonology
—un—unfriendly/unhealthy/unable/unemployed
(but under—meaningless)
—er—teacher/heater/reader/writer/speaking/pointer/leader
—spect—respect/inspect/circumspect
—pro—protest/profession/prospective/process/proceed/progress/profess
—z—dogs/hands/ideas
—s—cats/maps/snacks
—iz—churches/judges/classes
—en—oxen/children/brethren
—un—under/sun
—animal—anima + l
—monosyllabic—main/a/an/the
—polysyllabic—happy/future/nature
—martinel calls—a grammatical moneme—glosseme—morphophonology/morphonoloy
—phoneme—sheep/fish/deer—vary in their
phonological manifestations (sometimes)
Morphs
—any phonetic shape or representation of
a phoneme is a morph (Hockett)
—(John Lyons) —“When the word can be
segmental into parts, these segments are refered
to a
morph”
—shorter—short + er
—but sheep (plural)—two morphemes but
one morph
—went—go + ed—two morphems but one morph
Allomorphs
—morpheme alternants/morpheme variants—{-z}—/-z/,
/-s/, /-iz/, /θ/
Classification of Morphemes
Two types—i) Lexical ii) Grammatical
Lexical—boy/write/paper/pen (upto 10 millions)
—change frequently—nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs
Grammatical—some/with/a/an/the/to/from—do
not change frequently
—prepositions/articles/conjunctions/forms
including number/gender/tense
another two types—free and bound morphemes
Free morphemes—rat/cat/go/black/the/yet/but/and—monomorphemic
—air-craft—polymorphemic—often called
compound words (if no affixes)
Bound morphemes—(affixes) ness/less/pre/up/de/con/er/ment
roots/affixes
—Morphemes and roots—affixes—prefix—un/dis/in/pre/mis/mal/pro/mono/poly/anti/ante/omni
—suffix—ment/ity/er
—infix—i) derivational—ii) inflectional—iii)
bound bases
— (goose + s = geese)—(man + s = men)—(foot
+ s = feet) —(tooth + s = teeth)
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