ENGL 3371 Lecture 4: Morphology II

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ENGL 3371Lecture 4 Morphology II

• Dr. Min-Joo Kim

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Mechanisms by which new words or word meanings
are created

• morphological derivations (and compounding) by
  adding new morphemes or getting rid of them.
• Neologisms by creating entirely new words from
  scratch.
• meaning change by changing the meaning of a word
  without changing its form.
• This various methodology is a testimony to the
  linguistic creativity of humans.

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A way to derive new words by using morphological
operations

• (i) Either by adding a derivational or an
  inflectional morpheme to a root.
• (ii) Backformation
• Our focus today will be (i).

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Derivational vs. Inflectional Affix

• A derivational affix changes either the meaning
  or category of the root.
• Picky about what type of word it attaches to.
• Large in number
• Occurs closer to the root
• Can be prefixes, infixes, suffixes.

• An inflectional affix does not change the
  category of the root, but adds grammatical
  meanings to the root (e.g., plurality, past
  tense, passive, progressive, comparative).
• Not so picky more regular.
• Only a handful in a language
• Always follow a derivational morpheme if theres
  one.
• Usually suffixes.

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Examples

• Derivational affixes
• She is unkind.
• Please redo it.
• Kindness matters.
• Im a dancer.
• John conventionalized it.

• Inflectional affixes
• John walked
• John has arrived.
• John is arriving.
• Many hats are on the table.
• John conventionalized it.

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Exercise 1

• Determine whether the underlined affixes are
  derivational or inflectional.
• a. I bought three boxes.
• b. Today was a very springy day.
• c. John was swimming in the pond.
• d. Swimming is fun.
• e. John is the fastest runner among us.
• f. John was rather disrespectful towards Mary.

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Word formation rule

• Reminder the ultimate goal of linguistics is to
  identify the set of rules that govern any human
  language which can also serve as a learning
  algorithm for language acquisition.
• In morphology, this task means coming up with a
  working word-formation rule.

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Word formation rule 1st attempt

• Consider the following data. What do they tell us
  about the essential components of words?
• (1) a. un- b.
  -ness
• c. unness (un-ness) d. -ment
• (2) a. happy b. unhappy
  
• c. happiness d.
  commencement
• Answer A word must contain a root.
• Interim Rule 1 Word Root

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But what about affixes?

• We know that affixes, i.e., prefixes and
  suffixes, can occur with a root.
• So how to capture their optionality?
• Interim Rule 2 (Prefix) Root (suffix).

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But what about the following cases?

• (3) a. pre-pre-classical
• b. anti-pro-war
• c. anti-anti-democracy
• d. taste-less-ness
• e. tru-th-ful-ness
• f. convention-al-iz-ation
• Final Rule Word (prefix) Root (suffix),
• where indicates an infinite number of
  occurrences.

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Selectional properties of affixes

• Unfortunately, as it is, our word formation rule
  over-generates. For instance, consider the
  following
• (4) a. unable unkind unhurt
• b. unknowledge unintelligence uninjury
• (5) a. quickly happily softly
• b. laughly walkly workly
• What is the reason for the ungrammaticality of
  the (b) examples?
• How to resolve this problem?

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Solution

• Encode the idiosyncrasies, i.e., selectional
  properties, of each affix.
• Encode the info on the syntactic category of a
  root.
• Q What is a category?
• A Its a part of speech such as Noun, Verb,
  Adjective, and Adverb.

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Properties of Nouns and Adjectives

• Nouns can occur after the.
• That is NOUN the ___
• e.g. the intelligence the happy the
  sing.
• Adjectives can occur before nouns.
• That is, ADJECTIVE ___ N (N stands for Noun)
• e.g. happy men intelligence men sing men.

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Properties of Verbs and Adverbs

• Verbs can occur after want to.
• That is, VERB want to ___
• e.g. I want to sing I want to happy I want
  to men.
• Adverbs can occur before a verb.
• That is, ADVERB I ___ walked.
• e.g. I quickly walked I men walked I
  happy walked I sing walked.

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Categories and Roots

• Roots contain information about their
  categories.
• e.g. happy Adjective
• knowledge Noun
• Similarly, affixes contain information about the
  categories of words to which they can attach.
• e.g. un- Adjective the prefix un- combines
  with an adjective.
• Adjective -ly the suffix ly combines
  with an adjective.

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Back to the problematic data

• Explain why the (b) examples are ungrammatical.
• (4) a. unable unkind unhurt
• b. unknowledge unintelligence uninjury
• (5) a. quickly happily softly
• b. laughly walkly workly

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New problem

• What about the following data? What do they tell
  us about un- and -ly?
• (6) Untie uncover unwind undress
• (7) Lovely monthly weekly friendly
• Hint think about the category of the roots.

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Solution to the problem ambiguity

• We can solve the problem by positing that there
  are two types of un- and ly.
• One type of un- combines with an adjective the
  other type combines with a verb.
• One type of ly combines with an adjective the
  other type combines with a noun.

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Exercise 2

• Spell out what each of the following affixes
  does
• E.g. -ly e.g., quickly changes adjectives to
  adverbs.
• (i) -ize e.g., unionize
• (ii) -ion e.g., invention
• (iii) -er e.g., dancer
• (iv) ify e.g., solidify

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Next class

• More on morphology different types of derivation
  and neologisms
• Homework 3