Chapter4 Morphology

 

 

 

Chapter 4: Morphology

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words and the rules for word formation. It examines how words are formed from smaller meaningful units called morphemes.

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4.1 Morphemes

What is a Morpheme?

• A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function in a language.
• Morphemes cannot be broken down further without losing or altering meaning.

Types of Morphemes

Morphemes are classified into two broad types:

1. Free Morphemes

• Can stand alone as words.
• Have meaning independently.
• Examples: book, run, happy, quick.

2. Bound Morphemes

• Cannot stand alone; must be attached to other morphemes.
• Usually affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes).
• Examples: -s (plural), -ed (past tense), un- (negation).

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4.2 Word Formation Processes

Languages create new words through various processes. The main word formation processes include:

1. Derivation

• Derivation involves adding derivational affixes (prefixes or suffixes) to a base or root word to create a new word, often changing its grammatical category or meaning.
• Example: happy (adj) → unhappy (adj) by adding the prefix un-
• Example: teach (verb) → teacher (noun) by adding the suffix -er

2. Inflection

• Inflection involves adding inflectional affixes to indicate grammatical information like tense, number, gender, case, person, etc.
• Unlike derivation, inflection does not change the word’s category or basic meaning.
• Examples:
• walk → walks (third-person singular present)
• cat → cats (plural)
• run → ran (past tense)

3. Compounding

• Combining two or more free morphemes (words) to create a new word.
• Examples:
• toothbrush = tooth + brush
• blackboard = black + board
• football = foot + ball

Other Processes (Briefly)

• Conversion: Changing the word class without changing the form (e.g., noun to verb: email → to email).
• Reduplication: Repeating a whole or part of a word for grammatical or semantic effect (common in some languages).
• Blending: Combining parts of two words to make a new one (e.g., smoke + fog = smog).
• Clipping: Shortening a longer word (e.g., advertisement → ad).

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4.3 Morphological Typology

Languages vary in how they use morphemes and form words. Based on this, linguists classify languages into types:

1. Isolating (Analytic) Languages

• Words mostly consist of a single morpheme.
• Very little or no affixation.
• Grammar is expressed through word order and separate words rather than morphology.
• Example languages: Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Yoruba.
• Characteristics:
• One morpheme = one word
• Little or no inflection
• Each word typically corresponds to one meaning or grammatical function

2. Agglutinative Languages

• Words often consist of a sequence of clearly separable morphemes.
• Each affix represents a single grammatical meaning or function.
• Morphemes are "glued" together but remain distinct.
• Example languages: Turkish, Swahili, Japanese.
• Characteristics:
• Many affixes per word
• Each affix encodes one grammatical feature (e.g., tense, number)
• Affixes are easily segmented

3. Fusional (Inflectional) Languages

• Words often have affixes that combine several grammatical meanings in a single morpheme.
• Bound morphemes are fused together, and their boundaries may be unclear.
• Example languages: Spanish, Russian, Latin.
• Characteristics:
• One affix encodes multiple grammatical categories (e.g., person, number, tense)
• Morpheme boundaries are less distinct
• Complex morphology

4. Polysynthetic Languages (Briefly)

• Words are made up of many morphemes, often representing what would be an entire sentence in other languages.
• Common in some Native American languages.
• Highly complex morphology.

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Summary

Aspect	Description	Example
Morpheme	Smallest meaningful unit of language	book, -s, un-
Free Morpheme	Can stand alone	run, happy
Bound Morpheme	Cannot stand alone; attaches to other morphemes	-ed, un-
Derivation	Forms new words; changes meaning/category	teach → teacher
Inflection	Modifies word form for grammatical function	walk → walked
Compounding	Combines two or more words	blackboard, toothbrush
Isolating Language	Mostly single morpheme words; little/no affixation	Mandarin Chinese
Agglutinative Language	Clear morpheme boundaries; each affix = one meaning	Turkish
Fusional Language	Affixes fuse multiple grammatical meanings	Spanish