Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Lingua Inglese
Lecture 6
DOTT.SSA MARIA IVANA LORENZETTI
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Overview of Today’s Lecture
Introduction to Morphology
Basic Concepts
Word
Lexeme
Word-Form
Morpheme
The Nature of Morphemes
Types of Morphemes
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Morphology
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of
words
The assumption that languages contain words is
taken for granted, but sometimes there are
differences of opinions as to what units are to be
considered as words
Are these words?
A
Two
Zwiterdrenturschtreinngleurnierrzvig
Single-mother
All right
Alright
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Some Key Notions
Words are the building blocks, the material from which
the vocabulary of a language is built
What is the identity of a word?
Where does a word begin and end? How do people
learn, recognize words and understand their meaning?
Intuitively speaking, words can be defined as the minimal
meaningful units in language, and instinctively we even
include in the term ‘word’, sounds such as ‘aha!’, ‘wow’,
‘ciao’, ‘bye’, even though they are devoid of propositional
content and carry only expressive meaning
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Some Key Notions (2)
Consider the following sentence:
He staggered through the vaulted archway of the
museum
What would you do, if you met the unfamiliar word
‘staggered’ for the first time?
You would probably look it up in the dictionary, NOT under
staggered, but under stagger
You also know that the words staggering and staggers
exist
Stagger, staggers, staggering, staggered are all
manifestations of the same abstract vocabulary item, i.e.
LEXEME
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Some Key Notions (3)
Lexemes: technically, the units which are
conventionally listed in dictionaries as separate
entries
The forms staggers, staggered, staggering and
stagger are different realizations, with different
spelling and pronunciation, of the same lexeme
STAGGER, with which they share a common
meaning
Lexeme → walk (walks, walking, walking, walked)
Lexeme → big (bigger, biggest)
Lexeme → kick the bucket
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Exercise: Identify the Lexeme
Which ones of these words belong to the
same lexeme?
See catches taller boy catching sees
Sleeps woman catch saw tallest sleeping
Boys sleep seen tall jumped caught
Seeing jump women slept jumps jumping
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Exercise Solution
The physical word-forms
See, sees, seeing, saw,
seen, saw
Sleeps, sleeping, slept
Catches, catch, catching,
caught
The physical word-forms
Jump, jumps, jumped,
jumping
Tall, taller, tallest
Boy, boys
Woman, women
Are realisations of the
lexeme
SEE
SLEEP
CATCH
Are realisations of the
lexeme
JUMP
TALL
BOY
WOMAN
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Some Key Notions (4)
Sometimes we use the term word to refer not
to the abstract vocabulary item with a
common core meaning, but to a particular
physical realisation of that lexeme,
WORD-FORM
See, seeing, sees are word-forms of the lexeme
SEE
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Some Key Notions (5)
A word can also be seen as the representation of a
lexeme that is associated with certain
morphosyntactic properties, such as noun, verb,
tense, gender, number etc.
GRAMMATICAL
WORD
The word-form cut can represent 2 Grammatical Words in:
Usually I cut the bread with a knife [verb, present, non 3rd person
singular]
Yesterday I cut my finger. [verb,past]
BUT
Jane had a cut on her finger [noun, singular]
≠ LEXEME: CUT, noun
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Some Key Notions (6)
From the point of view of linguistic description, word is a rather vague term,
and more technical terms have been suggested for the various levels of
analysis:
Orthographic words: in writing, units separated by white
spaces
Phonological words: strings of sounds having internal
structuring:
*STZX is not a word in English
Grammatical words: walks, walking, walked, walk out →
word forms
Semantic word (lexeme) : walk
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Morphology (2)
Many words are morphologically simple
The, elephant, boat, eat, at, fee, fierce
and cannot be segmented (divided into smaller bits:
we cannot say what the –ierce part of fierce means
If we tried to divide this word up, we would only
obtain a series of sounds /e/ /H/ /@/ /r/, that do not
have any meaning in themselves
Many other words are morphologically complex
Desks, player, boots, misunderstand, bubblegum
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
6
Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Morpheme
Desks
5 letters
5 phonemes: /cdrjr/
1 syllable
2 morphemes: desk-s
A MORPHEME is the smallest meaningful unit of a language, or
more precisely
A MORPHEME is the smallest indivisible unit of semantic
content or grammatical function
Practice:
Fly – reuse – preplan – desks – optionality – untie – fastest –
justly – suite – triumphed – prettier – deform – mistreat –
premature – payment – disobey – receive – permit - submit
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Words and Morphemes 2
Words can be made by 1 morpheme, as in cat, or
bird, but this is not always the case.
Words may be composed of one or many
morphemes. Most long words in English can be
broken down into smaller units.
The longest word in English (according to the Oxford
English Dictionary) contains 45 letters and can be
broken down into 9 morphemes:
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Lung, respiration beyond small
look, see
silicon,flint volcanic
ADJECTIVE
dust
NOUN (condition, result)
A lung condition caused by very small-looking particles of volcanic silicon dust
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Characteristics of Morphemes
Morphemes have 4 defining characteristics:
They cannot be subdivided
They add meaning to a word
They can appear in many different words
They can have any number of syllables
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Morphemes cannot be subdivided
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units
of language. If you try to divide a morpheme
into smaller pieces, you will only get sounds.
Breaking up a morpheme like cat would only
give different sounds, such as /j/, /z/, /s/.
But individual sounds of a language do not have
any meaning in themselves. They have to be put
together in the correct order, before a listener will
be able to understand ‘feline animal’
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Morphemes add Meaning to a Word
Each morpheme contributes to the overall meaning
of a word. Yet some morphemes may affect the
overall meaning more than others. If we add the
morpheme ‘cat’ to ‘bird’, we create a new word with
a radically different meaning: catbird ‘a species of
songbird sounding more like a cat’
But we could add the morpheme –s to cat, and get
cats, thus changing from ‘one cat’ to ‘more cats’
In this case, we do not have a shift in meaning as in
the previous example, but only in number.
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Morphemes can Appear in Different
Words
The same morpheme can show up in many different
words.
Learning the meaning of a morpheme and
recognizing it in different forms, tells us something
about the words that use it
The Latin morpheme duc ‘lead, draw, pull’
Reduce ‘to pull back’
Deduce ‘to draw away from’
Seduce ‘to lead apart’
Produce ‘to pull forward’
Induce ‘to lead into’
Conduct ‘to lead together’
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Morphemes can Appear in Different
Words (2)
Ped ‘foot’ also from Latin
Pedal ‘pertaining to the foot’
Pedestrian ‘one who uses his/her feet for transportation’
Biped ‘a creature with 2 feet’
Pedigree ‘foot of a crane’
Un ‘not’
Untidy ‘messy’
Unclear ‘difficult’
Unknown ‘not known’
≠ under, uncle: in these cases it is not a morpheme
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Morphemes can Have Any Number of
Syllables
Morphemes ≠ Syllables
Syllables are groupings together of sounds for purpose of
articulation, while morphemes are smallest units of meaning or
grammatical function
Dogs
Sofa
1 syllable
2 morphemes: dog-s
2 syllables /r@T e@/
1 morpheme
Camera
3 syllables /jz l@ q@/
1 morpheme
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
10
Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Morphemes can Have Any Number of
Syllables (2)
Book
1 syllable /aTj/
1 morpheme
Books
1 syllable
2 morpheme: book-s
The books’ covers
3 morphemes: /aTj/+ -s PLURAL + -s
POSSESSIVE
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Some Problems
One form – Two (or more) meanings
Two different meanings can be expressed using the
same arrangement of sounds: 2 different morphemes
2 ‘IN’ morphemes
‘In’ = NOT: incapable, insufficient, inapt
‘In’ = INTO, WITHIN: invade, include, innate,
incandescent
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
11
Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Some Problems (2)
Two (or more) forms – One Meaning
When two different forms have the same meaning,
they could be different morphemes, or a single
morpheme
A. Two Forms, one meaning = Two Morphemes
1. Rather different forms referring to the same thing,
completely different origin
Andr- ‘MAN, MALE’ in android, androgyne, andrology
Vir- ‘MAN, MALE’ in virile, virago
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Some Problems (2)
Two (or more) forms – One Meaning
A. 2 Forms, one meaning=2 Morphemes
2. Similar forms, which came into English through different
sources
‘In’- INTO, WITHIN a prefix borrowed from Latin
‘In’- INTO, WITHIN a native English preposition
The histories of these two morphemes go back to a single
morpheme, existing in the parent language of both Latin
and English. They are very similar in form, but came into
English through different pathways, one is part of the native
vocabulary, the other is borrowed
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Some Problems (3)
Two (or more) forms – One Meaning
B. Two (or more) Forms, one meaning= One
Morpheme
Sometimes two forms with the same meaning may be
alternate forms of the same morphemes
‘A-’ ‘AN-’ different forms of the Greek morpheme meaning
‘without, not’: aphasia, anorexia, aphonia, anachronistic
‘PAN-’ ‘PANT-’ ‘all, overall’: pantisocracy, pan-slavic
Here an original single form adapted its beginning or
ending sounds to those found in other morphemes it
combined with: A- before roots beginning with consonants,
AN- before roots beginning with vowels
Alternate forms of the same morphemes are called
allomorphs
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Allomorphs
The analysis of words into morphemes begins with
the isolation of MORPHS: physical forms
representing some morpheme in a language
In the sentence I parked the car
/`H/ /o@9j/ /s/ /C@/ /j@9/ represent morphs
Sometimes different morphs may be represented by
the same morphemes, i.e. the past tense of regular
verbs in English, which is spelled –ed and is
represented by /Hc/, /c/ or /s/
The difference in form is not associated to a difference in
meaning. So /Hc/, /c/ or /s/ are grouped together as
allomorphs of the same morpheme
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
13
Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Exercise: Count the Morphemes
Thinker
Postmodernist
Tulip
Cats
ungovernability
2: think-, -er
3: post-, modern-, -ist
1: tulip
2: cat-, -s
4: un-, govern-, -able,
-ity
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Free and Bound Morphs
A morpheme that can stand alone as an
independent word is called a FREE MORPH
In the word-form drivers, drive can occur in isolation as a
free morph, while –er and –s can only occur, if they are
attached to other morphs
Man, book, tea, bet, very, cook, sweet are examples of free
morphs
A morpheme that cannot stand alone as an
independent word, but must be attached to another
morpheme/word is called a BOUND MORPH.
-er, and –s in drivers are bound morphs
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Free and Bound Morphs (2)
While only roots are free morphemes, not all
roots are free. Many roots are incapable of
occurring in isolation. They always occur with
some other word-building element attached
to them. Such roots are called BOUND
MORPHEMES
- mit as in permit, admit, commit
-ceive in perceive, receive, conceive, deceive
-pred as in predator, predatory, depredate
- sed in sedate, sediment, sedentary
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Root
A ROOT is the irreducible core of a word, with
absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is the part
that must always be present, possibly with some
modifications, in the different manifestations of a
lexeme
Walk is the root in walking, walks, or walked
Many words contain a root standing on its own as
free morphs (man, cat, do, and, car, drink etc.), but,
if only roots can be free morphs, not all roots are
free. Roots can also be bound morphs
Am- in Latin Amo, Amas, Amat is a bound morpheme
-mit as in permit, admit, submit, commit
-ceive as in receive, deceive, conceive, perceive
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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Lingua Inglese AA 2008/09 - 6 CFU
Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (modulo introduttivo)
Stem and Base
STEM: that part of a word in existence, before any inflectional
affixes (those affixes whose presence is required by the syntax,
such as markers of singular or plural in nouns, tense in verbs
etc.) have been added
Cats > cat is the stem
Workers > worker is the stem; work is the root
BASE: a unit to which other affixes are attached to create new
words. All roots are bases
Touchable acts as a base to create untouchable
UNTOUCHABLE
TOUCH – root
ABLE – suffix (derivational)
UN – prefix (derivational)
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Lecture 06 - 19/11/2008
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