Morphology, Part 2

January 26, 2012

Mr. Burns Quick Write• Is it realistic to portray Mr. Burns as having a dictionary inside his head?

Interesting Thoughts

The Last Word(s)

In Our Last Episode• Words and morphemes (meaningful “word parts”)

• Word-formation rules

• Free and bound morphemes

• Simple and complex words

• Affixes and roots

Tree Structures• In this class, we’ll primarily stick with tree diagrams to represent word structure.

• (because they look better and are easier to read)

re construct ion un desire able

• Tree terminology: branches

• nodes: where two branches meet

• nodes represent constituents of the word

Building the Perfect Beasts• To accurately capture all of the facts of word formation…

• tree structures should represent the lexical categories of all constituents at each node in the tree.

Noun Adj

Verb Adj

Aff Verb Aff Aff Verb Aff

[re-] [construct] [-ion] [un-] [desire] [-able]

Test Case• What should the tree diagram for “reassignment” look like?

Noun

Verb

Aff Verb Aff

[re-] [assign] [-ment]

3. reassignment

2. reassign

1. assign

Another Test Case• How about the tree diagram for “miscategorization”?

Noun

Verb

Verb

Aff Noun Aff Aff

[mis-] [category] [-ize] [-ation]

4. miscategorization

3. miscategorize

2. categorize

*miscategory

1. category

Ambiguity• Some complex words can have more than one interpretation

• Different derivations can result in different interpretations

• Example: “unlockable”

Note: [un-] can attach to both adjectives and verbs

[-able] attaches to verbs and creatives adjectives

Unlockable, part 1 Adj

Adj

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = not able to be locked

Unlockable, part 2 Adj

Verb

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = able to be unlocked

Inflections vs. Derivations• Linguists draw another distinction among affixes:

1. Inflectional affixes:• mark grammatical properties

• (person, number, gender, tense, aspect)• don’t change other aspects of meaning• are required by rules of sentence structure• create a new “word form”

2. Derivational affixes:• change meaning• create a new word • (typically) have clear semantic content• may change the lexical category of the word

Inflectional Affixes• There are precisely eight inflectional affixes in English:

1. -s 3rd person wait --> waits

2. -ing progressive wait --> waiting

3. -ed past tense wait --> waited

4. -en past participle eat --> eaten

5. -s plural card --> cards

6. -’s possessive dad --> dad’s

7. -er comparative tall --> taller

8. -est superlative weak --> weakest

• All of these are suffixes.

Inflectional Affixes• Other languages can have a lot more inflectional affixes.

• Examples from French: parler “to speak”

• 1st person, plural: parlons “We speak”

• 2nd person, plural: parlez “You guys speak”

• Past tense:

• 1st person, singular: parlais “I spoke”

• 1st person, plural: parlions “We spoke”

• 2nd person, plural: parliez “You guys spoke”

• Plus many, many more.

• Note: Volapük. (http://www.visi.com/~dean/volverb.html)

Derivational Affixes• In contrast to inflectional affixes, derivational affixes:

• Create new words when they’re attached to roots

• Examples:

• re- cycle --> recycle

• de- code --> decode

• -y fish --> fishy

• -ize vandal --> vandalize

• Also: English has far more derivational affixes than inflectional affixes.

• For fairness’ sake: http://www.visi.com/~dean/volword.html

Picky, Picky (last time)• Inflectional affixes are always going to attach to a root with a particular part of speech.

• Plural noun = singular noun + “s”

• birds = bird + s dogs = dog + s

• Past tense verb = present tense verb + “ed”

• waited = wait + ed talked = talk + ed

• Comparative adjective = adjective + “er”

• taller = tall + er shorter = short + er

• Q: if both a derivational and an inflectional affix attach to a root, which will attach first?

The Relationship• A: Derivational affixes will always attach before inflectional affixes do.

• Remember: derivational affixes create new words;

• Inflectional affixes just create new word forms.

• Examples: blackened, governments, *neighborshood

Verb Noun

Verb Noun

Adj DAff. IAff. Verb DAff. IAff.

black -en -ed govern -ment -s

A Note on Word Forms• Morphologists use the term lexeme to refer to a group of related word forms.

• wait, waits, waited, waiting, etc.

• The canonical form of the lexeme is called the lemma.

• = the “headword” in a dictionary.

• Inflectional affixes relate a lexeme to its various forms.

• Derivational affixes relate one lexeme to another lexeme.

lemma

word forms

different lexeme

The Class System• In English, there are two types of derivational affixes:

1. Class 1 (or Level 1)

• Often cause phonological (sound) changes in the root

• Also cause more profound semantic (meaning) changes to the root

• Can combine with bound roots, too.

• Ex: -ity, -y, -ion

• For instance:

• Electric electricity; stupid stupidity

• democrat democracy; nation

The Class System• Class 2 (or Level 2)

• Don’t cause phonological (sound) changes in root.

• Less of a semantic (meaning) effect, too.

• Ex: -ness, -less, -er, -ish

• Normally, Class 1 affixes attach to the root before Class 2 affixes.

• relational -ion (1), -al (1)

• divisiveness -ive (1), -ness (2)

• *fearlessity -less (2), -ity (1)

• fearlessness -less (2), -ness (2)

Productivity• Productivity = the extent to which a word-formation rule can be applied to new morphemes, to form new words

• Class 2 affixes tend to be more productive than Class 1 affixes.

• -ness vs. -ity

• both attach to: adjectives

• both form: nouns

• both mean: the quality of the adjective

blindness stupidity

happiness validity

goodness complexity

Productiveness• -ness is very productive, so it can expand its reach to other words:

• stupidness, validness, complexness

• The same is not true of -ity:

• *blindity, *happity, *goodity

• -ness is so productive, it can also be affixed to new words:

truthy + -ness truthiness

chair + -ness chairness

productive + -ness productiveness

Finiteness

• Note that “finitude” is the (awkward?) alternative.

• Another (formerly?) productive affix: -age

• wordage, sleepage, etc.

Unproductivity• -able is another very productive morpheme:

• make-fun-of-able

• Other morphemes are not so lucky:

• -th: warm + -th = warmth

wide + -th = width

deep + -th = depth

cool + -th = *coolth

• -en: moist + -en = moisten

red + -en = redden

cute + -en = ?cuten

abstract + -en = *abstracten

An Intermediate Case• -ify attached to adjectives to form verbs

• just + -ify = justify

pure + -ify = purify

• quick + -ify = ?quickify

smart + -ify = ?smartify

• An anecdotal case

busy + -ify = busify

ugly + -ify = uglify

• -ify has limited productivity

Blocking• Productivity can sometimes be limited by the existence of other words

• intelligent + -ness = *intelligentness

• “intelligence” gets in the way

• it blocks intelligentness from existence

• true + -ness = *trueness (truth)

• inhabit + -er= *inhabiter (inhabitant)

• guide + -er = *guider (guide)

• In other cases, a new word gets created anyway:

• pride + -ful = prideful (proud)

Content and Function Words• One last distinction: there are both content and function words.

• Content words =

• have some semantic content (meaning)

• nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

• ex: politics, baseball, socks, green, create

• Function words =

• specify grammatical relations

• have little or no semantic content

• prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions

Content and Function Words• Content words are an “open class”--

• we can add new members anytime we want.

• Function words are a “closed class”--

• it’s not easy (or possible?) to add new members.

• When was the last time you heard a new pronoun? Or new preposition?

• (thoughts on the quick write?)

• Our minds also process function words differently from content words.

• For instance, how many ‘F’s are in the following passage?…

Check This Out

FINISHED FILES ARE THE

RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC

STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

You might want to read through it again.