Morphology, part 1

Here we’ll talk about morphology, discussing word structure in English.

If you’d like to dig deeper into these concepts, check out Chapter 4 of How English Works.

 

 

What is morphology?

• The study of word structure

What is a morpheme?

• Smallest unit of meaning in a language. It might only be “part” of a word, but it still has some meaning on its own.
• Example: ‘Non-’ is not a complete word, but it has interpretable meaning (not).
  ‘N’ doesn’t have meaning on its own – it must be combined with other sounds.
• Morphemes combine together to make words.
• Morphemes include prefixes and suffixes.

 

Morphology interacts with phonology.

Allomorphs are different phonological forms of the same morpheme.

Examples:

• The ‘regular’ past tense morpheme is written as ‘-ed’, but can sound different based on the word.
  Compare ‘loved’ and ‘laughed’. Say each out loud – how is ‘-ed’ pronounced in each word?
• The ‘regular’ plural morpheme is written as ‘-s’ but can sound different based on the word.
  Compare ‘cats’ and ‘dogs’. Say each out loud – how is ‘-s’ pronounced in each word?

 

Morphemes can be broken down into different categories: bound and free morphemes

Free morphemes can stand alone as words:
‘help’, ‘book’, ‘happy’

Bound morphemes don’t work as words on their own; they must be attached to another morpheme (or morphemes):

‘un-’ (as in undo), ‘-ed’ (as in jumped), ‘-dom’ (as in queendom), ‘-ness’ (as in happiness)

What are other examples of bound and free morphemes?

 

In this example, ‘friend’ is a free morpheme. The other morphemes are all bound. They can’t stand alone as words.

Morphemes like ‘-ship’ might look like words, but notice that the word ‘ship’ (as in a large boat, or to mail) does not have the same meaning as the as the morpheme ‘-ship’ (condition or state)

 

 

Inflectional & Derivational Bound Morphemes

Bound morphemes can be further broken down into two categories: inflectional and derivational.

 

Inflectional morphemes signal grammatical information: tense, number, possessive, comparative/superlative

I think of inflectional morphemes as providing ‘extra’ information without deeply changing the meaning of the word – they wouldn’t be included on a word in a dictionary, but they add the information you need when you’re using it a sentence.

• They are always suffixes in English
• They’re limited – most varieties of English only have a few inflectional morphemes
• What are some examples?

 

Examples:

• Tense: past (-ed), present (-s), continuous (-ing), past participle (-en), etc.
• Number: plural (-s)
• Possessive: -s, spelled as ‘s
• Comparative (‘-er’ as in weirder) or superlative (‘-est’ as in weirdest)
• And that’s basically it! Most varieties of English don’t have much beyond those.

 

Derivational morphemes do add to the word’s meaning and can signal information about a word’s lexical category (part of speech)

If you learned about prefixes and suffixes in school (or especially in something like an SAT prep class), you likely focused on derivational morphemes.

• Often change its part of speech
• Examples?

 

Examples:

• non- (not)
  -ness (the quality of)
  -ful (full of)
  bi- (two)
  ultra- (very or beyond)
  -tion/-sion/-ion (the act of)
  -ify (to do/make)
• Other examples?

 

Morphemes follow patterns/rules in what they can attach to, and how they change the meaning of the word:

• ultra- attaches to adjectives: ultra-wealthy (very wealthy)
• -ness attaches to adjectives, and makes them into nouns: happiness (the quality of being happy)

 

These patterns hold even for ‘new’ words:

• ultra-eager or ultra-interesting make sense, but something like ultra-eat is weirder (because ‘eat’ is a verb)
• Exhausted-ness makes sense, but scream-ness is weirder (because ‘scream’ is a verb or noun)

You unconsciously follow these rules when making up new words.

 

 

Word Formation

We’re going to model how words are formed through the combination of morphemes.

You can choose which format works best for you – see next two slides.

I find Format 1 easier (to type, and to understand) so that’s what we’ll use here.

 

Format 1:

Irreplaceableness

Root: place (verb)
+ re = replace (verb)
+ able = replaceable (adjective)
+ irr = irreplaceable (adjective)
+ ness = Irreplaceableness (noun)

 

Format 2:

 

We’ll work through one example step by step:

Unlucky

 

Start by identifying the root/stem, which is the free morpheme the other morphemes attach to.

This is the core meaning of the word. It should be only one morpheme – it cannot be broken down any further.

Here, the root/stem is luck:

Unlucky

 

Next, we’ll need to identify the other morphemes involved, and determine which order they attach in.

The order of attachment matters in terms of the structure of the word itself (irreplaceableness, not irreplacenessable) and the construction of meaning in the word.

Each morpheme will be added one-by-one, attached to the beginning or end. You can’t shove a morpheme into the middle of the word.*

*In English – other languages do allow this more freely

 

What other morphemes do you see attached to ‘luck’ – directly before or directly after?

 

Un- and -y

 

We have to decide which comes first. We want to build words that make sense along the way, and respect the morphemes’ unique rules.

 

Unlucky – Which option makes more sense?

Option 1:

Root: luck
+ un- = unluck
+ -y = unlucky

Option 2:

Root: luck
+ -y = lucky
+ un- = unlucky

 

 

Option 2 makes more sense:

Root: luck (noun, meaning = fortune)
+ -y = lucky (adjective, having fortune)
+ un- = unlucky (adjective, not having fortune)

This models how meaning is made over time, as well as how we create/understand meaning in real time

As you work, you’re not required to include the content in the (parentheses), but it can help you track meaning!

 

Try another example:

Reclassify

 

Reclassify

Root: class (noun, category)
+ -ify = classify (verb, to put in a category)
+ re- = reclassify (verb, to put in a category again)

 

One more:

Coworkers

*Hint: inflectional morphemes are always after derivational morphemes

 

See answer here.

 

On the homework, you’ll try more of these on your own!

Next week, we’ll dig deeper into morphology, talking about word formation and doing some morphological analysis – stay tuned!