CONTENT OF Introduction to morphology&syntax

 The concept of Morphology  Types of English phrases

 The Concept of Lexemes &Word Forms  Noun phrase (NP)
 The structure of a lexeme and paradigms  Verb phrase (VP)
2. The concept of morpheme  Adjective phrase (AjP)
 Morpheme / Morph / Allomorph  Adverb phrase
 Inflection and derivation  Prepositional phrase (PP)
 Free & Bound Morphemes  Testing for Structure
 Roots / Stems / Bases / Affixes  Substitution
3.Words and their internal structures  Movement
 Parts of Speech / Word Classes  Coordination
 Content and Function Words  Single-word phrases
7. Types and Structures of English clauses
 Word analysis
4. Word formation processes  Clause functions
 Subject (S)
 Compounding
 Predicator (P)
 Derivation
 Object (O)
 Conversion  Complement (C)
 Clipping  Adverbial (A)
 Acronymy  Form and function relationships
 Blending  Simple clause structures
 Back- formation  Coordinated structures
 Onomatopoeic  Subordinate structures
 Eponyms 8. Thematic/ semantic roles
 Toponyms  Agent
 Reduplication  Patient
 Stress shifting  Theme
 Coinage  Experiencer
 Borrowing  Goal
5. Compound words  Benefactive
 Locative
 The internal structure of compounds  Source
 Headed (endocentric) compounds  Instrument
 Non-headed (exocentric) compounds  Recipient
 Compounds vs. phrases 9.English sentence patterns
 Kinds of Sentences
6.Introduction to structures larger than words  Syntactic Structures (Predication,
 Structures of English phrases Modification, Coordination,
Complementation, Subordination)

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Introduction to Morphology
1. Introduction to Morphology
What is morphology?
Morphology is study of internal structure of wordsand formation of words. Moreover,
morphology is the study of word formation, including the ways new words are coined in the
languages of the world, and the way forms of words are varied depending on how they’re used in
sentences. As a native speaker of your language you have intuitive knowledge of how to form
new words, and every day you recognize and understand new words that you’ve never heard
before.
Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a
meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free
morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An
example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly." It is
bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another
morpheme to produce a word.
Morphology is the study of word formation, of the structure of words. Some observations about
words and their structure:
1. some words can be divided into parts which still have meaning
2. many words have meaning by themselves. But some words have meaning only when used
with other words
3. some of the parts into which words can be divided can stand alone as words. But others cannot
4. these word-parts that can occur only in combination must be combined in the correct way
5. languages create new words systematically.
1.1 Morphology in different languages
Morphology of Different Languages: The way in which morphemes are employed to modify
meaning can vary between languages. Morphological typology is a method used by linguists to
classify languages according to their morphological structure. While a variety of classification
types have been identified, we will look at a common method of classification: analytic,
agglutinative and fusional.

Analytic languages have a low ratio of morphemes to words. They are often isolating languages

in that each morpheme is also a word and vice versa. These languages create sentences with
independent root morphemes with grammatical relations between words being expressed with
separate words. Examples of analytics or isolating languages include Chinese languages and
Vietnamese. While in English we inflect numbers: one day, two days, an analytic language such
as Mandarin Chinese has no inflection: 一天, yìtiān “one day”, 三天, sāntiān “three day”. The
Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang has created an analytic language, Toki Pona, as a
minimalist creative endeavour.
Unlike analytic languages, synthetic languages employ inflection or agglutination to express
syntactic relationships. 

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 Agglutinative languages combine one or more morphemes into one word. The distinguishing
feature of these languages is that each morpheme is individually identifiable as a meaningful unit
even after combining into a word. Examples of agglutinative languages include, Turkish,
Japanese, Finnish, and Hungarian.

Another type of synthetic languages are fusional languages. Like agglutinative languages,

fusional languages also combine morphemes to modify meaning. However, these combinations
often do not remain distinct and fuse together. In addition, these languages also have a tendency
to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote numerous grammatical or syntactic features. For
example, the suffix -í in Spanish comí (“I ate”) denotes both first-person singular agreement and
preterite tense. Examples of fusional languages include Indo-European languages such as
Sanskrit, Spanish, Romanian, and German. Modern English could also be consideredfusional;
although it has tended to evolve to be more analytic. J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional language
Sindarin is fusional (another elvish language, Quenya, is agglutinative).

 Additional morphological type is polysynthetic. These languages tend to a high morpheme-to-

word ratio as well as regular morphology. They often combine a large number of morphemes to
form words that are the equivalent of entire sentences in other languages. Many languages in
North America such as Mohawk tend to have this type of morphology.
Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic
typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures. The field
organizes languages on the basis of how those languages form words by
combining morphemes. Analytic languages contain very little inflection, instead relying on
features like word order and auxiliary words to convey meaning. Synthetic languages, ones that
are not analytic, are divided into two categories: agglutinative and fusional languages.
Agglutinative languages rely primarily on discrete particles (prefixes, suffixes, and infixes) for
inflection, while fusional languages "fuse" inflectional categories together, often allowing one
word ending to contain several categories, such that the original root can be difficult to extract. A
further subcategory of agglutinative languages are polysynthetic languages, which
take agglutination to a higher level by constructing entire sentences, including nouns, as one
word.
What are morphological types of languages?
Morphological classification of languages ??- typological classification of world
languages ?? determined by the principles of morphological structure of words.
 Root languages. ...
 Agglutinative languages. ...
 Inflectional languages. ...
 Polysynthetic languages.
2. Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes
We can make a further distinction within the set of morphemes that are both bound and
grammatical. Bound grammatical morphemes (those that don’t have a sense by themselves and,

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additionally, always occur in combinations) are commonly known as affixes. They can be further
divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.
2.1 Inflectional Morphology
Inflectional morphemes add grammatical information to a word while retaining its core meaning
and its grammatical category. The tense of a verb is indicated by inflectional morphology. You
add -ed to walk to make walked. You can also make a past tense inflection through the change of
a vowel as in sang or wrote. Some languages have inflections for the future tense as well (which
English does not have). Another example is when you indicate number in English by adding -s to
a word you add the morpheme to the end of a singular noun. So, book can be made a plural by
adding -s to make it books. The original stem doesn’t change in meaning and it remains a noun.
While English only has singular and plural numbers.
2.2 Derivational Morphology
Another way in which morphemes modify meaning is through derivation. Here the original word
is modified by the derivation and often changes its word category. Form example, adding -er to
the verb write will modify it into a noun: writer. The same is seen in teacher, walker and baker.
In the same way, an adjective can be changed into a noun as in sad and –ness becoming sadness.
Derivation often leads to the creation of new words. These new words can in turn serve as a base
for further derivation. This can lead to some rather complex morphological forms. For example,
a machine that computes may be called a computer (compute and -er). When we use a computer
to complete a task, we could say they computerize (computer and -ize) which in turn can be
called computerization (computerize and -ation). One interesting observation is that inflecting a
base makes further derivation impossible. So, making a plural our
of computer into computers (computer and -s) means we cannot make it into *computersize.
3. The concept of word, The lexemes and word forms

 Lexicon- is mental dictionary

Lexeme- is fundamental unity of vocabulary that exists in different form. Example, SPEAK-
spoke-spoken-speaks-speaking. “SPEAK” is lexeme and all of them are verbs and so they are
under the same lexeme b/c all of them are verbs and the meaning is not changed. On the other
hand, all of them are words.
WORD: There is no universal expectation for what words should be like in different languages.
We will see examples in other languages that are structurally similar to the first, but are
considered a single word.
Word- is grammatical unity which contains single or combination of above two meanings. Word
can be categorized as:
A. Content word(open class)- they are changed word to show grammatical rule For example,
N,V, Adj and Adv. They have independent meaning in which image of s.th comes to our
mind when we call them. Open class can be involved in the morphological process.
B. Function word(close class)- They make grammar r/ship contents and they have no clear
lexical meaning. They are not involved in morphological process. For example, pronoun,
preposition, conjunctions, articles and determiners.

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The other division of word is that:
A)simple word- is word without any affix and it is not divided into morpheme. It can be said
free morpheme and can stand alone. work- simple word, b/c it has no morpheme.
B)Complex word- is the word that has two and above two morphemes. For example, Worker-
complex word b/c of it has two morphemes while, workers- is complex word b/c of it has 3
morphemes.
C)Compound word- are formed from two and above words eg blackboard
A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme .
 compound verbs:
 compound adjectives
 compound nouns
 headed and headless compounds
 blends and acronyms
 compounds containing bound combining forms
 phrasal words
Headed (endocentric) compounds
Head is a word that determines the syntactic types of that phrase. Eg big red dog

 Non-headed (exocentric) compounds

HEADED AND HEADLESS COMPOUNDS:
 Adjective-noun (AN):
 blackboard
 greenstone
 faintheart
 headless -itsstatus as a noun is not determined by either of its components.
 Headless AN compoundsloudmouth,redshank (a kind of a bird that has red legs)
 headlessNN compoundsstickleback( a kind of fish with spines on its back), sabretooth.
 exocentric– headless compounds – having a centre „outside themselves“
 endocentric–headed compounds --having an „internal centre“

3.1 Grammatical word

Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and
another- words like at, in, on, -ed, -s are called grammatical morphemes. Those morphemes that
can stand alone as words are called free morphemes (e.g., boy, food, in, on).
What is the meaning of grammatical words?
As Linguistics Words for which the primary function is to indicate grammatical relationships,
as distinct from lexical words, the primary function of which is referential (content words).
Grammatical words include articles, pronouns, and conjunctions. Lexical words include
nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
As linguistics Words for which the primary function is to indicate grammatical relationships, as
distinct from lexical words, the primary function of which is referential (content words).
Grammatical words include articles, pronouns, and conjunctions. Lexical words include nouns,
verbs, and adjectives.
What is the difference between lexical and grammatical?
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Lexical meaning is dominant in content words, whereas grammatical meaning is dominant in
function words, but in neither is grammatical meaning absent. Grammatical words include
prepositions, modals and auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and some adverbs.

Parts of Speech/Word Classes

Terms such as “adjective” and “noun” are used to label forms in the language as the parts of
speech or word classes. The technical terms used to describe each part of speech are illustrated in
the following sentence and simple definitions of each term are listed below.
Nouns are words used to refer to people (boy), objects (backpack), creatures (dog), places
(school), qualities (roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if they were
all “things.”
Articles are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those “things”
(You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take the apple).
Adjectives are words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the things
referred to (happy people, large objects, a strange experience).
Verbs are words used to refer to various kinds of actions(go, talk)and states (be, have) involving
people and things in events (Jessica is ill and has a sore throat so she can’t talk or go anywhere).
Adverbs are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states
and events(slowly, yesterday).Some adverbs(really, very) are also used with adjectives to modify
information about things(Really large objects move slowly. I had a very strange experience
yesterday).
Prepositions are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing
information about time (at five o’clock, in the morning),
Pronouns are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases, typically referring
to people and things already known (She talks to herself. They said it belonged to you).
Conjunctions are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and indicate
relationships between events (Chantel’s husband was so sweet and he helped her a lot because
she couldn’t do much when she was pregnant).
4. The concept of morpheme

 Morpheme/Morph/Allomorph
Morpheme- the smallest linguistic unit which has a meaning or grammatical function. Words
are composed of morphemes (one or more). The component parts of words are called
morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaning bearing unit in a language. They are not
divisible. There are some complications with this simple definition. sing·er·s, home·work,
moon·light, un·kind·ly, talk·s, ten·th, flipp·ed, de·nation·al·iz· ation
The order of morphemes matters: talk·ed = ed·talk, re·write = *write·re
Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided
further. There are two main types: free and bound.
A morphemecan be defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning and more
of less constant form.
Types of morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning we have – that is, the smallest piece of a word that
contributes meaning to a word. It cannot stand alone. It is smallest unit of language like, s, es,
ingand etc. Example The word trainings has 3 morphemes in it: train-ing-s.

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A. Free morpheme
A free morpheme is one that can stand on its own – that is, it’s an entire word. Examples the,
accept, agree, cat, run, pretty and etc. Free morphemes may appear with other bound
morphemes attached to them; crucially, though, they don’t need to have other morphemes on
them.
• Free – can appear as a word by itself; often can combine with other morphemes too. house
(house·s), walk (walk·ed). Past tense morpheme is a bound morpheme in English (-ed) and it
could be not past in another language.
Free morphemes can appear alone. Take for example the morpheme /cat/ (for simplicity, we will
not use the IPA transcription of morphemes, unless significant); we can find this morpheme used
independently in speech. Consider now the following words:
cat -s
carriage -s
despot -s
criminal- s
/cat/, /carriage/, /despot/, /criminal/, and /elephant/ are all free morphemes. They can occur alone
in discourse. This is not true for the /-s/ morpheme. This morpheme marks PLURALITY. Note
that semantic features will appear in capital letters. PLURALITY means that there is more than
one cat, dog, and so on. However, the PLURALITY morpheme cannot show up alone in speech
or writing; thus it is called a bound morpheme. Free morphemes are often called root morphemes
or stems. Bound morphemes are called affixes because they need to attach to another morpheme.
B. Bound morpheme
A bound morpheme cannot stand on its own, but rather must be attached to a free morpheme
whenever you say it. For examples, disagreement, unacceptable, Those morphemes are: dis,
ment, able, un, re-, un-, -est, -er, -fer and etc. Those morphemes can show plural or singular, to
form different word classes, to show grammatical structure.
Bound – cannot appear as a word by itself. -s (dog·s), -ly (quick·ly), -ed (walk·ed and etc.
Some morphemes are roots; others are affixes.
Root- The primary piece of meaning in a word, to which affixes can be added. In English, a root
is often a word itself. Examples cat, pretty
Affixes
Affixes are classified according to their position. If they come before the root, they are called
prefixes; if they occur after the root, they are called suffixes. If they attach in the middle of a
word, they are called infixes. Infixes are very rare in English but extremely common in other
languages.
Affix- A morpheme which attaches to roots (or stems), changing their meaning in regular ways.
Affixes are generally either prefixes or suffixes.
Prefix- An affix that goes before a root. Examples, re-, un- (re-read, un-loved)
Suffix- An affix that goes after a root. Examples -est, -er, -s (quick-est, quick-er, read-s,
book-s).
 Suffix can always, change the class of word. We use both prefix and suffix in derivation.
Infix: common in Austronesian and Austroasiatic and also in Amharic. It is very rare in English:
s·um·ulat and etc.
Morph. Is simple form
eg past t,Id, d are meaning that show past. So, t, id, and d are morph and together, three are
allomorph.

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The term morpheme is used both to refer to an abstract entity and its concrete realization(s) in
speech or writing. When it is needed to maintain the signified and signifier distinction, the term
morph is used to refer to the concrete entity, while the term morpheme is reserved for the
abstract entity only.
• Allomorphs – is single meaningful elements in different shapes. Eg cat-cats[s], dog-dogs[z],
church-churches[Iz]. Thefore, s, z and Iz are allomorph. Morphemes having the same function
but different form. Unlike the synonyms they usually cannot be replaced one by the other.

4.1 Content and Functional

• Content morphemes – carry some semantic content car, -able, un
• Functional morphemes – provide grammatical information like, the, and, -s (plural), -s
WORDS AND THEIR PARTS
If we combine phonemes we get a larger unit, called a morpheme. For example, if we put
together the phonemes /d/, /o/, and /g/, we get the morpheme /do:g/ spelled dog. Note that
morphemes are written between slashes, like phonemes. Recall the definition of phonemes as the
smallest distinctive units in language. An important aspect of their nature is that they have no
meaning: a sound has no meaning in and of itself. On the contrary, morphemes have meanings.
“Cat” means something, for example.
Definition of morpheme: The smallest unit of language with a distinct meaning.
Morphemes and Words
So a morpheme can be I -z/ as in dogs (i.e., it marks the plurality of the dogs, meaning there's
more than one dog). The term "word" is not a technical term of linguistics. Usually by word we
mean any sequence of letters divided by blank spaces. Thus in the sentence
Mary has two dogs
We would say that there are four words. However, there are a number of problems: to begin
with, the term “dogs” is two morphemes (/dog/+-z/); on the other hand, as we saw previously,
there are "words" that consist of more than one "word" {put off, do away with, fly off and so
on): these are called phrasal verbs and idioms. Thus, in order to avoid these problems, linguists
have decided to use the word morpheme to indicate any unit of meaning that cannot be broken
down any further (think of them as "semantic atoms") and to use the word lexeme to indicate any
entry in the lexicon (the vocabulary) of a speaker/language. Lexemes may be plural morphemic
(i.e., have more than one morpheme).
4.2 Analyzing words
Morphological analysis
This section has three parts. In the first part, some basic terms in morphology is introduced, in
particular, morpheme, affix, prefix, suffix, boundand free forms. Thesecond reviews conventional
ways of grouping languages, such as isolating, agglutinative and inflecting. The final section
looks at some morphological processes, concentrating only on those of greater relevance to
natural language engineering.
Some terminology
Linguistics sets out to describe language. Any description needs some terminology with which to
set out its description. We can think of this as the technical vocabulary of the discipline. Natural
languages have their own terms to describe themselves. For instance, we colloquially talk about
"words", "phrases", "sentences" and "paragraphs". Do we know what these words mean?
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We'll look at just the definition of the word. In text like this, we can easily spot "words" because
they are separated from each other by spaces or by punctuation. However, if you record ordinary,
conversational speech, you will find that there are no breaks between words. In spite of this, we
could isolate units which we use in speech again and again, but in different combinations. This
suggests that there is a small unit something like a word. But just how do we define a "word"?
We will all agree that black and bird are words. Is blackbird one word or two words?
Is blackbirds the same word as blackbird or a separate word?

The classification of morphological structural types

It was suggested above that English is, from the morphological point-of-view, quite a
straightforward language. The implication is that other languages behave in rather a different
ways and this is the basis of this classification scheme. Linguists of earlier generations were
quite interested in producing family trees of languages to show which modern languages
descended from which earlier ones and, perhaps, even being able to reconstruct lost languages.
Morphological structure is just one way of grouping languages.

There are usually three classes in this classification.

Isolating languages
The words in an isolating language are invariable. To put it another way, it is composed of free
morphemes and so there are no morphemes to indicate information like grammatical number (eg
plural) or tense (past, present, future). Mandarin Chinese is often quoted as an example of such a
language (although some claim Vietnamese to be a better example).
The transliterated sentence:
goubúài chi qingcài
may be literally translated as:
dog not like eat vegetable
Depending on the context, it can mean any of the four following sentences:
the dog did not like to eat vegetables
the dogs do not like to eat vegetables
the dogs did not like to eat vegetables
dogs do not like to eat vegetables
Agglutinative languages
My dictionary gives the definition of agglutinate as "unite as with glue; (of language)
combine simple words without change of form to express compound ideas". Textbook
examples are usually based on Turkish or Swahili, of which we'll use the former.

The important thing about this example is to notice how the morphemes all represent a
"unit of meaning" and how they remain absolutely identifiable within the structure of the
words. This is in contrast to what happens in the last class: the inflecting languages.

Inflecting languages
The words in inflecting languages do show different forms and it is possible to break the
words into smaller units and label them, in the same way that the Turkish example was
presented above. However, the result is a very muddled and contradictory account. Usual

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 examples are based on Latin and rely on a knowledge of the Latin grammatical case
example, which most English undergraduates don't have. As a simple example, the Latin
for "I love" is amo. This is means that the ending o is used to express the meanings, first
person ("I" or "we"), singular, present tense, and also other meanings.

This classification has only three classes. Is it really possible to fit all the world's languages into
three classes? From one way of looking at the problem, it is impossible to fit any of the
languages into any of the classes, because each language is impure. That is to say, if you look
hard enough, you will find inflection in mainly agglutinative languages, inflection in isolating
languages, agglutination in inflectional languages and so on.

6. Roots, affixes, stems and bases

Bases, roots, and stems are the morphemes that other morphemes attach to. The parts that get
attached are called affixes. Affixation is the process of attaching morphemes to bases. An affix is
the morpheme that gets attached.

Morphemes can be considered free or bound.

 A Free Morpheme can be a word on its own.

 A Bound Morpheme must be attached to another element.

An analysis of the word cats, as described in terms of words and morphemes, would be:

 Cat = simple word, one morpheme

 Cat = free morpheme, can be a word
 Cats = complex word, two morphemes
 Cats = two morphemes, one free (cat), one bound (-s)

We need new terms to help us out:

Base

Root

Stem
A Base is a word form that other morphemes can
attach to. Bases include both roots and stems.
A Root is the core of a word. A root can be free or
bound.

A Stem is a root with some modifications to it. They

are usually derivational in nature.

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With the use of plant terminology,
it might be helpful to imagine a plant in order to keep these terms clear in your mind.

7. Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes

We can make a further distinction within the set of morphemes that are both bound and
grammatical. Bound grammatical morphemes (those that don’t have a sense by themselves and,
additionally, always occur in combinations) are commonly known as affixes. They can be further
divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.
Some morphemes can be used to create new words from old ones; they are called derivational
morphemes. For example, the name for the person who performs an action (agent) is often
formed with the "agentive" derivational morpheme -eras in
to buy ~ buyer
to sell ~ seller
On the other hand, inflectional morphemes simply mark such grammatical categories as
PLURAUTY, TENSE (past, continuous present), comparatives (tall-er), superlatives (tall-est),
and THIRD PERSON SINGULAR (walk-s). The principal differences between derivational and
inflectional morphemes are as follows.
Inflectional morphemes
It is phonological process in which word(open class) are changed it form to show grammatical
functions. It could be number, tense, gender and others. There are around 8 bound inflectional
affixes. Most of them are suffixes. For example …ies, ..es, …s, …’s, …ing, ..ed, …er, ..est, ..en
and others. In this case, only open class words are involved(inflected).
Noun inflection- to be singular or plural
Verb inflection- to show tenses
Adjective inflection- comparative, superlative
NB- whenever, consonants end in voiceless, the plural form of that word/noun can added ‘s’
except for ,ʃ, ʤ, s, z and t. example, cats(s)
Whenever sound ends in voiced, it is to make that noun plural, it ends in ‘z’. This is when you
call or change into phonetics description and inflected. Egdogs(z)
• They do not make a significant meaning change in a word or change the word's part of speech.
They are required by syntax.
• They are very productive. You can attach them to several words. Example: The morpheme for
PLURALITY in English (/-s/) can attach to virtually all nouns (with very few exceptions, such
as irregular nouns like o:", goose, woman, man).
• In English, they are located after derivational morphemes, farthest from the root.
• In English, they are suffixes only.
inflectional rules - relate different forms of the same lexeme(an abstract kind of word of which
the word forms are all inflectional variants)

• Derivational morphemes
It is the morphological process in which new words are created (derived) with new meaning
(class by adding morphemes, affix, suffix, prefix on the root. Those morphemes can be:
…en, ..de, …ve, …tion, …able, …ly, …ize, ..er, …cal, ..ment and etc.

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NB. We use both prefix and suffix in derivation.
• Derivational morpheme can change the meaning of the word, or change the word's part of
speech.
- adjectives +-ly: adverbs (e.g .. quick-ly)
• Syntax does not require the presence of derivational. They are optional. Whereas inflectional is
required by rules (see the following section on inflectional morphemes).
• Individually. Derivational is less productive. You cannot attach them to as many words as
inflectional morphemes. Example: -hood, as in childhood, adulthood, as opposed to -s/. Note the
dash(-), which means that the morpheme cannot appear by itself, i.e., it is a bound morpheme.
Thus one should not confuse it with the free morpheme hood, as in the hood of the car.
• In English, derivationals are located closest to the root.
• In English, they can be either prefixes or suffixes.

Tense, aspect, mood and voice

The remaining inflectional affixes are attached to verb stems, forming present and past tenses,
and present and past participles: Webster’s dictionary defines a participle as “a word having the
characteristics of both verb and adjective; especially an English verbal form that has the function
of an adjective and at the same time shows such verbal features as tense and voice and capacity
to take an object.” Our examination of inflectional affixes thus leads us into a discussion of the
various morphological forms that verbs can take, though this topic can’t be fully explored until
we deal with the topic of Syntax. Present Tense {PRES} present tense forms are root + {PRES}.
But there is only a surface affix when there is a 3rd person singular subject. That’s to say: John
loves Mary = {love} + {PRES} = {love} + {-s} Packer Morphology 6 You love Mary = {love}
+ {PRES} = {love} + {Ø} However, modal verbs – can/could, shall.should, will/would,
may/might and must—show an absense of this third person singular –s. John may love Mary.
When a modal verb occurs in a sentence, it is always ther first verb form and is always followed
by an uninflected verb form. Past Tense {PAST} past tense verb forms. John walked = {walk} +
{PAST}. drove ={drive} + {PAST} In English, only the first verb form is inflected for tense. For
example: I think; but I have thought; and I am thinking [??
8. Morphological trees
Morphological trees represent the analysis of word structure
Useful tool to illustrate derivation and inflection.
Tree Structures
Trees can be drawn from the top-down or from the bottom-up.Using the top down method: start
with the base word label, in this case A for adjective, then split off each major division. In this
case there is just one affix, Af, and an adjective, A. Once the parts are labeled, the word parts can
be filled in underneath.Using the bottom up method: start with the word written out with spaces
between each morpheme. "Branch" up and label each part. In this case, Af and A. Then join the
two parts together by drawing connecting lines. Finally label the top node to show the syntactic
category of the whole word.

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Morphological trees examples

13
9. Word formation processes
Where Do New Words Come From?
The English language has roughly 500,000 words, but new words are being invented every day
to match the ever-changing needs of the speakers, such as the new words required by the rising
importance of computers in our lives. Derivational morphemes are only one way to get new
words from old ones. The following are some of the ways that speakers can create new words in
English.
 Obviously words don’t make words, people make words! But study of historical change
in languages shows that people do so in ways that are systematic. Since children often
make words too, the study of historical language change has potential relevance to study
of child language.
Derivation
New words can be created by using derivational morphemes. For example, after we invented the
fax machine, we needed a verb to describe the action of jaxing-hence, to fax.
Affixation/Derivation-
In our list so far, we have not dealt with what is by far the most common word formation
process to be found in the production of new English words. This process is called derivation and
it is accomplished by means of a large number of small “bits” of the English language which are
not usually given separate listings in dictionaries. These small “bits” are generally described as
affixes. Some familiar examples are the elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism and -ness
which appear in words like unhappy, misrepresent, prejudge, joyful, careless, boyish, terrorism
and sadness.
Compounding
Another technique is that of putting two old words together to make a new one, e.g., railway,
department store, pick+pocket: leba/thief, black+board: blackboard and etc.
Conversion
When one word can be both V and N at once it can be two words b/c it has two meanings. eg
small, taste which are both verb and noun.
A change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used as a verb
(without any reduction), is generally known as conversion. Other labels for this very common
process are “category change” and “functional shift.” A number of nouns such as bottle, butter,
chair and vacation have come to be used, through conversion, as verbs: We bottled the home-
brew last night; Have you buttered the toast?; Someone has to chair the meeting; They’re
vacationing in Florida. These conversions are readily accepted, but some examples, such as the
noun impact being used as a verb, seem to impact some people’s sensibilities rather negatively.
The conversion process is particularly productive in Modern English, with new uses occurring
frequently. The conversion can involve verbs becoming nouns, with guess, must and spy as the
sources of a guess, a must and a spy. Phrasal verbs (to printout, to take over) also become nouns
(a print out , a takeover). One complex verb combination (want to be) has become a new noun,
as in “He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wanna be.” Verbs (see through, stand up) also become
adjectives, as in see-through material or a stand-up comedian. Or adjectives, as in a dirty floor,
an empty room, some crazy ideas and those nasty people, can become the verbs to dirty and to
empty or the nouns a crazy and the nasty.
Clipping- Clipping New words can be constructed by shortening a longer word, e.g.,
( tele)phone, proj(essor ), auto(mobile), lab-laboratory.

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Acronym- A rich source of new words is the practice of using the initial letters of a set of words,
e.g., NAFTA, NASA, NFL, PTA, HIV,AIDS.
Acronyms are different from abbreviations in that acronyms use initial letters of words or parts
of words. Abbreviations shorten the word, as in am for amount or pres for president. Acronyms
are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. These can be forms such as
CD (“compact disk”) or VCR (“video cassette recorder”) where the pronunciation consists of
saying each separate letter. More typically, acronyms are pronounced as new single words, as in
NATO, NASA or UNESCO. These examples have kept their capital letters, but many acronyms
simply become everyday terms.
Blending - New words can also be created by the blending of two existing words, e.g., motel
(motor+hotel), brunch (breakfast+lunch).
Back- formation-
New words are unconsciously created by speakers when they no longer analyze a word in its
constituent morphemes and instead break it down according to the way it "looks:· From the word
inflammable came flammable, when people perceived in- as the NEGATION morpheme; from
swindler came swindle (when the -er suffix was perceived as the agentive, i.e., the person doing
the action); from burglar came burgle. This phenomenon is also known as reanalysis.
The other example, eg pop-popular, hawk-hawker
Onomatopoeic- is the formation of word from a sound associated with what is named. Eg
cuckoo, sizzle. It is also is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the sound that
it describes.
Reduplication- Reduplication – part of the word or the entire word is doubled: dik ‘thick’ –
dik·dik ‘very thick’. It is also copy it in repeatedly. For example in Amharic, kital-kitalakital
Coinage- Is the name of modernized/new come materials as the result of technology .egTv,
vaselin
Borrowing- Languages in contact borrow words from each other. It may be that one language
does not have a word for a new product or concept. Thus, when coffee became popular in
Europe, the Arabic word kawatinwas used in various forms: coffee, cafe, Kaffee, and so on.
Japan in turn borrowed koffi from the European languages. Borrowing is a two-way street;
English gave French weekend and took bon vivant. Japanese took game from English and gave it
sushi. Indeed, Japanese is full of English loan words. Another example that English borrowed is,
zebra-bantu, piano-Italy

What is Syntax?
Syntaxis linguistics part that studies the way in which words or linguistics forms are arranged
together in sequence to form well-formed phrase, clause and sentence. So, Syntax is the
arrangement of words to show their r/ship to one another in a sentence or to form well-formed
sentence. Syntax defines the formal relations between the constituents of a language, thereby
providing a structural description of the various expressions that make up legal strings in the
language. Syntax deals solely with the form and structure of symbols in a language without any
consideration given to their meaning. It studies internal structure of words, phrases and sentence.
The following listed items are considered by syntax.
• Word order: I want these books.
*want these I books.
• Agreement – subject and verb, determiner and noun, often must agree:
He wants this book.

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 *He want this book.
I want these books.
*I want this books.
Agreement is an informal rule for English subject-verb agreement. In English, the main verb
agrees with the head element of the subject.
• How many complements which prepositions and forms (cases):
I give Mary a book.
*I see Mary a book.
I see her.
*I see she.
• Hierarchical structure – what modifies what
We need more (intelligent leaders). (more of intelligent leaders)
We need (more intelligent) leaders. (leaders that are more intelligent)
Syntax is not about meaning! Sentences can have no sense and still be grammatically correct:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. – nonsense, but grammatically correct
*Sleep ideas colorless furiously green. – grammatically incorrect

One of the important feature of language, and one more central to syntax, is that language
makes infinite use of finite set of rules or principles, the observation of which led the
development of generative linguistics in the 20th century (cf. Chomsky 1965). A language is a
system for combining its parts in infinitely many ways. One piece of evidence of the system can
be observed in word-order restrictions. If a sentence is an arrangement of words and we have 5
words such as man, ball, a, the, and kicked, how many possible combinations can we have from
these five words? More importantly, are all of these combinations grammatical sentences?
Mathematically, the number of possible combinations of 5 words is 5! (Factorial), equaling 120
instances. But among these 120 possible combinations, only 6 form grammatical English
sentences.
(1)a. The man kicked a ball.
b. A man kicked the ball.
c. The ball kicked a man.
d. A ball kicked the man.
e. The ball, a man kicked.
f. The man, a ball kicked.
All the other 114 combinations, a few of which are given in (2), are unacceptable to native
speakers of English. We use the notation * to indicate that a hypothesized example is
ungrammatical.
2. Lexical categories
What is lexical?
Lexicalis related to word or vocabulary of language. It is also a single word, or a part of word or
a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language’s lexicon/vocabulary.

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Major Lexical Categories
Noun (N)-Nouns are words used to refer to people (boy), objects (backpack), creatures (dog),
places (school), qualities (roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if
they were all “things.”
Verb (V)-Verbs are words used to refer to various kinds of actions(go, talk)and states (be, have)
involving people and things in events (Jessica is ill and has a sore throat so she can’t talk or go
anywhere).
Adjective (Adj)-Adjectivesare words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information
about the things referred to (happy people, large objects, a strange experience).
Adverb (AdV)-Adverbs are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about
actions, states and events(slowly, yesterday).Some adverbs(really, very) are also used with
adjectives to modify information about things(Really large objects move slowly. I had a very
strange experience yesterday).
Minor Lexical Categories
Determiner- (Det) the, a/an, this, those
Articles are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those “things”
(You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take the apple).
AuxiliaryVerb-(Aux)
Preposition (P)-Prepositionsare words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in
phrases providing information about time (at five o’clock, in the morning).
Pronoun (Pro)-Pronouns are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases,
typically referring to people and things already known (She talks to herself. They said it
belonged to you).
Conjunction(C)-Conjunctions are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections
and indicate relationships between events (Chantel’s husband was so sweet and he helped her a
lot because she couldn’t do much when she was pregnant).
3. Words and their internal structures
Hierarchical structure of words
This structure is to show word’s order of morpheme.
Structure of words
Structure of words can be captured in a similar way as structure of sentences.
(4) unbelievable = un + (believ + able), not *(un + believe) + able.

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Activity: Do the following one according to the given example, unsystematic, unlockable,
help(v,n), helpless(adj), helpful(adj), unhelpful(adj), helplessness(n), unhelpfulness(n)

Phrases, Constituents & Phrase Structure Rules

Describing Noun Phrases
In English, a noun phrase a determiner followed by a noun, or determiner followed by an
adjective followed by a noun, or a single noun, or ...
To save words, we can use the so called Phrase Structure Rules capture this:
(1)a. NP → Det N the cat
b. NP → Det A N those noisy cats
c. NP → N cats
d. NP → A N noisy cats
We can mark optional subphrases with parentheses and save even more words:
(2) NP → (Det) (A) N cats, noisy cats, the cat, those noisy cats.
A phrase structure rule tell us two things:
• Which smaller phrases (Det, A, N) use to build a bigger phrase (NP).
• How to order the smaller phrases – the rule (2) allows noisy cats, but not cats noisy
In addition, a pronoun can be a noun phrase:
(4) NP → Pron she, you, ...
Describing Prepositional phrases
In English, preposition is usually followed by a noun phrase (let’s ignore the prepositions at the
end of the sentence).
(5) PP → P NP about those noisy cats

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2.1 Determining lexical categories
2.2. Content vs. function word
Word- is grammatical unity which contains single or combination of above two meanings. Word
can be categorized as:
C. Content word(open class)- they are changed word to show grammatical rule For example,
N,V, Adj and Adv. They have independent meaning in which image of s.th comes to our
mind when we call them. Open class can be involved in the morphological process.
D. Function word(close class)- They make grammar r/ship contents and they have no clear
lexical meaning. They are not involved in morphological process. For example, pronoun,
preposition, conjunctions, articles and determiners.
Closed Classes
 Determiners (D, Det)
articles (a, the), quantifiers (many, any, all, several), possesives(my, your, his, her)
Syntax – come before nouns: (Adj) N
 Auxiliary verbs (Aux)
will, may, must, shall, would, can, have Syntax:
 Pronouns (Pron)
Words that stand for a noun or a whole noun phrase are. I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him,
her, us, them
 Prepositions (P) in, on, about, with, at, to, of, under
 Conjunctions (Conj) and, or, but, ...
Syntax: connect two words or phrases on the same level
1. N N (women and men)
2. V V (run or walk)
3. AdjAdj (warm but rainy)
4. S S (I will talk and he will write.)
5. etc.
The other division of word is that:
A)simple word- is word without any affix and it is not divided into morpheme. It can be said
free morpheme and can stand alone. work- simple word, b/c it has no morpheme.
B)Complex word- is the word that has two and above two morphemes. For example, Worker-
complex word b/c of it has two morphemes while, workers- is complex word b/c of it has 3
morphemes.
C)Compound word- are formed from two and above words eg blackboard
Phrasal Categories
Noun Phrase (NP)- the young man, books, John
Verb Phrase (VP)- runs, opened the door
Prepositional Phrase (PP)- in the dark, in open contest
The phrases are broken into:
NP- Det, N,NP
VP- v, Np, pp, cp
PP- p, Np
CP- Cs
S- NP, VP/

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Phrases head
NP ………………………N
VP……………………….V
AP……………………….A

Sentences category
In this section we’ve been looking at the rule that needed to generate trees that account for
English sentences. As we’ll see in later chapters, this is nothing but a first pass at a very complex
set of data. It is probably worth repeating the final form of each of the rules here:
a) S' → (C) S
b) S → { NP / S' } T VP
c) VP → (AP+) V ({NP/S'}) (PP+) (AP+)
d) NP → (D) (AP+) N (PP+).
e) PP → P (NP)
f) AP → (AP) A

example,
Figure 1.The actor-undergoer hierarchy.

The big man from NY has often said that he gave peanuts to elephants.

20
HOW TO DRAW A TREE
You now have the tools you need to start drawing trees. You have the rules, and you have the
parts of speech. I suspect that you’ll find drawing trees much more difficult than you expect! It
takes a lot of practice to know which rules to apply and apply them consistently and accurately to
a sentence. You won’t be able to draw trees easily until you literally do dozens of them. Drawing
syntactic trees is a learned skill that needs lots of practice, just like learning to play the piano.
There are actually two ways to go about drawing a tree. You can start at the bottom and work
your way up to the S, or you can start with the S and work your way down. Which technique you
use depends upon your individual style. For most people who are just starting out, starting at the
bottom of the tree with the words works best. When you become more practiced and experienced
you may find starting at the top quicker. Below, I give step-by-step instructions for both of these
techniques.
Rule how to structure the tree diagram
-First separate subject & predicate
Structures of English phrases
It is traditional to represent the structure of the sentence with a tree diagram that shows with
branching lines the process illustrated of breaking down the sentence. A simple example follows:
show it in tree diagram. For example. Marry met a tall man in the garden.

21
Types of NPs in English
Let us look at some other examples that will show the various configurations of an NP in
English. An NP may be very simple or have a fairly complex structure: show those NP on tree
diagram. For example. Mary, the woman, the smart woman

Types of English phrases

 Noun phrase (NP)
 Verb phrase (VP)
 Adjective phrase (AjP)
 Adverb phrase (Adp)
 Prepositional phrase (PP)
Phrase/Constituent
Intuitively, a constituent (phrase) is a group of words which “belong together” in a sentence.
They are usually coherent by themselves (i.e., when taken out of the context of the sentence) and
make a coherent contribution to the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
(1) a. The dog ate the bone.
b. The president of the company likes to see big profits.
c. My stupid kid brother told my mom about my F in algebra.
Always relative to a given sentence. What is a constituent in one sentence is not necessarily a
constituent in another sentence.

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Combinatorial Possibilities

 Five words: kicked, the, man, a, ball

 Possible combinations: total 120 but only 6 are grammatical
(1) a. The man kicked a ball.
b. A man kicked the ball.
c. The ball kicked a man.
d. A ball kicked the man.
e. The ball, a man kicked.
f. The man, a ball kicked.
(2) a. *Kicked the man the ball.
b. *Man the ball kicked the.
c. *The man a ball kicked.
Morphosyntax 

Morphosyntax studies grammatical units that have both morphological and syntactic properties.

It is the set of rules that govern grammatical units whose features are definable by both morphological
and syntactic criteria.

These grammatical units are definable using both morphology and syntax as they apply to words.

Grammatical categories like NUMBER, CASE, GENDER, PERSON, TENSE, ASPECT, etc. are

morphosyntactic.

Number contrast for example is morphosyntactic in most languages.

Number contrasts require a morphological marking with an affix, for example the suffix –s in English and
it also affects syntax because of the agreement between the subject and the verb.

There are languages, for example Hausa, where the adjective must also agree with the noun it is
modifying.  

ADDITIONAL

8.6 Subcategories
1. What is the subcategory of the underlined verb in this sentence? The soccer players kicked the
ball. Transitive.

2. What is the subcategory of the underlined verb in this sentence? Many birds fly over Ontario each
fall. Intransitive.

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3. What is the subcategory of the underlined verb in this sentence? This game teaches children the
alphabet. Ditransitive.

8.8 Adjuncts
1. Is the underlined phrase an adjunct or a complement? Sam ran the Around-the-Bay race. Complement.

2. Is the underlined phrase an adjunct or a complement? Sam ran this morning. Adjunct.

3. Is the underlined phrase an adjunct or a complement? The baby slept through the night. Adjunct.

8.9 Move
1. Which tree diagram correctly represents the question, “Could you hand me those scissors?”

2. Which tree diagram correctly represents the question, “Does Suresh like Ethiopian food?” 

3. Which tree diagram correctly represents the question, “Will the Habs win the Stanley Cup?”

8.10 Wh-Movement
1. Which tree diagram correctly represents the Deep Structure for the question, “Who did Brenda see at
the gym?”

2.Which tree diagram correctly represents the Surface Structure for the question, “Where did you get that
hat?”
=

3. Which tree diagram correctly represents the Surface Structure for the question, “Why should I trust
you?”

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Chapter 9 Sentence Structure and Meaning

9.2 Events, Participants, and Thematic Roles

1. What label best describes the thematic role of the underlined NP? The guard chased the
intruder. Agent.

2. What label best describes the thematic role of the underlined NP? The wind slammed the door
shut. Cause.

3. What label best describes the thematic role of the underlined NP? The guard followed the
intruder. Theme.

9.3 Thematic Roles and Passive Sentences

1. Is the following sentence in the active or passive voice? The patient was diagnosed with
alopecia. Passive.

2. Is the following sentence in the active or passive voice? Eileen was convinced that her appointment had
been cancelled. Passive.

3. Is the following sentence in the active or passive voice? The children had been invited to a tea
party. Passive.

Chapter 10 Word Meanings

10.1 Elements of Word Meaning: Intensions and Extensions

1. Sidney Crosby, Wayne Gretzy, and Maurice Richard, and  ______________ of hockey
player. Extensions.

2. Has pages, binding, and contains writing are all __________________ of book. Intensions.

3. Head of state, lives in the White House, and American are all ______________ of President of the
United States. Intensions.

10.2 Intensions in the Mind

1. For most speakers of Canadian English in the category animals, giraffe is probably: Less typical than
dog.

2. For most speakers of Canadian English, in the category pets, tarantula is probably: Peripheral.

3. Choose the set of features that best defines chair. [+furniture, +legs, +back, +seat, -blankets].

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