MORPHOLOGY: The Words Of Language

MORPHOLOGY: The Words of Language

I. Introdu ction: Dictionaries

Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

LEXICON

WHAT INFORMATION DO DICTIONARIES PROVIDE ABOUT A WORD?

1- spelling

2- “standard” pronunciation

3- Definitions to represent the word’s one or more meanings

4- Parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.)

II. CONTENT WORDS & FUNCTION WORDS

A. CONTENT WORDS

The OPEN CLASS words

DO YOU KNOW WHAT STEGANOGRAPHY IS?

ANSWER: The art of hiding information in electronic text.

CAN YOU THINK OF OTHER WORDS THAT ENTERED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DUE TO THE INTERNET REVOLUTION?

B. FUNCTION WORDS

The CLOSED CLASS WORDS

EXERCISE: Count the number of F’s in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE

RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC

STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

III. WORD FORMATION : COMPOUNDING

Head constituent

L ongboat - consists of an adjective - long, and a noun - boa t

I ncome is a noun consisting of a preposition followed by a verb

Nouns: signpost, sunlight, bluebird, redwood, outhouse

Verbs: window shop, stargaze, outlive, undertake

Adjectives: icecold , hell-bent , undersized

Prepositions: into, onto, upon

Multi-word compounds: three-time loser, four-dimensional space-time, master of ceremonies, daughter-in-law

EXERCISE ABOUT COMPOUNDS: Compounds are often frequent in modern technical areas where new vocabulary is being created. Find the compounds in the following passage:

Free Talker

Nokia 610 Car Kit

The cell phone stays by your side -- instead of your ear -- with Nokia's hands-free Bluetooth system. An unobtrusive dash-mounted screen provides the same information as your cell-phone display, and you can effortlessly download contact info from your phone. A small console-mounted control unit with three intuitive buttons and a dial is but one way to manage calls and messages, which sound off through your car's speakers: Choose to use Nokia's decent voice-recognition software and neither hand has to leave the wheel. $300; www.nokia.com.

CNN Business (iness2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,695018,00.html)

IV. MORPHEMES

MORPHOLOGY - morph + ology

A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes:

one morpheme boy

desire

two morphemes boy + ish

desire + able

three morphemes boy + ish + ness

desire + able + ity

four morphemes gentle + man + li + ness

un + desire + able + ity

more than four un +gentle + man +li + ness

anti + dis +establish + ment +ari +an +ism

Single sound morpheme - the morpheme a meaning “without” - as in amoral or asexual, Single syllable morpheme - child and ish in child + ish

M ore than one syllable morphemes: camel, lady, and water, crocodile, hallucinate.

EXERCISE: If “to write” to a disk or CD means to put information on it, what do the following words mean in the same context?

writable CD rewritable CD (CD-RW) unrewritable CD (CD-W)

A. BOUND & FREE MORPHEMES

FREE MORPHEMES - boy, desire, gentle, and man

BOUND MORPHEMES - –ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans- and un

AFFIXES:

PREFIXES - un-, pre-, and bi

SUFFIXES - -ing, -er, -ist, and –ly

EXERCISE ON BOUND AND FREE MORPHEMES: Divide the following into free and bound sets:

ation, nation, pre, post, angle, ible, infra, out

B. STEMS & AFFIXES

STEM - the form of a word to which affixes are attached.

Example: possible - ible is attached to the stem poss, which is itself bound

EXERCISE ON STEMS & AFFIXES: Separate the affixes from the stems in the following words:

Trains, succeeded, lighter, predetermined, retroactive, confusions, instructional.

C. Inflectional Morphemes

Suppletive forms - an unpredictable and unrelated form of a word for a particular morphosyntactic realization that is completely unpredictable ones.

Example - the past tense form of the verb go, namely went. This form is suppletive.

Syncretism - two different grammatical words have the same inflected form

Examples: Joanna has towed the boat . And

Joanna towed the boat.

EXERCISE ON SYNCRETISM: Remove all the inflectional affixes from the following passage:

The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it down, went to the window. His rooms were the highest flat of a lofty building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes of glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.

(Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim)

What happens to the text when all inflectional affixes are removed?

ANSWER:

The privileged man open the packet, look in, then lay it down, went to the window. His room were the high flat of a lofty building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear pane of glass, as though he were look out of the lantern of a lighthouse.

MORE EXERCISES ON THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS:

(a) Divide the following words into their constituent morphemes by placing a plus sign (+) between the morphemes, and indicate for each morpheme whether it is bound or free:

Cleaning lady, anti-skidding device, mushroom, nationhood, deputise, derailments, predestination, and internationalization.

(b) Indicate for each of the following words, which have been divided up into morphemes, which are affixes and for each affix, what is its associated stem.

Involve + ment, in + support + able, sub + profess + or + ial, inter + sub + ject + iv + ity.

(c) A number of morphemes in the following passage are italicized. For each, say whether it is bound or free; if bound, whether it is an inflection or a derivational affix.

We are at once the most resilient, most resourceful, most restive, most receptive, most radical, most reaction ary people who ever lived. We have had time and the tide for everything but those moments of thought necessary to reverse the priorities to cause us occasionally to look before leaping.

D. DIAGRAMING WORD STRUCTURE

COMPOUNDS

Example: blackboard

Noun

Adjective Noun

Black board

AFFIXES

Example: nationalisation

Noun

Verb

Adjective

Noun

nation al ise ation

Exercise on Tree Diagrams: Represent the following words in tree diagrams.

(a) bookworm

(b) singer

(d) tax collector

Answers:

(a) bookworm (b) singer

Noun Noun

Noun Noun Verb

book worm sing er

Verb Noun

Verb Noun Noun

mis lay Verb

tax collect or

Exercise:

Study the following passage and then answer the questions below. Take your examples from the passage.

The dogs swam ahead, fatuously important; the foals, nodding solemnly, swayed along behind up to their necks: sunlight sparkled on the calm water, which further downstream where the river narrowed broke into furious little waves, swirling and eddying close inshore against black rocks, giving an effect of wildness, almost of rapids; low over their heads an ecstatic lightning of strange birds manoeuvred, looping-the-loop and immelmanning at unbelievable speed, aerobatic as new-born dragonflies. The opposite shore was thickly wooded.

(Malcom Lowry, Under the Volcano)

(immelmanning – (n) an aircraft manoeuvre used to gain height while reversing the direction of flight. It consists of a halfloop followed by a half roll.)

(a) Identify 3 compound words. For each one, name the grammatical category of the compound, and the grammatical category of the elements that compose it. (Example: watertight is an adjective, made up of noun + adjective.)

(b) Divide the following words into their component morphemes, labeling each morpheme F (free), I (inflectional), or D (derivational):

unbelievable dragonflies

(d) Identify two other words containing (different) derivational suffixes, name the grammatical category of the stem to which the suffix is attached, and the grammatical category of the derived word.

(e) Describe the function of the suffix –s in foals and waves, and that of the suffix-ed in swayed and sparkled.

(f) Comment on the past tense forms swam and broke.

Inglês IV Lesson on Morphology: The Words of Language 7