LING 101 • Lecture outline
W Sept 16
Today’s topic:
• Introduction to morphology
(no background preparation)
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0. Course information
• Exam #1 in class on Monday
- A study guide is available after Wednesday’s
lecture
- You will have a chance to ask questions and
review material in recitation on Friday
• Please note that there is a reading assignment due
next Wednesday, for our first lecture after the exam
2
1. Morphemes: meaningful units
• The Swahili puzzle (see data set)
How would you say the following in Swahili?
(a) ‘you liked them’
(b) ‘s/he will pay you’
• What procedure did you use to figure this out?
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1. Morphemes: meaningful units
• What we have just found are some of the
morphemes that make up Swahili verbs
• morpheme = “the smallest unit of language that
carries information about meaning or function”
(CL, p 117)
• A morpheme:
- shows a systematic sound-meaning
correspondence
- cannot be further divided without losing the
sound-meaning correspondence
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1. Morphemes: meaningful units
• A morpheme:
- shows a systematic sound-meaning
correspondence
- cannot be further divided without losing the
sound-meaning correspondence
• How many morphemes are in these English words?
(a) cat
(d) caterpillar
(b) cats
(e) ignores
(c) wildcat
(f) lens
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1. Morphemes: meaningful units
• Morphemes are listed in the mental lexicon
(“mental dictionary”) of a language
- Reminder: Morphemes are stored with the basic
form of all of their phonemes
• The mental grammar of a language includes rules
about how morphemes can be combined to make
words
- Words are free (can stand alone)
- Morphemes may be free or bound
More about this topic next time
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2. More morphological analysis: Spanish
• Consider the Spanish data set
• Look at the items in (1)
- Can we analyze these words as made from
multiple morphemes? Why or why not?
• Look at the items in (2)-(4)
- Do all Spanish nouns carry a visible gender
morpheme?
- Do nouns like profesor ‘male teacher’ or
cárcel ‘jail’ have gender in Spanish? How can we
check this?
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2. More morphological analysis: Spanish
• Look at the items in (5)-(6)
- When a Spanish noun ends in [a], is this always a
feminine gender morpheme? How can we tell?
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3. Lessons from the Spanish data set
• All Spanish nouns have grammatical gender
- They trigger gender agreement on adjectives,
articles, etc.
• Not all Spanish nouns have an overt gender
morpheme (some linguists propose that there is still a
silent gender morpheme in such cases)
• Sometimes there is not a one-to-one correspondence
between sound and meaning
- Some morphemes encode more than one meaning at a
time (‘3rd singular present’)
- Some morphemes are silent or ‘zero’ (sound=[ ])
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Remember: Your mental grammar includes many
unconscious rules
- Always use data to look for linguistic rules, even
in your own language
- Use the same principle of sound-meaning
correspondence when looking for morphemes in
your own language
• Morphology is not the same as etymology!
- Does a child acquiring a mental grammar of
English have evidence that ‘transfer’ is from
Latin trans + fer?
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Try this: Which of the underlined English words
are plural?
(a) We saw a lot of cats.
(b) We saw a lot of oxen.
(c) We saw a lot of geese.
(d) We saw a lot of sheep.
(e) We saw a lot of sand.
(f) We saw a lot of data.
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Do any of these forms have an overt plural
morpheme?
(a) cats
(b) oxen
(c) geese
(d) sheep
(e) sand
(f) data
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Do any of these forms have an overt plural
morpheme?
(a) cats
[ kæt ] vs.
[ kæts ]
(b) oxen
[ ɑks ]
[ ɑksən ] irregular
(c) geese
[ ɡus ] vs.
[ ɡis ]
irregular
(d) sheep
[ ʃip ]
??
??
(e) sand
[ sænd] vs.
[ sændz]
??
(f) data
??
vs.
vs.
regular
??
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Can we find evidence from that/those and verb
agreement? Which cases behave like the ones we
know are plurals?
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
Those
Those
Those
Those
Those
cats are
oxen are
geese are
sheep are
sand are
scary.
scary.
scary.
scary.
scary.
What does your grammar say about this one?
(f) Those data are scary.
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4. Morphological analysis of English
• Can we find evidence from demonstrative and verb
agreement? Which cases behave like the ones we
know are plurals?
(a) Those
(b) Those
(c) Those
(d) Those
(e) *Those
cats are
oxen are
geese are
sheep are
sand are
scary.
scary.
scary.
scary.
scary. | That sand is scary.
What does your grammar say about this one?
(f) Those data are scary. | That data is scary.
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6. Lessons from the English data set
• English has regular and irregular plural morphemes
• One of the English irregular plural morphemes is a
zero morpheme (singular sheep, plural sheep)
• Words like sand are a special kind of noun — they
are not plural, they are mass nouns (designating
“uncountable stuff ”)
-
If a mass noun has a plural, it often means ‘types of...’
• Some English speakers have analyzed data as a
plural; others have analyzed it as a mass noun
- Remember: Morphology is not etymology!
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