Morphology

TOPICS OF PRESENTATION
o Morphosemantic
o Relation of morphology and semantic
o what is semantic study of?
o Some basic concepts of semantic
o Types of semantics.
o Process of word formation
o Relation of -nyms. with words
o Importance of new words

Morphosemantic & Relation Of
“Morphology And Semantic.”

Morphosemantics
The word Morphosemantics comes from two terms of linguistic levels
which cover different studies.
o Morphology + semantic
“Morphosemantics may be defined as the semantic analysis of words through
their constituent morphemes.

 Morphology & some of its term
Morphology:
“It the study of words how they are formed in their relationship to other
words in the same language. “
or
“It is the study of word formations or it is the branch of linguistic.”
In morphology we studied :
o Morpheme ( Minimal linguistic unit that can’t be divide. E.g. man+ s =mans)
o Morph ( Phonetic representation of morpheme. E.g. in dogs s pronounced as
lzl.

 Types of morphology
Free Morpheme Bound Morpheme
Morphemes that can stand
by themselves as single
words.
Morphemes that must be
attached to another form and
cannot stand alone.
Example:
A word like 'house' or 'dog' is
called a free morpheme
because it can occur in
isolation and cannot be
divided into smaller meaning
units
Example:
The word 'quickest'...is
composed of two morphemes,
one bound and one free. The
word 'quick' is the free
morpheme and carries the
basic meaning of the word.

Semantics
“Semantics is the study of the relationship between words and how we draw
meaning from those words.”
Or
“study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.”
Semantic gives three perspectives about a simple word
o Lexical semantics (words and meaning relationship among words)
o Phrasal/ sentential semantics
o What a speaker conventionally means.

Words are described according to the roles they fulfill with the situation
described in a sentence.
o Theme= the entity that undergoes the action
o Experiencer= one who perceives something
o Instrument= an entity used to perform an action
o Location= the place where the action happens
o Source= the place from which an action originates
o Goal= the place where the action is directed

 Role of semantics
Examples:
The boy kicked the ball
o verb indicates action
o Boy performs the action= agent
o Ball undergoes the action= theme

1. Conceptual meaning
2. Associative meaning
3. Social meaning
4. Connotative meaning
5. Reflected meaning
6. Affective meaning
7. Thematic meaning

1. Conceptual Meaning
It is also called denotative meaning.
 Factual
 Objective meanings/ dictionary meaning Conceptual meaning deals with the core
meaning of expression.
 he aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic
representation to a sentence or statement.
Example: Money: it's an object that allows people to buy. Birds: Sparrow, dove, crow
etc.
2. Associative Meaning
 This refers to the meaning associated with the conceptual meaning. Which can be
further divided in to following five types.
Example:
Money: Tired, rich: job, Birds: Freedom, peace: love.

3. Social Meaning
 This refers to what is linked with the social circumstances of language use,
including variations like dialect, time, topic, style.
 Under different social circumstances, we have different styles.
 It tells us something about the regional or social origin/background of the
speaker.
4. Connotative Meaning:
 It refers to the feelings or emotions associated with the words.
 It goes beyond the actual meaning of the word and paints a picture or
invoke a feeling.
For example: Women : delicate, Man; bravery

5. Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning
or multiple conceptual meaning.
Mostly comedian use this type of meaning.
• Simply we can say that one word has different senses.
For example:
Trunk – elephant Trunk-tree Gay: kind hearted, homosexual
6. Affective Meaning
It is meaning that is used in the sense to express an emotion.
 •It is related to the conveyed emotions, feelings and attitudes of the
speaker/writer towards the listener or reader.

For example: She is a fox.
Interjection: Ahh, oh, yippie, aww
7. Thematic Meaning
Thematic Meanings This is what is communicated by the way in which the
message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.
 Or we pay attention to the theme of meaning.
Now compare the following pair of sentences.
(1) The young man donated the kidney voluntarily.
(2) the Kidney was donated by a young man voluntarily.

Word formation is the Creation Of A New Word.
 Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change,
which is a change in a single word's meaning.
 Examples:
Noun + noun: Master-piece, table-cloth.
Adjective + noun: Short-hand, free-thinker, lay-man, hard-ware,
strong-hold etc.

COMPOUNDING:
Compounding is the morphological operation that in general puts together
two free forms and gives rise to a new word.
Examples: Blackbird, clock work, light bulb, notebook, bittersweet.
BLENDING:
Blending is a type of word formation in which two or more words are merged
into one.
Example:
smog + smoke = fog
motel + motor = hotel
Brunch + breakfast = lunch

BACK FORMATION:
In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word by removing
actual or supposed affixes from another word. A back formation is a shortened
word.
EXAMPLE:
Edit from editor
Peddle from peddler
AFFIXATION:
Affixation is the morphological process that consists of adding an affix to a
morphological base.
 PREFIXATION: Example: independent, impossible
 SUFFIXATION: Example: kindness, kindly
 INFIXATION: Example: nowadays

DERIVATION AFFIXES:
Derivational affixes attach to the base form of a word to create a new word.
EXAMPLE:
 Verb to noun: preserve to preservation
 Verb to verb: appear to disappear
 Verb to adjective: bore to boring
 Adjective to noun: ugly to ugliness
ACRONYMS:
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other
words.
EXAMPLE: CD (compact disk) VCR (video cassette recorder) RADAR (radio
detection and ranging)

ACRONYMS:
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other
words.
EXAMPLE: CD (compact disk) VCR (video cassette recorder) RADAR (radio
detection and ranging) .
CLIPPING:
Clipping occurs when a word with more than one syllable is reduced to a
shorter form.
EXAMPLE: gasoline(gas) advertisement(ad) laboratory(lab) telephone(phone)
examination(exam).

 Homonyms: different words that are pronounced the same, but may or
may not be spelled the same (to, two, and too).
 Homograph: different words that are spelled identically and possibly
pronounced the same; if they are pronounced the same, they are also
homonyms (pen can mean writing utensil or cage).
 Heteronym: homographs that are pronounced differently (dove the bird
and dove the past tense of dive)
 Synonym: words that mean the same but sound different (couch and
sofa).

 Antonym: words that are opposite in meaning.
e.g., Complementary pairs: alive and dead Gradable pairs: big and
small (no absolute scale)
 Hyponym: set of related words (red, white, yellow, blue is all
hyponyms of "color")
 Metonym: word used in place of another to convey the same
meaning (jock used for athlete, Washington used for American
government, crown used for monarchy)
 Retronym: expressions that are no longer redundant (silent
movie used to be redundant because a long time ago, all movies
were silent, but this is no longer true or redundant).

Importance Of Semantic Studies.
 Semantic skills are important in developing an understanding of the world.
When a speech and language therapist assesses a child's semantics skills,
they do not just look at vocabulary and word meaning, but also the ability to
understand: Categorization of different words.
 Semantics is critical to a language because without it, there would be no
real structure to a language.
Semantics provides speakers a structure to use when they need to slot words
into sentences, creating meaning.

 Example ;
Gentle was borrowed in Middle English in the sense of ‘born of a
good-family, with a higher social standing’.
Fast (OE fæste ‘firm') later developed the meaning ‘quick’.

Morphology

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