INTRODUCTION TO MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX (NGL 243)

Dr. Monira Al-Mohizea

Outline

What is morphology ?1.1 Introduction

1.2 What is a ‘word ?’1.3 Words and lexemes

1.4 Morphemes

Introducing Morphology

Definition:Morphology is simply the study of how words are put together. Morphology is the component of grammar

that study the internal structure of words. It is concerned with:

1. the speakers knowledge of words (e.g. goalkeeper).

2. The rules used to interpret and form new words.

Consider the following words!

Earwitness Televangelist Imho Wordrobe McJob Disorient Express

Aim of Morphology

The aim of morphology is to make the subconscious knowledge of words explicit.

What is a word

Morphology is the study of words internal structure but what is a word??

Discuss this with your partner.

A definition of a ‘word’ Bloomfield (1935) “a word is a minimum

free form”. It can occur on its own as an utterance, E.g. Boys! It is the smallest unit in language that can

be manipulated by syntax (can be parsed).

Consider the following:

The neighbour’s dog disturbed burglars. Burglar's were disturbed by the

neighbour’s dogs. *s burglar weres disturb the ed by the

neighbour’s dog s. *sdog the neighbour’s disturbed s burglar. The neighbour’s *dog sdisturb burglar ed. *dog ed the s neighbour’s disturb the s

burglar.

Other definitions of a ‘word’ (1) Word form: the shape that represent the

word in speech or writing.In the written language word-forms are called Orthographic words. vs. phonological words.Consider this sentence above, how many words are there?? Compare it to:www.yahoo.com

Other definitions of a ‘word’ (2)

Lexeme or a ‘lexical item’ is used when by word we mean vocabulary item, which requires a single dictionary entry.

E.g. lexeme: write Writing Wrote written

Other definitions of a ‘word’ (3)

Words viewed as syntactic units are called grammatical words, whereby :

a lexeme is considered together with its morphological and syntactic (morpho-syntactic) properties.

E.g. speaking, spoke, spoken.

What is a morpheme?

Is word the smallest unit of morphological structure? Discuss?

What is a morpheme?

E.g. Boys!Boy (has meaning)+ -s(pl.) (grammatical function) the minimal unit which has a

meaning or a grammatical function is called morpheme.

What is a morpheme?

Linguists define a morpheme as the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning. Simple words such as, giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are morphemes.

but so are prefixes like re- and pre- and suffixes like -ize and -er.

So, a word is one or more morphemes that can stand alone in a language.

Exercise!

Consider the following words, What do you notice:

opposition intellectual crystallize prewash repressive Blackboard

giraffe fraud murmur oops just Pistachio

(1) Simplex words vs. complex

Words that consist of only one morpheme, such as the words in (1) giraffe, wiggle, or yellow are morphemes, can be termed simple or simplex words.

Words that are made up of more than one morpheme, e.g. prewash, goalkeeper, and classroom are called complex.

Discussion

How many words do we know in our language? Consider in reference to age groups:

How much do we know? Children entering school – 13000* A highschool graduate – 60000* A literate adult – 120000* + names of people,

places... The list of words for any language is called

lexicon?? Existence of words in the native language is

obvious, but in a foreign language it is difficult to recognize words. When you have mastered a language, you are able to recognize individual words without effort.

* source: Akmajian, A. et al. 2001. Linguistics. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 11

Thank you