CHAPTER 6 Morphology

(hình thái học)

–Morphology is the analysis of the structure of words.

This term, which literally means “the study of forms,” was originally used in biology, but since the middle of the nineteenth century has also been used to describe the study of all those basic “elements” used in a language.
What we have been describing as “elements” in the form of a linguistic message are technically known as “morphemes.”

If it is a “word,” then it seems to consist of a number of elements that, in English, turn up as separate “words.” A rough correspondence can be presented here

Morphemes

(Hình vị)

–Morphemes: the smallest linguistic unit that has meaning and/or grammatical function.

Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural

So, we can take words apart, as shown in Table 6.1 with re-new-ed and tour-ist-s, to reveal the different elements in their morphology.

Free and Bound Morphemes

( Hình vị tự do và ràng buộc)

–Free morphemes: a stand-alone word like new, tour

–Bound morphemes: cannot stand alone and only occur as parts of words; all affixes like prefixes “re-” and suffixes “-ist”, “-ed”, “-s” & contracted forms like ‘ll, ‘ve)

The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
When they are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word forms are technically known as stem/root/base (cần tố).

Lexical and Functional Morphemes

( Hình vị từ vựng và chức năng)

–Lexical morphemes: a set of nouns (girl, house), verbs (break, sit), adjectives (long, sad), and adverbs (never, quickly) that carry the most content of a sentence.

-Lexical morphemes: are open class – we easily create new ones.

–Functional morphemes: a free morpheme that is used as a function word.

-Function morphemes: are closed class – we rarely (almost never) create new ones.

Ex:

articles: a, an, the
auxiliaries: can, must, should
conjunctions: and, because, for, or, not, but, so, if, when
prepositions: on, near, above, at, in, to
pronouns: it, me, he, she, we, that, these

Derivational Morphemes

(Hình vị phái sinh)

–Derivational morphemes: an affix that derives a new word or a new form of an existing word.

Ex: “encourage” (verb) + “-ment” (suffix) = encouragement (noun)

Inflectional Morphemes

(Hình biến tố)

–Inflectational morphemes: are morphemes that add grammatical infor to a word but does not create a new word.

Ex: past participle is often -ed “They have talked already”

Eng has only the inflectional affixes listed here
All inflectional affixes in English are suffixes

There is some variation in the form of these inflectional morphemes. For example, the possessive sometimes appears as a plural form –s’ (those boys’ bags) and the past participle is often -ed (they have talked already).

Morphological Description

( Mô tả hình thái)

The differ between derivational & inflectional morphemes is worth emphasizing

Inflectional morphemes: never change the grammatical category of a word
Ex: “old” (adjective) & “older” (adjective)
Derivational morphemes: often can change the grammatical category of a word
Ex: “teach” (verb) + “-er” (suffix) -> “teacher” (noun)
Inflectional suffixes follow derivational suffixes

Armed with all these terms for different types of morphemes, we can now take most sentences of English apart and list all the “elements.” For example, in the sentence The teacher’s wildness shocked the girls’ parents, we can identify thirteen morphemes.

A useful way to remember all these different types of morphemes is presented in.

Morphs, Allomorphs and Special Cases

Morphs, Allomorphs and Special Cases (Hình thái, dị hình và trường hợp đặc biệt)

–Morphs: an actual form used as part of a word, representing 1 version of a morpheme

Ex: “cats” -> “cat” (lexical) + “s” (plural)

–Allomorphs: one of a closely related set of morphs

drink => drank
man (sing.) => men (plural)
không đổi phát âm (zero-morph): sheep (sing.) => sheep (plural)
Special cases
Change the root: child -> children

The three allomorphs of the one morpheme (“plural”) are shown in.

Other languages

When we look at the morphology of other languages, we can find other forms and patterns realizing the basic types of morphemes we have identified.

Kanuri

–> nəm- is a prefix, functioning as a derivational morpheme that is used to derive nouns from adjectives.

Ganda

–> an inflectional prefix omu- used with singular nouns, and a different inflectional prefix aba- used with the plural of those nouns

Ilocano

–> the first part is bí- in the singular, the plural begins with this form repeated bibí-

Tagalog

–>-um- has been inserted after the first consonant/ the syllable onset => infix

Study Questions

1. There are 2 morphemes in the word "terrorists": "terrorist" (root) and "-s" (plural suffix).

2. The suffix "-ly" in "slowly" is an adverbial suffix, which is a type of derivational morpheme.

3. The functional morphemes in the sentence "When she walked into the room, the doctor asked me if I had a sore throat or an annoying cough" are:

* "when" (indicating time)

* "if" (indicating condition)

* "had" (indicating past tense)

* "or" (indicating alternatives)

(i) The bound morphemes in the given words are:

* "re-" in "fearlessly"

* "-er" in "happier"

* "-s" in "misleads"

* "pre-" in "previewer"

* "-ing" in "shortening"

* "un-" in "unreconstructed"

(ii) The words with bound stems are:

* consist

* deceive

* introduce

(iii) The words containing an allomorph of the morpheme "past tense" are:

* sits (allomorph of -ed)

(i) The word "class" in the sentence "Bob brought hot donuts to class" would be classified as a closed-class word (a noun).

(ii) The words "it", "you", and "him" in the sentence "I put it on the shelf near you and him" would be classified as open-class words (pronouns).

6. There are 7 regular inflectional morphemes in English: -s, -ed, -ing, -ly, -er, -est, and -en.

(a) The inflectional morpheme is -ed (past tense).

(b) The inflectional morpheme is -'ve (auxiliary verb).

(d) There are no inflectional morphemes in this sentence.

(e) The inflectional morpheme is -s (possessive).

8. The allomorphs of the morpheme "plural" in the given set of English words are:

* -s for nouns ending in -s, such as "dogs"

* -en for nouns ending in -n, such as "oxen"

9. The technical term used to describe the relationship between the singular and plural forms of Indonesian words like anak-anak is called "zero derivation".

10. The equivalent forms for the English translations are:

* Ganda omuloŋgo ("twin") – ("twins") Gandaŋgo

* Ilocano tawtáwa ("windows") – ("window") Tawtawa

* Ilocano tálon ("field") – ("fields") Talon

* Kanuri nəmkəǰi ("sweetness") – ("sweet") Nəmkə

* Tagalog bili ("buy") – ("will buy") Bibili

* Tagalog kain ("eat") – ("Eat!") Kain!

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