LIN101 Week 2 Morphology

1. Week 2 Morphology

2. 2
Structure UsePragmatics
Meaning (semantics)Grammar
Medium of
Transmission
Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Lexicon Discourse
Structure of Spoken Language (from Crystal 1997)

3. What is Morphology?
 Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a
core part of linguistic study today.
 The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning
‘shape, form’, and -ology which means ‘the study of something’.
 Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the first
time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the
term for the study of the form of words.

4. What is a word?
 Smallest independent units of language
Independent:
 do not depend on other words.
 can be separated from other units
 can change position.
Example:
 The man looked at the horses.
 s is the plural marker, dependent on the noun horse to receive meaning
 Horses is a word: can occur in other positions or stand on its own

6. What is morpheme?
 Morphemes – the building blocks of morphology
 Words have internal structure: built of even smaller pieces
1. SIMPLE WORDS: Don’t have internal structure (only consist of one
morpheme) eg. work, build, run. They can’t be split into smaller parts
which carry meaning or function.
2. COMPLEX WORDS: Have internal structure (consist of two or more
morphemes) eg. worker: affix -er added to the root work to form a
noun.
Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units of language.

9. Morphemes
Free Morphemes
 Content Words
1. Nouns
2. Verbs
3. Adjectives
4. adverbs
 Function Words
1. Determiners
2. Prepositions
3. Pronouns
4. conjunctions
Bound Morphemes
 Bound roots (affix)
 Derivational affixes
1. adjective-to-noun: -ness (slow → slowness)
2. adjective-to-verb: -ise (modern → modernise) in British English or -ize
(final → finalize) in American English and Oxford spelling.
3. adjective-to-adjective: -ish (red → reddish)
 Inflectional affixes
 For example, the suffix [-ed] signals that a verb is past tense: walk-
ed.
 English has only eight inflectional affixes: noun plural {-s} – “He has
three desserts.” noun possessive {-s} – “This is Betty's dessert.”

10. Practice:
1. Dismantle: V (Daff + V)
2. Dismantled: Adj (Daff +V + Iaff)
3. Humanities:
4. Educational :
5. Misunderstanding:
V
Daff V
Dis mantle

11. Practice:
1. Dismantle: V (Daff + V)
2. Dismantled: Adj (Daff +V + Iaff)
3. Humanities: N (N + Daff + Iaff )
4. Educational : Adj (V + Daff + Daff)
5. Misunderstanding: N (Daff + V + Daff)
V
Daff V
Dis mantle

12. Practice 1: Free and Bound
Morphemes

13. Answers
create (F)un (B)ing (B)
sea (F) ward (B)
waste (F) age (B)
poet (F) ic (B)
modern (F) ize (B)
un (B) health (F)y (B
wait (F) er (B)
re (B) consider (F)
key (F) s (B)
in (B) complete (F) ion (B)

14. Word Trees

15. Review: For each below, draw a word
tree.
1. Unbelievable
2. Systematically
3. Desirable
4. Derivational
5. Hardships
6. Nationwide
7. Teachers
8. Engaging
9. Rainy
10. weaken