Briefly explore how we acquire vocabulary and determine vocabulary in classroom contexts; Define the notion of word and briefly discuss morphology and pieces of words, ‘morphemes; Explain the difference between content words and function words; Examine how words can be assigned to ‘word classes’ (parts of speech); identify types of morphemes, including roots, stems and the different types of affixes; Examine how words are created.

1. Chapter 5:
The System of Words
MR.VATH VARY
AGA INSTITUTE
Course:
Applied Linguistics for
Language Teachers
• Tel: 017 471 117
• Email: varyvath@gmail.com

2. 1-2
Learning Outcomes
After studying this
chapter, you will
be able to:
• Briefly explore how we acquire
vocabulary and determine
vocabulary in classroom contexts;
• Define the notion of word and
briefly discuss morphology and
pieces of words,‘morphemes;
• Explain the difference between content words
and function words; Examine how words can
be assigned to ‘word classes’ (parts of
speech);
• identify types of morphemes, including roots,
stems and the different types of affixes;
• Examine how words are created.
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3. Linguistics
Sounds Structures Meaning
Phonology
Phonetics Syntax
Morphology Semantics Pragmatics
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4. 1-4
VIGNETTE
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• What words do you
know that others may
not know because of
your work,
background, hobbies,
education,
geographical location,
family, and travel?
• What slang words do
you know in English?
• What words might you
use in different
contexts to those in
which you use English?

5. 1-5
Discussion
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6. 1-6
INTRODUCTION
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• Acquiring vocabulary in a
second or foreign language is
the most challenging tasks for
L2 learners, particularly in EFL
contexts, where the target
language is not widely spoken
outside of the classroom.
• Control over a broad range of vocabulary items
in oral communication is critical for participation
in most modern societal endeavors outside of
the classroom and crucial for L2 literacy
development because vocabulary knowledge is
fundamental to reading comprehension.
• The amount of reading is an
indicator of the size of the
vocabulary you recognize and
use.
• We need to learn large
numbers of vocabulary words.

7. 1-7
INTRODUCTION
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Every speaker of every language knows tens of
thousands of words. Unabridged English dictionaries
have between 500,000 and 600,000 entries.
First graders
have
vocabularies in
their L1 of
between 2,500
and 5,000
words.
L1 Second
graders know
between 2,000
and 5,000
words.
The end of
secondary
school, they know
about 45,000
words in their L1.

8. 1-8
INTRODUCTION
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Both ESL and EFL teachers and materials and
curriculum development specialists…
• Developing an understanding of the English
word system is critical in making these
instructional and curricular decisions.
have to decide which words to teach and which
words should be incorporated into classroom
instruction based on the needs of learners in
the particular context in which they teach or the
learners for whom the materials are intended.

9. 1-9
Introduction
What is Word Family?
A group of words in which someone knowing one of the
words (in the family) could guess or infer the meaning of
the others when encountering it [one of the words] in
context while reading, such as add, addition, additive,
adding and so on.
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• ESL and EFL teachers who have developed a sophisticated
understanding of the English word system will be able to
identify word families that are critical to texts on which their
learners are focused and can place the task of acquiring L2
vocabulary within a manageable system for L2 vocabulary
development.

10. 1-10
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1. https://www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/learn/
2. https://www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/academic/awllists/

11. 1-11
Example
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12. 1-12
How much vocabulary is enough for L2 learners?
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• To be familiar with 98% of the running words in a
friendly informal conversation, or to be familiar
with 98% of the running words in a movie, you
need to know around 6,000 different words (word
families).
• To be familiar with 98% of the running words in a
novel or newspaper, you need to know around
8000-9000 different words (word families).
• This is a lot of words and native speakers learn
them at the rate of around 1,000 different words a
year.
• However, not all words are created equal, and
with a vocabulary of 1,000 to 2,000 of the most
useful words we can hold adequate conversations
and get most things done.
https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2018/03/02/vocabulary-learning-enhancing-memory/

13. 1-13
What is Word?
American linguist Bloomfield, who defined
word as:
…. a minimum free form, that is, the
smallest form that can occur by itself.
Why have linguists found it so hard to
find a satisfactory definition of the
notion ‘word’?
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14. 1-14
Defining Word
It is important to distinguish …
lexical
items (the
technical term for
dictionary entry)
syntactic
words
phonological
words
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15. 1-15
Examples
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16. 1-16
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Lexical items
/flai/ ‘ fly ’
represents two
words, since most
dictionaries have
separate entries
fly N: an insect with
two wings.
fly V: to move
through the air in a
controlled manner.
Syntactic forms
The lexical items
have various
syntactic forms
associated with
them.
The insect could
occur as fly (singular)
or flies (plural),
Verb could occur as
fly , flying , flies , flew ,
flown
Phonological words
the singular form
flaw has two different
sound sequences
associated with it,
/flɔ/ before a
consonant, and /flɔr/
before a vowel:
The flue had a flaw
/flɔ/ which allowed
the fly to escape.
There was a flaw
/flɔr/ in the flue.

17. 1-17
Summary
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18. 1-18
Defining Word
The term ‘ word ’
is difficult to
define because
there are
different kinds of
word.
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19. 1-19
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What is
morphology?
What is
morpheme?
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Classifying Morphemes and Words

20. Look at examples
• Every speaker of English knows that measure is an
English word:
• Ex. measurement,measuring,measurable, and
immeasurable.
• However, even though street is an English word,
English speakers know that they cannot say:
• Ex. streetment,streeting,streetable,instreetable.
How do English
speakers know that
adding -able to
measure results in
another word, but
adding -able to
street does not?
• Morphology
tries to capture
this knowledge,
which is largely
subconscious.

21. • This word itself consists
of two morphemes,
[morph + ology].
• the word
morphology is
from the Greek
words morph-
‘form/structure’
and -logy (study).
The study of the internal
structure of words:
 the rule of how words are
formed;
 what their relationships to
other words are in the
same language
 (Sunny Park-Johnson,Sarah
J.Shin,2020).
 is the study of words and
parts of words.
What is Morphology?
MR. VATH VARY

22. • The minimal unit in
morphology is
morpheme:
 is derived from the
Greek word
morphe, meaning
‘form’.
 is defined as ‘the
smallest unit of
meaning in a
language’
• We all know that words
have meaning—peace,
elephant, rancor—but
we also know that many
pieces of words have
meaning too: un-, -s,
non-, -ed.
• Knowing a language
means knowing the
morphemes, which are
the building blocks to
construct words.
What is Morpheme?
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23. Examples
un- means the same
thing – ‘not’.
phon has the identical
meaning ‘pertaining
to sound’.

24. 1-24
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Words have two types …
Simple Morphemes
Words that are
made up of a
single morpheme.
• The word “happy”
cannot be divided into
smaller parts that carry
information about its
meaning or function.
Complex Morphemes
Words that contain
two or more
morphemes
• Ex.“impersonal” is
made up of three
morphemes, im-
person-al.

25. 1-25
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Mr. Vary
A single word may be composed of one or more
morphemes:
Example
• Complex words typically consist of a root morpheme
and one or more affixes.

26. 1-26
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Free morpheme
A meaningful unit of
language that can stand
alone as a word and can
have other morphemes
attached to it.
Pan is a free
morpheme.
Most roots in English
are free morphemes.
Bound morpheme
a meaningful unit of
language that cannot
occur alone
In the word pans, -s is
a bound morpheme.
It does not occur
alone, but it does
carry meaning.

27. 1-27
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Root
• forms the core of a word in
the sense that other
morphemes can be
attached to it, and it also
carries the meaning of the
word.
• belongs to a lexical
category: Noun, verb,
adjective and preposition
• A root may or may not
stand alone as a word;
but a root is usually a
free morpheme.
• (paint and read do;
ceive and ling don’t).
Affix
• is a bound morpheme that
is attached to the
beginning, end, middle,
or around a root to change
its meaning or function;
• does not belong to a
lexical category.
• Affixes (prefix and suffix)
are never words by
themselves but are
always parts of words.
 Prefix: [un- dis-, trans-] attaches
to the front of root.
 Suffix: ([-ish, -ness, -ly] attaches
to the end of root

28. 1-28
These two
Morphemes are not
used in English
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• Infixes are affixes that are
added to the middle of a root.
They are common in other
languages, such as Turkish
and Tagalog (a language of
the Philippines).
• Another type of affix is called
a circumfix, which is
common in Semitic
languages, such as Arabic,
Hebrew, and Persian.

29. 1-29
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Many words in English are
formed from Latin roots.
These words are often
considered fairly formal in
English.

30. Types of Morphemes
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• Content
• Function
Free
Morpheme
• Derivationa
l
• Inflectional
Bound
Morpheme

31. 1-31
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Content morpheme
• denotes meaning and
constitutes the major
part of the vocabulary
(e.g., nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs)
• can be called open
class, a lexical
category into which
new words are often
introduced.
Function morpheme
• provides information
about the grammatical
relationships between
words in a sentence
(e.g., articles, conjunctions,
prepositions, and
pronouns)
• Can be called closed
class, a lexical category
in which members are
fairly rigidly established
and additions are made
very rarely.
TWO TYPES OF FREE MORPHEMES

32. Types of Bound Morphemes
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Derivational morpheme
• attaches to a morpheme
or word (root) to create a
change of either the
meaning or the part of
speech of the word.
• Is ‘content
morpheme’ and
include both prefixes
and suffixes (Table 7.2)
Inflectional morpheme
• are affixes that are
added to a word to
serve a grammatical
function, but they DO
NOT change the
meaning of the word.
• There are only eight of
them in English and
they are all suffixes
(Table 7.3)

33. 1-33
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Derivational morphemes

34. Inflectional morphemes
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35. Summary
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36. Allomorphs
Plural morpheme
[s]
Past tense morpheme
[ed]
… the alternate phonetic forms of a morpheme.
These morphemes [s] or [ed] are uttered differently
depending on the phonetic environment.
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37. Allomorphs
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• The process of attaching
one of the three is not a
random process but is
governed by rules known
as morphophonemic
rules because of the
relationship between
phonology and
morphology inherent in
the rule.
Allomorphs

38. 1-38
Compound Words
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Not all words in English are created by adding affixes to roots.
English words can also be created by putting two roots together.
• Closed-form
compounds
• Hyphenated
compounds
• Open-form
compounds
Write as one word e.g. textbook
Write as one word, e.g. sister-in-
law
Write as a separate word, e.g. real
estate.

39. 1-39
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Types of Compound Words

40. 1-40
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Examples of Compound Words

41. How New Words are Created
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Open-
word
classes
• Also known as
Content words;
• Words consist of
intrinsic
Meaning
including N,V,
Adj & Adv
Closed-
word
classes
• Also known as
Function words;
• Words consist of
functional
meanings
including
determiners,
auxiliary verbs,
conjunctions,
prepositions,
pronouns, etc.
Word classes (Parts of speech)

42. 1-42
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Open-word classes
• New words in these
categories are
continually being
coined.
• Denote concepts
such as objects,
actions, attributes,
and ideas that we
can think about
• Ex. Children,
anarchism, soar, and
purple.
Closed-word classes
• This class of words is
stable and new words
are rarely added to
these categories.
• Specify grammatical
relations and have
little or no semantic
content
• Ex 1.The preposition of
indicates possession,as in
“the book of yours”
• Ex 2. Definite or
indefinite—the boy or a
boy.

43. How New Words are Created
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• Neologisms (new
words) are open-
class words that are
new to a language.
• They are formed by
a number of
different processes.
Neologisms

44. 1-44
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Neologis
ms
Acronyms
Back
Formation
Clipping
Blending
Compoundin
g
Derivation
Foreign Word
Borrowing
People’s
Names
Trade Names
Technology
Greek and
Latin Roots
and Affixes

45. What is Acronym?
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Acronyms …
• Are pronounced as new single
words:
 SARS= severe acute respiratory
syndrome
 NASA = National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
 FAQs = frequently asked questions
• A new word formed
from the initial letters
of other words.
• laser = light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation
• radar = radio detecting and
ranging
• scuba = self-contained underwater
breathing apparatus
• Zip= zone improvement plan code
Some acronyms have become
so ingrained in the language
that we may no longer know
what the letters once stood for;
they have also usually lost their
uppercase letters in the
acronym.

46. What is Acronym?
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• WMD: weapons of mass destruction
• OMG: Oh my God
• DVD: digital versatile/video disk
• NCAA: National Collegiate Athletic
Association
• NPR: National Public Radio
• A subtype of initialism is a word
formed from letters within a
word rather than from separate
words.TV/tv television
• The initialism ID, taken from the
first two letters of identification,
has become a root word that can
take an affix
The second type
of acronym is the
initialism, a
word created by
initial letters,
which is
pronounced with
the letter names.
Initialism
• word formed
from the initial
letters of a
group of
words (CD).

47. What is ‘Backformation’?
• the process of reducing a word
such as a noun to a shorter
version and using it as a new
word such as a verb.
Example Verbs are the backformation from Noun
donate  donation liaise  liaison
televise  television babysit  babysitter
emote  emotion edit  editor
enthuse  enthusiasm scavenge  scavenger
MR. VATH VARY

48. • What is ‘Clipping’?
involves snipping a part of a word to create a
shortened form; the process of reducing a word of
more than one syllable to a shorter form.
Example Advertisement → ad Gasoline → gas
Condominium → condo Influenza → flu
Brother → bro Mathematics → math
Facsimile → fax Pantaloons → pants
Fanatic → fan Streptococcus → strep
MR. VATH VARY

49. the process of combining the
beginning of one word and the
end of another word to form a
new word .
What is Blending?
Example
apathetic apathy + pathetic
bit Binary + digit
blog web + log
brunch breakfast + lunch
modem modulator + demodulator
Motel (motor + hotel
Permafrost (transfer + resistor
prissy prim + sissy
Telecast Television + broadcast
MR. VATH VARY

50. What is Compounding?
• the process of combining two (or
more) words to form a new word
Example
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51. What is ‘Borrowing’?
• the process of taking words from
other languages
Throughout its history,
the English language
has adopted a vast
number of words from
other languages.
MR. VATH VARY
Words Languages
• Casino
• Piano
Italian
• Kindergarten
• Pretzel
German
• Jewel Dutch
• Sofa Arabic
• Yogurt Turkish
• Tycoon Japanese
• Zebra Bantu
• Ski Norwegian
• Tattoo Tahitian

52. 1-52
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• A word is a derivation if it
has been created by adding a
derivational affix
• (see Table 7.2 above), such as
(mis)understand and (re)construct;
new affixes are rare.
Derivation

53. What is ‘Eponym’?
• A word that comes from the name of a
(usually famous) person or place.
Examples • Pythagorean theorem: a geometric equation named
for the Greek mathematician Pythagoras
• Braille: used for the blind (named for the Frenchman
Louis Braille, who invented it)
• saxophone (named for Adolph Joseph Sax).
• malapropism (after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the
play The Rivals by Sheridan)
• Morse code: a communication system invented by
Samuel Morse for use with the telegraph
• Teddy bear: derived from US president Theodore
(Teddy) Roosevelt
• Jeans: from the Italian city of Genoa where the type of
cloth was first made
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54. 1-54
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• Eponyms
also come
from brand
names.
• Kleenex, an original facial tissue brand
name,
• Any petroleum jelly as Vaseline,
• All cotton swabs as Q-tips,
• All MP3 players as iPods.
• When new
products are
created, new
words are often
coined to label
the new products.
Eponym: Brand Names

55. 1-55
Neologisms
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• As a result of
technological
advances, new words
are constantly being
formed.
• blog, web page, eBay,
email, boot up,
download, upload,
texting, wi-fi, and thumb
drive.
Technology
• There are numerous
Greek and Latin roots,
suffixes, and prefixes that
are frequently used in
science and technology,
particularly in medical
terminology.
• Prefixes include bi-, bio-,
chlor-, crani-, derm-, di-,
duodeno-, and hydro-
Greek and Latin Roots
and Affixes

56. 1-56
Conclusion
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Benefits for teaching
An understanding of the
English word system is
important in teaching
and working with English
learners who may be
either children or adults
Neologisms
In presenting this brief
overview of English
morphology, we have also
included types of
morphemes and the
processes that govern the
creation of new words in
English.

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