Morphological decomposition
922 lecture 4
What is the longest word of the
English language?
Some candidates:
• antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters)
• floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters)
• pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis
(45 letters)
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In theory, there is no longest word
in English.
Consider the following two series, each of which can be continued
without limit to create a potentially infinite number of new words:
a.
anti-missile missile
b.
anti-anti-missile missile
...
a. sensation
b. sensational
c. sensationalize
d. sensationalization
e. sensationalizational
f. sensationalizationalize
...
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Recursive derivation
N
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N
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N
Note that the correct term for 'a missile to be deployed
against "anti-missile missiles"' is not "anti anti-missile missile."
It's "anti anti-missile-missile missile." You're always supposed
to have one more "missile" than "anti," because otherwise
nothing will blow up. Granted, this information comes from
civilian linguists, rather than from military sources. Military
sources would almost certainly be using acronyms instead…
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N
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anti- anti- anti- missile missile missile missile
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Morphology
• Morphology is the theory of the structure
of words
• A morpheme is defined as the minimal
meaning bearing linguistic element
• A free morpheme is a morpheme that can
stand alone, e.g., dog, green, caricature..
• A bound morpheme occurs only as a part
of a word, e.g., un-, -s, -ing, -ness
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Derivational vs. Inflectional Morphology
• Inflectional morphology - permits a word to
agree with other words in its context.
– Number (-s, Pl: cat -cats)
– Person (-s, 3Sg: talk -talks)
– Tense (-ed: talk-talked)
• Derivational morphology – builds new
words (may change the category or
meaning of a word)
– English: Adj+ -ly = Adverb: calm -calmly
– Other: /un-/, /-able/, /-ish/
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‫ובעברית‪:‬‬
‫•‬
‫•‬
‫•‬
‫•‬
‫‪10‬‬
‫ילדה‬
‫ילדות‬
‫נגריה‬
‫סיבוכיות‬
Inflectional morphology: regularity
• Inflectional morphology can be captured
by rules and exceptions.
• Regular inflection – forms that follow the
rule (V+ed = Vpast; walked)
• Irregular inflection – went, ate, brought
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The teacher claimed it was so plain
I only had to use my brain.
She said the past of throw was threw
The past of grow – of course- was grew
So flew must be the past of fly
And now, my boy, your turn to try.
But when I trew,
I had no clue,
If mow was mew
Like know and knew.
(Or is it knowed
Like snow and snowed?)
The teacher frowned at me and said
The past of feed was - plainly - fed.
Fed up, I knew then what I ned:
I took a break, and out I snoke,
She shook and quook
(or quaked? Or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke:
Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it’s collid (like hide and hid)
Or else – from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was surely rode,
So of collide must be collode?
Oh damn these English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough
These verbs of yours are far too tough.
Bolt upright in my chair I sat,
And said to her ‘that’s that’ – I quat.
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Over-regularization
• went  goed  went
• Happens around the late twos
• Suggests acquisition of morphological
rules
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What are allomorphs?
• Morphemes that vary in sound but not in
meaning.
• Examples?
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Allomorphs
• the past tense morpheme -ed occurs in several
allomorphs depending on its phonological
environment:
– as /ɪd/ in verbs whose stem ends with the alveolar
stops /t/ or /d/, such as 'hunted' /hʌntəd/ or 'banded'
/bændəd/
– as /t/ in verbs whose stem ends with voiceless
phonemes other than /t/, such as 'fished' /fɪʃt/
– as /d/ in verbs whose stem ends voiced phonemes
other than /d/, such as 'buzzed' /bʌzd/
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Wug test
Go to movie
https://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/facilities/acquisition/movies/Berkosexp.mov
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Wug test
•
•
•
•
Jean Berko, 1958
3 allomorphs of English regular plural -s: [z] (dogs), [s] (cats),
[əz] (horses)
When/how do children learn these rules?
Test paradigm
– Children are presented with a pretend creature and told, "This is a
wug."
– Another wug is revealed, and the researcher says, "Now there are
two of them. There are two __."
•
Results
– Very young children are baffled by the question and are unable to
answer correctly, responding with e.g. “two wug."
– Children in grade 1 were almost fully competent with both [s] and
[z].
– Both preschool and first-grade children dealt poorly with [əz],
giving the correct answer less than half the time, possibly because
it occurs in the most restrictive context.
•
Major finding
– The first experimental proof that young children have extracted
generalizable morphological rules from the language around them.
Wug test – more realistic
scenario
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How would you design a
similar experiment in your own
language?
The ‘words
and rules’
hypothesis
(Pinker and
Ullman, 2002)
When a word must be inflected, the lexicon and grammar are accessed in parallel.
If an inflected form for a verb (V) exists in memory, as with irregulars (e.g. held), it will be retrieved;
a signal indicating a match blocks the operation of the grammatical suffixation process via an
inhibitory link from lexicon to grammar, preventing the generation of holded. If no inflected form
is matched, the grammatical processor concatenates the appropriate suffix with the stem, 22
generating a regular form.
Dissociation
between regular
and irregular
verb inflection
Ullman et al
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Connectionist
model:
morphological rules
are emergent
phenomena
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Semantic effect on past tense
generation
I
R
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Interpretation
“It appears that inflection is carried out
through analogical reminding based on
semantic and phonological similarity and
that a rule-based route is not necessary to
account for past tense inflection.”
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(Decompositional view)
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Switch to …
Derivational morphology
Derivational morphology: semantic
transparency
• What is the difference between
– Restart
– Repeat
– Hunter
– Corner
– Apartment
– Government
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Semantic transparency
• In a semantically transparent word, the
word and the stem share semantic content
• In a semantically opaque word, there is no
such semantic relation between the stem
and the word
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Summary
• Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words
• Morphologically complex words can be decomposed into
morphemes
• There is a major distinction between inflectional and
derivational morphemes
• Different processes may be involved in representing and
accessing regular and irregular inflected forms,
semantically transparent and opaque derived forms
• There is evidence that word recognition involves
morphological decomposition
– Possibly depending on semantic transparency, regularity
• There is an ongoing discussion on the stage at which
morphological decomposition takes place – early
sublexical orthographic level or lexical-semantic level.
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