Morphology & Word Formations: Morphemes, Conditioning & Words
Morphology & Word Formations: Morphemes, Conditioning & Words
Morphology & Word Formations: Morphemes, Conditioning & Words
March 1, 2021 1
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the flea: ‘Let us fly’.
Said the fly: ‘Let us flee’.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
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WORD CLASSES
• Content Words
→ noun, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
→ “open class” vocabulary
• Function Words
→ pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries, etc
→ “closed class” vocabulary
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WORD RELATION & MORPHEME
• Words can be related to other words, e.g. happy – unhappy.
→ fundamental elements: morpheme
→ rules of combination: Word Formation Rules
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MORPHEMES
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MORPHEME
MONOMORPHEMIC
Simple words single morpheme
e.g : train
track
POLYMORPHEMIC
Complex words more than one morpheme
• happier
• unhappy unhappy -er
• unhappier
• unhappiness
un- happy
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RECOGNITION OF MORPHEMES
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BOUND & FREE MORPHEMES
doors
bound morpheme
s
Must be attached to another
element
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INFLECTIONAL & DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES
clouds cloudy
• Inflectional morpheme
→ provides further information about an existing
lexical item
e.g : car cars
jump jumped
• Derivational morpheme
→ creates an entirely new word March 1, 2021 10
Derivational Morpheme . . . .
AFFIXES
comb Comb
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ALLOMORPHS
The variant forms of morpheme
e.g: a, an
cats, dogs, horses, oxen, sheep, geese
• Phonological conditioning
→ its form is dependent on the adjacent
phonemes
• Lexical conditioning
→ its form seems to be a purely accidental one,
linked to a particular vocabulary item
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COMPOUNDS
the combination of two free forms
In English, the HEAD of a compound is usually the right-hand
member
The HEAD supplies the category and basic meaning for the
whole compounds
Compounds can be used with affixation to produce larger
words
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- blackberry
- blueberry
- strawberry BOUND ROOTS
- cranberry
- huckleberry
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HOMOPHONOUS MORPHEMES &
REDUPLICATION
Homophonous Morphemes
• two morphemes having the same pronunciation (form) with
different meanings
Reduplication
• the copying of a part of a word
e.g. the language of the people of Madura
in English?
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OTHER WAYS OF FORMING WORDS
• Blends
→ smoke + fog = smog
motor + hotel = motel
• Onomatopoeia
→ bang, buzz
• Words from names
→ jumbo, sandwich
• Truncation (Clipped words)
→ gym(nasium), (tele)phone
• Acronyms
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→ AIDS
DISCUSS…
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