This document discusses factors that influence whether English adjectives take the -er/-est suffix form or the more/most periphrastic form in comparatives and superlatives. It reviews previous research identifying factors like syllable length and stress pattern. It then describes the author's data collection of Google search hits for 500 common adjectives in both forms to quantify their relative frequencies. Statistical models will be used to evaluate which factors best predict an adjective's preferred form.
This document discusses morphology and morphemes. It defines morphology as the study of word structure and morphemes as the minimal units of meaning or grammatical function. There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone and are attached to other forms. Morphemes are further divided into lexical/content morphemes and functional morphemes, as well as derivational morphemes, which create new words, and inflectional morphemes, which indicate grammatical functions like number and tense. The document also discusses problems in morphological analysis regarding words like sheep, legal, and others.
1) The document discusses different aspects of word structure and formation including compounds, blends, morphology, prefixes, suffixes, and homophones.
2) It provides examples of compound words, blended words like "electrocute" and "fortnight", and discusses morphology and morphemes.
3) Prefixes and suffixes are discussed as affixes that can change the word class, and examples of different affixes are given like "able" and "ly". Homophones, homonyms, and other lexical relationships are also defined.
The document discusses key concepts in morphology including words, morphemes, and affixes. It defines a word as a sound or group of sounds that expresses an idea, and notes that orthographically a word is a group of letters separated by spaces. It distinguishes between word forms, which are the concrete representations of lexemes, and lexemes, which are the abstract representations. The document also defines bound and free morphemes, noting that bound morphemes like prefixes and suffixes must attach to other morphemes while free morphemes can stand alone. It provides examples of roots, stems, bases, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes.
Morphology refers to the study of how words are created in a language. There are two main word formation processes: inflection and derivation. Inflection involves changing the base form of a word through processes like adding suffixes to change the word's grammatical function. Derivation involves processes like compounding, blending, clipping, and affixation to form new words. Some common word formation processes in English include coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, and affixation through the use of prefixes and suffixes.
Morphology is the study of word structure and formation. It analyzes words into their smallest meaningful parts called morphemes. Morphemes can be free or bound - free morphemes can stand alone as words while bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes. There are several word formation processes including affixation, compounding, blending, clipping, and conversion. The addition of affixes can be inflectional, changing word form but not class, or derivational, changing a word's meaning and class.
The document summarizes various processes of word formation in morphology, including:
1) Affixation processes such as prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, infixes, interfixes, and transfixes.
2) Internal base modifications like segmental changes to consonants and vowels, and suprasegmental changes to stress patterns.
3) Compounding processes including endocentric, exocentric, copulative, and neo-classical compounds.
4) Other processes like reduplication, zero derivation, backformation, clipping, blends, acronyms, and suppletion.
The document discusses morphology, which is the study of the internal structure of words and the rules for word formation. It covers key concepts such as morphemes, the minimal units of meaning; free and bound morphemes; inflectional and derivational morphology; and processes of word formation including compounding, blending, clipping, and others. Examples are provided to illustrate different morphological concepts and rules.
This document discusses English morphology and morphemes. It begins by explaining that the meaning of words comes from morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Words can be made up of one or multiple morphemes. The document then provides numerous examples of English words broken down into their constituent morphemes such as "combination" which has four morphemes. It discusses different types of morphemes including free morphemes, bound stems, prefixes, suffixes, and superfixes. The document concludes by outlining different noun-forming and verb-forming morphemes in English.
This document discusses morphology and morphemes. It defines morphology as the study of word structure and morphemes as the minimal units of meaning or grammatical function. There are two types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone and are attached to other forms. Morphemes are further divided into lexical/content morphemes and functional morphemes, as well as derivational morphemes, which create new words, and inflectional morphemes, which indicate grammatical functions like number and tense. The document also discusses problems in morphological analysis regarding words like sheep, legal, and others.
1) The document discusses different aspects of word structure and formation including compounds, blends, morphology, prefixes, suffixes, and homophones.
2) It provides examples of compound words, blended words like "electrocute" and "fortnight", and discusses morphology and morphemes.
3) Prefixes and suffixes are discussed as affixes that can change the word class, and examples of different affixes are given like "able" and "ly". Homophones, homonyms, and other lexical relationships are also defined.
The document discusses key concepts in morphology including words, morphemes, and affixes. It defines a word as a sound or group of sounds that expresses an idea, and notes that orthographically a word is a group of letters separated by spaces. It distinguishes between word forms, which are the concrete representations of lexemes, and lexemes, which are the abstract representations. The document also defines bound and free morphemes, noting that bound morphemes like prefixes and suffixes must attach to other morphemes while free morphemes can stand alone. It provides examples of roots, stems, bases, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes.
Morphology refers to the study of how words are created in a language. There are two main word formation processes: inflection and derivation. Inflection involves changing the base form of a word through processes like adding suffixes to change the word's grammatical function. Derivation involves processes like compounding, blending, clipping, and affixation to form new words. Some common word formation processes in English include coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, and affixation through the use of prefixes and suffixes.
Morphology is the study of word structure and formation. It analyzes words into their smallest meaningful parts called morphemes. Morphemes can be free or bound - free morphemes can stand alone as words while bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes. There are several word formation processes including affixation, compounding, blending, clipping, and conversion. The addition of affixes can be inflectional, changing word form but not class, or derivational, changing a word's meaning and class.
The document summarizes various processes of word formation in morphology, including:
1) Affixation processes such as prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, infixes, interfixes, and transfixes.
2) Internal base modifications like segmental changes to consonants and vowels, and suprasegmental changes to stress patterns.
3) Compounding processes including endocentric, exocentric, copulative, and neo-classical compounds.
4) Other processes like reduplication, zero derivation, backformation, clipping, blends, acronyms, and suppletion.
The document discusses morphology, which is the study of the internal structure of words and the rules for word formation. It covers key concepts such as morphemes, the minimal units of meaning; free and bound morphemes; inflectional and derivational morphology; and processes of word formation including compounding, blending, clipping, and others. Examples are provided to illustrate different morphological concepts and rules.
This document discusses English morphology and morphemes. It begins by explaining that the meaning of words comes from morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Words can be made up of one or multiple morphemes. The document then provides numerous examples of English words broken down into their constituent morphemes such as "combination" which has four morphemes. It discusses different types of morphemes including free morphemes, bound stems, prefixes, suffixes, and superfixes. The document concludes by outlining different noun-forming and verb-forming morphemes in English.
The document discusses morphological processes in English including inflectional and lexical morphology. It covers topics such as:
- Inflectional morphology deals with changes in word forms to express concepts like number, case, and tense, while lexical morphology focuses on word formation through processes like compounding, affixation, and conversion.
- In inflectional morphology, nouns inflect for number and case, verbs for tense and person/number, and adjectives have comparative and superlative forms.
- Lexical morphology examines processes like compounding, affixation, conversion and others to understand how new words are formed from existing word elements or bases.
- Productivity refers to whether a word
This document summarizes key points from an English morphology lecture, distinguishing between different types of morphemes and word formation processes. It discusses bound and free morphemes, and inflectional versus derivational morphemes. Specific examples are provided to illustrate different morphological concepts like affixation, compounding, conversion and productivity in word formation. Tree diagrams are used to visualize complex derived words.
Morphology is the study of how words are structured and formed from smaller units of meaning called morphemes. Morphemes can be free-standing words or bound affixes. The document discusses morphological processes in English such as derivation, compounding, and conversion that form new words from existing morphemes. Suffixes and prefixes are provided as examples of derivational morphemes that can change a word's part of speech or meaning.
This document discusses the morphological structure of English words. It defines key terms like morpheme, allomorph, free and bound morphemes. It explains that words can be decomposed into morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning. Morphemes can be classified as inflectional or derivational. Inflectional morphemes change grammatical information while derivational morphemes create new lexical items or change part of speech.
Morphemes, LANE 333- Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar .pptxDr. Shadia Banjar
The key points about morphemes are:
- Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in language.
- There are two types: roots, which carry the core meaning, and affixes, which are attached before or after roots.
- Roots can be free morphemes that stand alone as words or bound morphemes that cannot. Affixes are always bound.
- A stem is the part of a word left after removing any inflectional affixes, and a base is the unit affixes are attached to.
The document discusses different types of morphemes and their roles in word structure. It defines morphemes as the minimal units of morphology. There are two main types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes. Bound morphemes are further divided into derivational morphemes, which can change a word's class, and inflectional morphemes, which indicate grammatical categories like number or tense. The document also discusses roots, affixes, and combining forms as the main components that make up words.
This document discusses morphology, which is the study of word structure and formation. It covers several key topics:
- Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a word, and can be free or bound. Common affixes like prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.
- There are several ways words can be formed, including derivation using affixes, compounding of multiple words, and inflection of verbs and nouns.
- The meaning of complex words can often be predicted based on the meanings of their constituent morphemes. Understanding morphology helps analyze unfamiliar words.
The document provides an introduction to morphology, which is the study of word formation. It discusses different types of morphology including inflection, derivation, affixation, and compounding. Inflection involves changing word forms of the same lexeme or word entry, while derivation forms new lexemes and can change the meaning. Affixes are prefixes and suffixes that are added to word bases. Compounding involves combining multiple free morphemes. The document also defines key morphological terms like morpheme, lexeme, allomorphs, and discusses the differences between inflectional and derivational morphology.
This document provides an overview of basic concepts in morphology, including:
- Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language, such as prefixes, suffixes, roots.
- A lexeme is an abstract word, while a word form is a concrete combination of a lexeme and grammatical features.
- Morphemes can have different phonological realizations called allomorphs that occur in complementary distribution based on their environment.
- Affixes are bound morphemes that attach to word stems or bases. Bases can be roots or derived forms. Roots cannot be broken down further.
The document discusses morphosyntax, which is the study of grammatical categories or properties that have both morphological and syntactic characteristics. Some examples of morphosyntactic categories include number, tense, person, and voice. Morphology is the study of word structure and classification, while lexicology is the study of vocabulary. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit, and can be free-standing or bound within words. Morphemes are further classified by their position and function, such as prefixes, suffixes, and infixes.
Grammar refers to the rules and structures of a language. It can be described through analyzing grammatical categories and constituent structures. There are differences between modern and traditional views of grammar, as well as between descriptive and prescriptive approaches. Descriptive grammar aims to objectively describe language usage, while prescriptive grammar prescribes rules for 'correct' usage.
The document discusses key aspects of English morphology, including what constitutes a word, how words are formed, and how new words enter the language. It notes that morphology is the study of words, which can be simple, complex, or compound. Words are formed from morphemes, which can be free or bound. Bound morphemes include inflectional and derivational affixes that can change a word's meaning or part of speech. New words enter English through processes like coining, compounding, clipping, acronyms, blending, back-formation, and borrowing from other languages.
The document discusses morphology, which is the study of word forms and formation. It defines morphemes as the smallest units of meaning or function. Words can be composed of one or more free or bound morphemes. It also discusses derivational and inflectional morphemes, and how they differ in terms of meaning and category changes. Examples are provided to illustrate morphological concepts.
Morphology Word and Its Parts (Root and Afixes)Reni Riyani
This document discusses word morphology, focusing on the smaller parts of words called morphemes. It defines key terms like root, affix, prefix, suffix, and bound vs. free morphemes. Roots carry the main meaning of a word and can be free or bound. Affixes like prefixes and suffixes can be added to roots to derive new words or change word class. Suffixes can be derivational, changing a word's meaning and part of speech, or inflectional, changing grammatical properties without altering the core meaning. The document provides examples to illustrate these morphological concepts.
Morphological analysis involves breaking words down into their component morphemes. There are three main approaches: morpheme-based analyzes words as sequences of morphemes; lexeme-based analyzes changes to word stems; word-based analyzes words within paradigms of related forms. Morphological analysis is needed because having every word explicitly listed uses more memory than rules, and it helps understand new words. Analysis uses paradigm tables listing changes to apply morphological rules for inflection and derivation. Problems include false analyses of unproductive forms and bound morphemes that only occur within compounds.
Morphology is the study of word structure and formation. It involves the analysis of morphemes like roots, affixes, and stems. There are two main types of morphemes - inflectional morphemes which mark grammatical functions and derivational affixes which can change word categories. Some common word formation processes in English include affixation, compounding, clipping, blending, borrowing, back-formation, and functional shift. Morphemes can be categorized as root morphemes, which have an individual lexical meaning, or non-root morphemes like inflections and affixes.
The document defines and provides examples of different types of morphemes:
1) Bound morphemes are affixes like prefixes and suffixes that must be attached to other morphemes and cannot stand alone as words.
2) Free morphemes can stand alone as words like "girl", "system", and "happy".
3) A root is a morpheme that cannot be further analyzed, such as "cran" or "act".
Morphology is the study of words and their internal structure and formation. It looks at morphemes, the smallest units of meaning, and how they combine to form words. There are two types of morphemes - free morphemes or lexemes which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes or affixes which must be attached to other morphemes. Affixes that carry grammatical meaning are called inflectional affixes, while those with lexical meaning are used in word derivation to form new lexemes. Some major word formation processes in English are derivation, compounding, and conversion.
This document provides an introduction to the structure of the English language. It discusses analyzing language at various levels, including words, meanings, syntax, morphology, sounds, and written forms. Some key points:
- Morphology is the study of how morphemes (the smallest units of meaning) are combined to form words. Morphemes can be free-standing words or affixes like prefixes and suffixes.
- Words are organized into classes (parts of speech) based on how they function in phrases, clauses, and sentences. The main classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns.
- Closed word classes like determin
The document discusses morphological processes in English including inflectional and lexical morphology. It covers topics such as:
- Inflectional morphology deals with changes in word forms to express concepts like number, case, and tense, while lexical morphology focuses on word formation through processes like compounding, affixation, and conversion.
- In inflectional morphology, nouns inflect for number and case, verbs for tense and person/number, and adjectives have comparative and superlative forms.
- Lexical morphology examines processes like compounding, affixation, conversion and others to understand how new words are formed from existing word elements or bases.
- Productivity refers to whether a word
This document summarizes key points from an English morphology lecture, distinguishing between different types of morphemes and word formation processes. It discusses bound and free morphemes, and inflectional versus derivational morphemes. Specific examples are provided to illustrate different morphological concepts like affixation, compounding, conversion and productivity in word formation. Tree diagrams are used to visualize complex derived words.
Morphology is the study of how words are structured and formed from smaller units of meaning called morphemes. Morphemes can be free-standing words or bound affixes. The document discusses morphological processes in English such as derivation, compounding, and conversion that form new words from existing morphemes. Suffixes and prefixes are provided as examples of derivational morphemes that can change a word's part of speech or meaning.
This document discusses the morphological structure of English words. It defines key terms like morpheme, allomorph, free and bound morphemes. It explains that words can be decomposed into morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning. Morphemes can be classified as inflectional or derivational. Inflectional morphemes change grammatical information while derivational morphemes create new lexical items or change part of speech.
Morphemes, LANE 333- Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar .pptxDr. Shadia Banjar
The key points about morphemes are:
- Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in language.
- There are two types: roots, which carry the core meaning, and affixes, which are attached before or after roots.
- Roots can be free morphemes that stand alone as words or bound morphemes that cannot. Affixes are always bound.
- A stem is the part of a word left after removing any inflectional affixes, and a base is the unit affixes are attached to.
The document discusses different types of morphemes and their roles in word structure. It defines morphemes as the minimal units of morphology. There are two main types of morphemes: free morphemes, which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes. Bound morphemes are further divided into derivational morphemes, which can change a word's class, and inflectional morphemes, which indicate grammatical categories like number or tense. The document also discusses roots, affixes, and combining forms as the main components that make up words.
This document discusses morphology, which is the study of word structure and formation. It covers several key topics:
- Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a word, and can be free or bound. Common affixes like prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.
- There are several ways words can be formed, including derivation using affixes, compounding of multiple words, and inflection of verbs and nouns.
- The meaning of complex words can often be predicted based on the meanings of their constituent morphemes. Understanding morphology helps analyze unfamiliar words.
The document provides an introduction to morphology, which is the study of word formation. It discusses different types of morphology including inflection, derivation, affixation, and compounding. Inflection involves changing word forms of the same lexeme or word entry, while derivation forms new lexemes and can change the meaning. Affixes are prefixes and suffixes that are added to word bases. Compounding involves combining multiple free morphemes. The document also defines key morphological terms like morpheme, lexeme, allomorphs, and discusses the differences between inflectional and derivational morphology.
This document provides an overview of basic concepts in morphology, including:
- Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language, such as prefixes, suffixes, roots.
- A lexeme is an abstract word, while a word form is a concrete combination of a lexeme and grammatical features.
- Morphemes can have different phonological realizations called allomorphs that occur in complementary distribution based on their environment.
- Affixes are bound morphemes that attach to word stems or bases. Bases can be roots or derived forms. Roots cannot be broken down further.
The document discusses morphosyntax, which is the study of grammatical categories or properties that have both morphological and syntactic characteristics. Some examples of morphosyntactic categories include number, tense, person, and voice. Morphology is the study of word structure and classification, while lexicology is the study of vocabulary. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit, and can be free-standing or bound within words. Morphemes are further classified by their position and function, such as prefixes, suffixes, and infixes.
Grammar refers to the rules and structures of a language. It can be described through analyzing grammatical categories and constituent structures. There are differences between modern and traditional views of grammar, as well as between descriptive and prescriptive approaches. Descriptive grammar aims to objectively describe language usage, while prescriptive grammar prescribes rules for 'correct' usage.
The document discusses key aspects of English morphology, including what constitutes a word, how words are formed, and how new words enter the language. It notes that morphology is the study of words, which can be simple, complex, or compound. Words are formed from morphemes, which can be free or bound. Bound morphemes include inflectional and derivational affixes that can change a word's meaning or part of speech. New words enter English through processes like coining, compounding, clipping, acronyms, blending, back-formation, and borrowing from other languages.
The document discusses morphology, which is the study of word forms and formation. It defines morphemes as the smallest units of meaning or function. Words can be composed of one or more free or bound morphemes. It also discusses derivational and inflectional morphemes, and how they differ in terms of meaning and category changes. Examples are provided to illustrate morphological concepts.
Morphology Word and Its Parts (Root and Afixes)Reni Riyani
This document discusses word morphology, focusing on the smaller parts of words called morphemes. It defines key terms like root, affix, prefix, suffix, and bound vs. free morphemes. Roots carry the main meaning of a word and can be free or bound. Affixes like prefixes and suffixes can be added to roots to derive new words or change word class. Suffixes can be derivational, changing a word's meaning and part of speech, or inflectional, changing grammatical properties without altering the core meaning. The document provides examples to illustrate these morphological concepts.
Morphological analysis involves breaking words down into their component morphemes. There are three main approaches: morpheme-based analyzes words as sequences of morphemes; lexeme-based analyzes changes to word stems; word-based analyzes words within paradigms of related forms. Morphological analysis is needed because having every word explicitly listed uses more memory than rules, and it helps understand new words. Analysis uses paradigm tables listing changes to apply morphological rules for inflection and derivation. Problems include false analyses of unproductive forms and bound morphemes that only occur within compounds.
Morphology is the study of word structure and formation. It involves the analysis of morphemes like roots, affixes, and stems. There are two main types of morphemes - inflectional morphemes which mark grammatical functions and derivational affixes which can change word categories. Some common word formation processes in English include affixation, compounding, clipping, blending, borrowing, back-formation, and functional shift. Morphemes can be categorized as root morphemes, which have an individual lexical meaning, or non-root morphemes like inflections and affixes.
The document defines and provides examples of different types of morphemes:
1) Bound morphemes are affixes like prefixes and suffixes that must be attached to other morphemes and cannot stand alone as words.
2) Free morphemes can stand alone as words like "girl", "system", and "happy".
3) A root is a morpheme that cannot be further analyzed, such as "cran" or "act".
Morphology is the study of words and their internal structure and formation. It looks at morphemes, the smallest units of meaning, and how they combine to form words. There are two types of morphemes - free morphemes or lexemes which can stand alone as words, and bound morphemes or affixes which must be attached to other morphemes. Affixes that carry grammatical meaning are called inflectional affixes, while those with lexical meaning are used in word derivation to form new lexemes. Some major word formation processes in English are derivation, compounding, and conversion.
This document provides an introduction to the structure of the English language. It discusses analyzing language at various levels, including words, meanings, syntax, morphology, sounds, and written forms. Some key points:
- Morphology is the study of how morphemes (the smallest units of meaning) are combined to form words. Morphemes can be free-standing words or affixes like prefixes and suffixes.
- Words are organized into classes (parts of speech) based on how they function in phrases, clauses, and sentences. The main classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns.
- Closed word classes like determin
What can a corpus tell us about grammarSami Khalil
The document discusses what can be learned about lexis and grammar from corpus data. Regarding lexis, corpora can provide information about the general lexicon, word formation, collocations, idioms, meanings such as polysemy, and lexical patterns in speech. Regarding grammar, corpora allow analysis of grammatical patterns through frequency, associations with lexis, co-text, discourse factors, and variation across registers and speech. Multiple interrelated linguistic features must be examined simultaneously to fully understand grammatical choices.
Chapter 3 A word and its parts roots, affixes and their .docxAbhinav816839
This chapter discusses the structure of words and their component parts called morphemes. It defines key terms like root, affix, free morpheme and bound morpheme. It explains how morphemes can be identified and classified based on characteristics like meaning contribution and ability to stand alone. Examples are provided to illustrate different types of morphemes like prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, cranberry morphemes and how words can contain single or multiple roots and morphemes. The chapter aims to classify word parts and differentiate between free and bound morphemes, distinguish roots from affixes, and identify morphemes independently of meaning.
This document discusses morphological rules and patterns. It begins by examining different types of morphological patterns, including concatenative patterns involving affixation and compounding, and non-concatenative patterns involving base modification. It also discusses reduplication and conversion. The document then discusses two approaches to formulating morphological rules - a morpheme-based model that emphasizes similarities between morphology and syntax, and a word-based model that minimizes those similarities. The goal is to create a system of rules that accurately models speakers' linguistic knowledge.
05 linguistic theory meets lexicographyDuygu Aşıklar
This document discusses the application of linguistic theories to lexicography. It reviews theories like frame semantics that can help lexicographers analyze data and produce dictionary entries. Frame semantics describes how words relate to semantic frames and contexts. The document explains key concepts for lexicographers like sense relationships, inherent properties of words, and what information is relevant for dictionary entries. It provides examples and guidelines for analyzing words using frame semantics and determining lexicographic relevance from corpus data.
Morphology.....a major topic in Linguisticssaroshzainab
In this topic you will learn Morphology, Morphemes, Difference in bound and free morphemes, Types of bound and free morphemes and Morphological Description.......Morphology is a branch of linguistics that explores the structure and formation of words in a language. It is concerned with the study of morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Morphology delves into how these morphemes combine to create words and how words, in turn, form larger units such as phrases and sentences.
The primary focus of morphology is on understanding the rules and patterns governing the internal structure of words, encompassing both inflectional and derivational processes. Inflection involves modifications to a word to convey grammatical information, such as tense, number, or case. Derivation, on the other hand, deals with the creation of new words by adding prefixes, suffixes, or infixes to existing roots.
Morphology also examines the concept of morphological productivity, which refers to the extent to which a language allows speakers to generate new words using established morphological processes. Languages exhibit varying degrees of morphological complexity, with some relying heavily on inflections and derivations, while others may lean towards a more analytic structure.
Moreover, morphology plays a crucial role in understanding the relationship between form and meaning in language. It helps elucidate how changes in word structure contribute to shifts in meaning and grammatical function. The study of morphology is essential not only for linguists but also for language learners, as it provides insights into the intricate mechanisms underlying word formation and the dynamic nature of linguistic systems.
This document provides an introduction to morphology, the study of word structure. It discusses the basic units of meaning in words called morphemes, including roots, stems, prefixes, suffixes, and other affixes. It explains the difference between inflectional and derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology involves changes that indicate grammatical information like number, tense, or case, while derivational morphology derives new words and can change a word's class. The document also covers topics like allomorphy, where a single morpheme can have variable phonetic forms depending on context.
This document discusses what corpus linguistics can reveal about grammar. It outlines how analyzing large text collections shows grammar as patterns of use rather than absolute correctness. Grammatical choices are best understood through their associations with vocabulary, co-text, discourse factors and communication context. The document provides examples of studies investigating grammatical features across these different levels simultaneously rather than in isolation. It also discusses how corpus analysis has improved understanding of spoken grammar.
Derivational morphemes typically occur inside inflectional affixes and can change the part of speech or meaning of a word, while inflectional morphemes do not change the part of speech and express grammatical features. Some morphemes like -ing can be both inflectional and derivational depending on how they are used. The constituent structure of words can be represented as a tree diagram showing the relationship between prefixes, suffixes, and word stems. Understanding morphology helps with vocabulary development, language learning, and teaching language skills.
The document discusses various types of cohesion that provide links between parts of a text, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference uses words like pronouns to refer to things introduced earlier. Substitution and ellipsis involve replacing or omitting words. Conjunction uses words like "and" and "but" to connect sentences. Lexical cohesion involves repeating or associating vocabulary through reiteration or collocation. Different languages use these cohesion techniques in different ways.
Morphology - Adjective derived from member of other word classesNurul Khotimah
The document discusses adjective derivation. It begins by defining derivation as the formation of new words from existing words, typically through the addition of affixes. It then examines different types of adjective derivation: (1) from adjectives through prefixes, (2) from nouns using suffixes like "-ful" and "-less", and (3) from verbs using suffixes like "-able", "-ive", "-ant", and "-ent". Overall, the key to identifying derived adjectives is looking for changes in word class through the addition of affixes.
The document discusses lexical semantics and how words derive their meaning. It addresses word meaning, lexical relations between words like synonyms and antonyms, and cross-linguistic patterns in word meanings. Specifically, it examines how words are defined and categorized, how their meanings are related or opposed, and commonalities in color terms and core vocabulary across languages.
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The AWL Reorganized for Spanish-Speaking ELLsRobert Bushong
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1. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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Modelling variation in the form of English comparatives and superlatives
Robert Foster
University College London
1. Introduction
The comparative and superlative forms of English adjectives may be produced in two ways.
Comparison can be denoted through attachment of the -er/-est suffix to an adjective, or by using the
periphrastic form more/most. While for certain adjectives one form is greatly preferred, most
adjectives exhibit some degree of free variation in their comparative/superlative form. This paper
aims to identify the phonological factors that influence the alternation through inspection of the
relative frequencies of the two competing forms in a database of English adjectives. By expressing
these generalisations as grammatical constraints, we are able to use two statistical models (MaxEnt
and regression trees) to provide insights into how a grammar that gives rise to variation may be
represented in the mind of the speaker.
2. Which factors play a role in determining the form of the comparative/superlative?
Speakers have strong intuitions as to whether certain adjectives should be modified though the
-er/-est suffix or through the use of more/most. These intuitions are directly reflected in the relative
frequencies of the morphological and periphrastic forms in spoken and written English. For example,
more tragic is far more frequent in speech and text corpora than its morphologically inflected
counterpart tragicer, whereas biggest is much better represented than most big. For some
adjectives, no clear preferences emerge and both forms receive similar levels of usage e.g.
cleverest/most clever, vainer/more vain. Several authors have attempted to identify generalisations
that capture speakers’ intuitions on the form of inflected adjectives.
Quirk et al. (1985) use the number of syllables in the adjective’s positive form as the main diagnostic
for the alteration. Monosyllables tend to prefer the morphological form (oldest > most old), whereas
words of three syllables or more strongly prefer the periphrastic form (most difficult > difficultest).
Words of two syllables exhibit free variation (stuffier ≈ more stuffy). While this generalisation is
broadly true, the authors state numerous counterexamples. These include the adjectives apt and
prone which prefer to take most, and unhappy which frequently takes the -er/-est suffix. This
suggests that syllable length is not the only factor which influences the alteration. Quirk et al. outline
several other diagnostics, summarised below:
Disyllabic adjectives ending in an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant tend to prefer the
morphological form. Unstressed vowels include /əʊ/ as in narrow, /i/ as in silly, and /ɚ/ as in
tender.
Adjectives such as scared and caring which are formed from verb participles are almost
always modified with more.
Among monosyllables, frequently occurring adjectives such as easy and large take the
morphological form more readily than rare adjectives such as wry and pert.
2. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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Leech & Culpeper (1997) analyse the relative frequencies of morphological and periphrastic forms of
adjectives found in the British National Corpus. In addition to the generalisations observed above,
the authors identify other phonological and syntactic factors which influence the alteration:
Disyllabic adjectives with initial stress such as quiet and stupid take the morphological form
more frequently than those with word-final stress such as remote and absurd
Comparatives are more likely to be expressed with the more form when they have a
predicative function than when they have an attributive function. For example, the
periphrastic form is better represented in 1a) than in 1b):
1a) This bar is a livelier/?more lively place than the old bar.
1b) The bars in this town are a lot more lively/?livelier than I’m used to.
There is a tendency for comparative/superlative adjectives in parallel syntactic structures to
be of the same form, as illustrated in 2) and 3):
2) the wildest, riskiest/?most risky, craziest stunt in the world
3) The more irritated he gets, the more angry/?angrier he becomes.
Mondorf (2003) argues that the underlying factor responsible for the alteration is the cognitive
complexity of comparatives/superlatives and the environment in which they occur. She identifies 21
determinants for ‘more-support’ (i.e. the periphrastic form) which are used to illustrate her
hypothesis that -er/-est forms favour environments that are simple to process. This hypothesis goes
beyond the scope of papers such as Quirk et al. (1985) and Leech & Culpeper (1997) which simply
aim to observe the determinants that play a role in adjectival form, and not necessarily explain why
these patterns should be the case. Some of the determinants that are original to Mondorf’s paper
are outlined below:
Adjectives that end in consonant clusters tend to take the periphrastic form (most apt >
aptest)
Adjectives that are morphologically complex tend to take the periphrastic form (more selfish
> selfisher, more famous > famouser)
Adjectives that have a high frequency ratio of inflected form to uninflected form take
-er/-est more often than adjectives that are rarely made into comparatives/superlatives.
This suggests a semantic factor concerning the gradability of adjectives; less gradable
adjectives such as real and dead frequently require more-support
One aspect that all of these papers have in common is that they treat adjectives as belonging to one
of three categories: i) those that always take the morphological form, ii) those that always take the
periphrastic form, and iii) those that give rise to variation. As we shall see, the distinction between
these categories is not always so clear, and the alteration is observed to some extent for almost
every adjective in the data set. This suggests that grammaticality across all comparative/superlative
forms is gradient in nature, rather than being absolute for certain adjectives and variable for others.
In the following sections, we formalise some of these generalisations as grammatical constraints and
verify whether they are indeed influential in determining the form of comparatives/superlatives. In
order to do this, we observe the relative frequencies of morphological/periphrastic forms in a
database of adjectives for both comparatives and superlatives. If the individual constraints are
statistically true of the data set, they can be used as the targets of learning in grammatical models.
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University College London
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3. Data and Methodology
Our data set consists of 500 of the most frequent English adjectives. For each item, we conducted
four Google searches (www.google.com) using the templates “x-er than”, “more x than”, “the x-est”
and “the most x” and tabulated the number of hits returned for each search. By comparing the
number of hits for the two competing comparative and superlative forms, we obtain a reliable
estimate of the relative frequencies of these forms for a wide array of adjectives.
The main advantage of using the above templates instead of simply searching the bare
comparative/superlative is to reduce the inherent syntactic ambiguity of the strings “more x” and
“most x”. If these templates were not used, our search would return hits for pages containing
phrases such as Most big companies donate some of their profits to charity, where most is modifying
the entire noun phrase big companies rather than just the adjective. This would lead to the
periphrastic forms being overrepresented in the data set. Even when using the templates, some
ambiguity remains; the search will still return false positives for constructions where the
morphological form is impossible such as more sad than angry and the most Big Macs (compare
*sadder than angry and *the Biggest Macs). However, these constructions are relatively uncommon.
Several steps were taken to identify any problematic adjectives for data collection. These words
were removed and replaced with the next most frequent adjective. Such problems include:
the adjective having a homograph that is a mass noun. Some examples are fat, fun, and
light: “thin glass lets in the most light” is problematic for this reason.
the adjective being ungradable e.g. solar, financial. This would limit search results to the
unwanted syntactic constructions mentioned above.
One advantage of using Google hits to estimate frequency is that language use found in websites
may be more representative of actual usage than data obtained from text corpora. This is because
text corpora such as the Brown Corpus are usually compiled from publications that are edited to
reflect the highest standards of ‘grammatical’ English. This means that non-standard adjectival
forms, which are occasionally produced in less formal environments, may be underrepresented.
Figure 1 displays the number of Google hits (in thousands) for 11 adjectives in each of the four
templates. The figures in bold represent the percentage of hits for morphologically formed
comparatives and superlatives. This is a small subsection of the data for illustrative purposes. The
entire data set containing frequency figures for 500 adjectives can be found in the Appendix.
4. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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Figure 1 Table of raw and proportional frequencies for a small sample of adjectives
Adjective
x-er
(K)
more x
(K) %er
x-est
(K)
most x
(K) %est
NOISY 420 89.1 82.50% 401 51 88.72%
STRICT 509 192 72.61% 5390 269 95.25%
DISCREET 0.815 64.8 1.24% 4.05 171 2.31%
IMMENSE 0.28 107 0.26% 3.15 46.4 6.36%
TOUGH 5130 46.5 99.10% 23600 158 99.33%
FRESH 542 53 91.09% 16800 297 98.26%
POLITE 13.7 141 8.86% 145 408 26.22%
STUFFY 26.7 129 17.15% 16.2 71.5 18.47%
LONELY 164 80.8 66.99% 618 117 84.08%
GLORIOUS 0.13 181 0.07% 0.844 563 0.15%
DEAR 382 45.9 89.27% 455 314 59.17%
... ...
4. Forming constraints
From the generalisations discussed above, we formulate grammatical constraints on the output form
of comparatives and superlatives. The analysis consists of 6 constraints on the morphological form as
well as one universal constraint on the periphrastic form. As the primary focus of this paper is
phonological, the analysis does not incorporate any syntactic or semantic factors proposed in the
literature.
Constraints 1, 2 and 3 concern the syllable structure and stress pattern of the morphological form.
Constraints 4, 5 and 6 refer to the phono- and morphotactics of the morphological form. For each
constraint we performed a paired two-tailed t-test to show that the constraint is statistically
significant for both the -er and -est data sets (p <0.05)
Constraint 1- * σ σ σ [+COMP]
The morphological form must not contain three or more syllables
This constraint aims to capture the contrast between short words and medium/long words, e.g.
bigger and valider. Note that this constraint (as well as all of the others) applies to the candidate
-er/-est form and not the base adjective. This means that words such as humbler and littlest, which
are formed from words ending in a syllabic consonant, do not violate the constraint due to the
desyllabification of /l/ after suffixation. As a result, their inflected forms do not contain three or
more syllables. p-value <0.001 for both data sets.
Constraint 2- * σ σ σ σ [+COMP]
The morphological form must not contain four or more syllables
This constraint aims to capture the contrast between medium and long words, e.g. stupidest and
difficultest. Like the previous constraint, candidates that undergo resyllabification after suffixation
such as unstabler satisfy this constraint. p-value <0.001 for both data sets.
5. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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Constraint 3- * σ ‘σ σ [+COMP]
The penultimate syllable of trisyllabic (or longer) morphological forms must not be stressed
This constraint is derived from Leech and Culpeper’s (1997) observation that adjectives such as
profounder and naivest are less well formed than adjectives with initial stress such as quieter and
stupidest. p-value <0.001 for both data sets.
Constraint 4- * [-reduced][+COMP]
The comparative/superlative morpheme must not be preceded by any segment that is not a reduced
vowel
This highly restrictive constraint is inspired from Quirk et al.’s observation that the morphological
form can be readily applied to adjectives that end in /əʊ/ , /i/ and /ɚ/. Conversely, it can be
construed that the morphological form disprefers final segments that are not /əʊ/ , /i/ or/ɚ/.These
three phonemes can be referred to as reduced vowels, and are characterised by their laxness, short
duration and central position. p-value <0.001 for both data sets.
Constraint 5- * C C [+COMP]
The comparative/superlative morpheme must not be preceded by two or more consonants
This constraint is motivated by Mondorf’s (2003) claim that adjectives ending in consonant clusters
such as apt tend to prefer the periphrastic form. When determining which words contained clusters,
we only considered non-rhotic pronunciations where /r/ in coda position is unpronounced.
p-value= 0.026 for -er, p-value= 0.004 for -est.
Constraint 6- * [SUFFIX][+COMP]
The comparative/superlative morpheme must not be preceded by a suffix
This is a simplified version of Mondorf’s (2003) hypothesis that morphologically complex adjectives
are less likely to take -er/-est. Through manual inspection, the suffixes we identify as reluctant to
take -er/-est are as follows: -able,-al,-ant,-ed,-en,-ent,-ful,-ible,-ic,-ing,-ish,-ive,-less,-ous,-some.
p-value <0.001 for both data sets.
Constraint 7- * more/most ADJ
Comparatives/superlatives must not be formed through the use of more/most
This constraint represents the inherent bias against the periphrastic form, capturing the intuition
that this form is only licensed when morphological form is sufficiently ungrammatical. Without this
constraint, the periphrastic form would be the preferred candidate for every input. Of course, it is
conceivable that the reverse situation is true- that there is an inherent bias against the
morphological form and several well-formedness constraints on the periphrastic form. However, this
account would not be very insightful from a phonetic standpoint. Assuming that phonological
constraints are generally phonetically motivated, it is more intuitive to think of the novel word forms
as the ones which create new, potentially ungrammatical phonological environments.
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University College London
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Figure 2 displays a small sample of the full data set of 500 adjectives. It states the relative
frequencies of the morphological form of 12 comparatives and superlatives, as well as listing the
constraints that each adjective violates.
Figure 2 Constraint violations for 12 adjectives
Adjective %-er %-est * σ σ σ * σ σ σ σ * σ ‘σ σ * [-reduced] * C C * [SUFFIX]
ORDINARY 0.5% 0.3% * *
IGNORANT 0.3% 0.8% * * * * *
DIFFICULT 0.5% 0.0% * * * *
STEADY 71.5% 70.1% *
HOT 99.5% 99.6% *
POLITE 8.9% 26.2% * * *
SUDDEN 11.6% 9.0% * * *
HONEST 7.6% 3.1% * * *
PROFOUND 6.8% 6.5% * * * *
ASHAMED 0.2% 0.0% * * * * *
VAST 66.6% 61.2% * *
SCARED 14.4% 2.1% * *
... ... ...
These data are used as input to the statistical models MaxEnt and regression trees. In the next
section, we explain how these models can be used to construct a grammar that is representative of
the data set.
5. The Maximum Entropy model
The Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model provides a principled, objective means of simulating a
constraint-based grammar. The MaxEnt model has frequently been applied to phonological data
sets, as in Keller (2000), Goldwater & Johnson (2003) and Hayes & Wilson (2008). One notable
advantage of the model is that the output is probabilistic, meaning it is easily applicable to
grammars in which there is variation. The goal of the MaxEnt framework is to maximise the
probability of the observed data while maintaining maximum entropy of the model- i.e. it aims to
capture as many generalisations as possible from the data without making additional assumptions.
In the MaxEnt model, each constraint is assigned a non-negative weight. These weights are learned
algorithmically through maximising the objective function below:
In order to do this, the model compares all possible sets of weights and settles on the grammar that
maximises the likelihood of the observed data. The probability of each output candidate can be
calculated as follows:
7. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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1. Take the dot product of the constraint violations for each candidate. In our data set, a
constraint can only be violated once, so the dot product for a particular candidate is just the
summed weights of all violated constraints.
2. Find the maxent value by raising e to the negative power of the dot product.
3. Divide this maxent value by the total value for all candidates (in our model, there are only
two candidates). The resulting figure is the expected probability of that candidate.
Figure 3 displays a small sample of results obtained from applying the MaxEnt model to our -er data
set. The predicted values for all 500 adjectives for both -er and -est forms can be found in the
Appendix:
Figure 3 MaxEnt predictions for 4 adjectives
* more * σ σ σ * [-reduced] * σ σ σ σ * [SUFFIX] * σ ‘σ σ * C C
Input Candidate
Dot
Product MaxEnt 4.109 3.419 2.830 2.326 2.324 0.935 0.340 Predicted Observed
POISONOUS poisonouser 10.898 0.000 * * * * 0.1% 0.2%
more poisonous 4.109 0.016 * 99.9% 99.8%
SCARY scarier 3.419 0.033 * 66.6% 72.6%
more scary 4.109 0.016 * 33.4% 27.4%
VAST vaster 3.169 0.042 * * 71.9% 66.6%
more vast 4.109 0.016 * 28.1% 33.4%
POLITE politer 7.183 0.001 * * * 4.4% 8.9%
more polite 4.109 0.016 * 95.6% 91.1%
... ... ...
These results allow us to quantify the influence of each phonological factor in determining the form
of comparatives and superlatives. The weights of each constraint for both the -er and -est data sets
are plotted below.
Figure 4 Constraint weights for -er and -est
-er
-est
8. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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From these graphs, we see that the most influential constraint on the morphological form is the
constraint on trisyllabic or longer comparatives/superlatives. This corroborates Quirk et al.’s
proposal that the primary cause of the alteration is word length. The constraints on morphological
forms containing four syllables, a suffix or a final segment that is not an unreduced vowel also play a
significant role in determining output form, receiving similar weights in both data sets. The
remaining two constraints are less influential, particularly the consonant cluster constraint which
only has a marginal effect on the frequency of the morphological form. These findings seem to
contradict the assertion of Mondorf (2003) that adjectives ending in consonant clusters greatly
prefer more-support. No single constraint outweighs the inherent bias against the periphrastic form,
although because the constraints *σ σ σ σ and * σ‘σ σ only ever occur in tandem with * σ σ σ, we can
conclude that having four syllables or penultimate stress alone is enough to make the morphological
form dispreferred.
6. Modelling with regression trees
In this section, we use a second model to analyse the data set– regression trees. This model
estimates the observed frequency of inputs by observing generalisations in the data set and
expressing them as a network of binary decisions. The algorithm is outlined below:
1. All samples start at the top of the tree (in our case, we use morphological forms as samples)
2. At each branch, the algorithm looks to find the variable that splits the remaining data in the
‘best’ possible way. Specifically, it tests the null hypothesis of independence between each
variable and the response. Then it selects the variable with the strongest association to the
response (lowest p-value) and splits on it.
3. Branches stop splitting if the p-values for all variables exceed a certain stopping criterion.
4. The prediction at each leaf node is simply the average observed frequency for all samples at
that node.
If we set the stopping criterion for the p-value to be 0, the algorithm will always split- i.e. the tree
will grow to maximum size. The resulting tree for the -er data set is shown below:
Figure 5 Overfitted tree for –er
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University College London
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While this tree is extremely faithful to the data set, many of the ‘rules’ it has learnt are tenuous and
only relevant to the data it was trained on. This makes it a poor predictor of the behaviour of new
inputs, and unlikely to be representative of a speaker’s grammar. We see that most of the early
splits have a very low p-value, indicating that there is an excellent chance that a real difference exists
between the two outcomes. However, at nodes 2,31,15,26 and 29, the p-value is high, suggesting
that there is no significant difference between the two outcomes above what would be expected
from random noise. Therefore, if we set a p-value threshold of 0.01, the resulting trees for -er and
-est capture only the most important generalisations, allowing them to be much better predictors of
new input: (>0 indicates violation, ≤0 indicates non-violation)
Figure 6 Master trees for -er and -est
10. PLIN3104 - Advanced Phonological Theory B Robert Foster
University College London
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The strength of regression trees is that they are highly interpretable and that they capture non-
linear relationships between constraints and observed frequencies. For example, compare the values
of the leaf nodes in the following simplified version of the -er tree, in which the algorithm decides to
split on the * [-reduced] constraint on both sides of the tree:
Figure 7 Simplified tree for -er
The impact of violating * [-reduced] in the left-hand branch (unsuffixed, and at least trisyllabic) is
much greater than the impact of violating * [-reduced] in the right-hand branch (suffixed disyllables)
This kind of variable impact could not be captured by the MaxEnt methodology, in which a
constraint has the same weight no matter which other constraints a particular candidate violates. In
this example, the impact of capturing non-linearity is negligible (only 2 words fall in the left branch
of node 8), but in a larger scale analysis with more features, capturing non-linearity may be crucial to
the success of the model.
7. Evaluating the two models
To assess the performance of the MaxEnt and regression tree models, we conduct a 5-fold cross
validation, in which the models are trained on 80% of the data and asked to predict the relative
frequencies of the remaining 20%. This is repeated for every fifth of the data set to simulate
exposure to completely unseen adjectives. The table below displays the R2
value and root mean
squared error of the two models for both the original and cross-validated data sets:
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University College London
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Figure 8 Table of R2
and RMSE values for original and cross-validated data sets
Original Cross-Validated
MaxEnt Reg. Tree MaxEnt Reg. Tree
R² -er 0.742 0.743 0.713 0.734
R² -est 0.832 0.834 0.807 0.827
RMSE -er 0.205 0.205 0.217 0.209
RMSE -est 0.173 0.172 0.185 0.174
The values in the left-hand column show that when trained and tested on the entire data set, both
models perform equally well. The high R2
and low RMSE values indicate a strong correspondence
between the observed and predicted frequencies. However, after cross-validation, the regression
tree model performs better than the MaxEnt model. This suggests that the relationship between
constraints and observed frequencies is non-linear.
The main cause of error in the models appears to be the large amount of variation in monosyllabic
adjectives, as well as in disyllables that end in -y. For example, easy, tiny and heavy take -er/-est
almost 100% of the time, compared to <25% for nosy, hasty and stuffy. The models cannot make
different predictions for these adjectives because they all violate the same phonological constraints.
This suggests that the relative frequency of the morphological form is not determined by phonology
alone, and that variation among these words may instead be attributed to lexical or semantic
properties such as raw frequency or gradability as proposed in the literature.
8. Summary
We have shown that the phonology of an English adjective influences whether its
comparative/superlative is formed with -er/-est or more/most. Phonological constraints can be
learned by the MaxEnt and regression tree models in order to capably simulate a grammar that
captures variation in the relative frequency of the morphological and periphrastic forms. The
grammars produced by the models allow us to draw the following conclusions:
The number of syllables is the most influential factor in determining surface form
Adjectives that end in a stressed syllable, a suffix, or any segment that is not an unreduced
vowel are much less likely to take the morphological form
Adjectives that end in consonant clusters only slightly prefer the periphrastic form
The relationship between phonological factors and observed frequency is likely to be
non-linear
Phonological constraints alone are not able to capture all of the variation observed for
certain kinds of adjective, particularly monosyllables and disyllables that end in -y. This
suggests that lexical or semantic factors may also play a role in determining output form.
3990 words (discounting appendix and bibliography)
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