Morphology

1
Morphology

• Complex Words

2
Simplex words and complex words

• to walk, to dance, to laugh, to kiss
• to purify, to enlarge, to industrialize, to
  head-hunt
• house, corner, zebra
• collection, builder, sea horse
• green, old, sick
• regional, washable, honey-sweet

3
Morphemes

• A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that
  adds its own distinct bit of meaning to the word.
• kill-er, work-er, print-er
• wash-able, laugh-able
• re-paint-ing

4
Cranberry morphemes

• blueberry
• blackberry
• gooseberry (goose?)
• cranberry (cran???)

5
Free morphemes and bound morphemes

• Free morphemes can stand on their own.
• Bound morphemes, or affixes, cannot
• Q Is that green?
• A No, at best its ish.
• Q Is she any good at football?
• A Yes, shes a great er.
• Q Does he play the piano often?
• A Yes, he s it all the time.

6
Suffixes and prefixes

• Suffixes
• green-ish
• build-er
• wash-able
• solid-ify
• industry-al-ize
• Prefixes
• en-large
• re-en-act
• de-throne
• ex-minister

7
Circumfixes and infixes

• Circumfixes
• leef ge-leef-d huur ge-huur-d
  (Dutch)
• play played live lived
• Infixes
• base labas verb l-um-abas come out
  (Tagalog)
• base pasok verb p-um-asok enter
• base bili verb b-um-ili buy

8
Compounding

• Combining two free morphemes
• sea horse ? sea horse
• head strong ? headstrong
• hand made ? handmade

9
Productivity

• Some types of compounding are more productive
  than others.
• N-N compounding is completely productive in
  English
• word kitchen ? word kitchen (e.g. a kitchen
  for morphologists)
• tree laptop ? tree laptop (e.g. a laptop with a
  picture of a tree)
• gorilla window ? gorilla window (e.g. a window
  through which you can see a gorilla)
• window gorilla ? window gorilla (e.g. a gorilla
  that always sits
• behind a window)

10
Derivation

• Making a completely new word with an affix
• buildverb ? build-ernoun
• largeadjective ? en-largeverb
• industrynoun ? industry-aladjective
• industry-aladjective ? industry-al-izeverb

11
Inflection

• Providing grammatical information about a word
  with an affix
• workverb-s (expresses that the verb has a third
  person singular subject)
• workverb-ed (expresses that the event expressed
  by the verb took place in the past)
• housenoun-s (expresses that we are dealing with
  more than one house)

12

• Inflectional morphology can be obligatory in some
  syntactic contexts.
• Sylvia usually walk to work.
• Sylvia usually walks to work.

13
Conversion

• Invisible morphology
• to build a build-er
• to dance a danc-er
• to run a run-er
• to kill a kill-er
• to cook a cook

14

• Conversion between different categories
• to runVERB a runNOUN
• yellowADJECTIVE to yellowVERB
• downPREPOSITION to downVERB
• greenADJECTIVE a greenNOUN

15

• Null affixes in inflection
• I/You usually go- to the market on Saturdays.

16
Tree structures

• Representing the structure of a complex word in
  the form of a tree diagram
• N
• N plural
• N N s
• school V N
• teach er

17
Structural ambiguity

• This ex-president-office-manager works for Bill
  Clinton.
• This ex-president-office-manager is now a street
  artist.

18

• N N
• N N ex N
• N N manager N N
• ex N office N N manager
• president president office