MORPHOLOGY part 3
…….(CONTINUOUS) English are the use of went as the past tense form of the verb go, and the use of was and were as the past tense form of be.
These are suppletion in other languages:
Language Basic form Meaning Superlative Form Meaning
French Avoir ‘to have’ eu ‘had’
Spanish Ir ‘to go’ fue ‘(he) went’
German Ist ‘is’ sind ‘are’
Russian Xoro∫o ‘good’ lut∫∫e ‘better’
In some cases, it is hard to distonguish beetwen suppletion and internal change. For instance, are the past tenses of think (thought) and seek (sought) the result of suppletion or internal change? Because the initial phoneme of these verbs remains unchanged, we will consider this alternation to involve an extreme form of internal change rather than true suppletion
Stress and tone placement
In English, the stress and tone placement in the word is dividing its function as a noun (stressed on the first syllable), and as a verb (stressed on the second syllable). Stress is represented by ( ´ ).
Stress placement in English:
Verb Noun
Im´plant ´Implant
con´test ´Contest
pre´sent ´ Present
im´port ´Import
sub´j ect ´ subject
Reduplication
Reduplication is duplicates all or part of the base to which it applies to mark a grammatical or semantic contrast. This process is very productive and it shows a number of characteristics. It is used to express various grammatical functions such as verbal aspect and some showing complex models.
Reduplication is not found in English language, but we can find it in Turkish, tagalog, and Indonesian. A wide use of reduplication is one of the most prominent grammatical features of the Indonesian languages. To some this sounds like a child language (hula-hula, caca).
Example of full reduplication (in Turkish and Indonesian):
Base Reduplicated Form
Turkish
t∫abuk ‘quickly’ t∫abuk t∫abuk ‘very quickly’
java∫ ‘slowly’ java∫ java∫ ‘very slowly’
iji ‘well’ iji iji ‘very well’
gyzel ‘beautifully’ gyzel gyzel ‘very beautifully’
Indonesian
orang ‘man’ orang orang ‘all sorts of men’
anak ‘child’ anak anak ‘all sorts of children’
mangga ‘mango’ mangga mangga ‘all sorts of mangoes’
these are the example of partial reduplication (in Tagalog):
Base reduplication form
takbuh ‘run’ tatakbuh ‘will run’
lakad ‘walk’ lalakad ‘will walk’
pili? ‘choose’ pipili ‘will choose’
Cranberry morphemes
In linguistic morphology, a cranberry morphemes (or fossilized term) is a type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning or a grammatical function but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other.
The canonical example is the cran of cranberry. It is unrelated to the word cran meaning a case of herrings, and though it actually comes from crane(the bird), this is not immediately evident. Likewise, mul exists only in mulberry(mul is from Latin morus, the mulberry tree).Phonetically, the first morphemes of raspberry also counts as a cranberry morpheme, as it does not occur by itself. Compare these to blackberry, which has two obvious unbound morphemes. The first morphemes of loganberry and boysenberry are derived from names.
Other cranberry morphemes in English include:
- mit in permit, commit, and submit, from the Latin verb mittere meaning to give, to send
- ceive in receive, perceive, and conceive, from the Latin verb capere meaning to seize
- twi in twilight
- cob in cobweb, from the obsolete word coppe for a spider
DERIVATION
— Derivation is the formation of a new word or inflectable stem from another word or stem. It typically occurs by the addition of an affix.
— The derived word is often of a different word class from the original. It may thus take the inflectional affixes of the new word class.
— Examples :
- Kindness is derived from kind.
- Joyful is derived from joy.
- Amazement is derived from amaze.
- Speaker is derived from speak.
- National is derived from nation.
English Derivational Affixes
The first entry states that affix –able applies to a verb base and converts it into an adjective. Thus, if we add the affix –able to the verb fix, we get an adjective.
Sometimes beginning students have trouble determining the category of the base to which an affix is added. For instance worker, the base (work) is sometimes used as a verb (they work hard) and sometimes as noun (work is time-consuming).
In the words teacher and writer for instance, we see this affix used with bases (teach and write) that are clear verbs. Moreover, we know that –er can combine with the verb sell (seller) but not the noun sale (*saler).
Derivational Suffix
A derivational suffix usually applies to words of one syntactic category and changes them into words of another syntactic category. For example, the English derivational suffix -ly changes adjectives into adverbs (slow → slowly).
Examples of English derivational patterns and their suffixes:
- adjective-to-noun: -ness (slow → slowness)
- adjective-to-verb: -ise (modern → modernise) in British English or -ize (archaic → archaicize) in American English and Oxford spelling adjective-to-adjective: -al (red → reddish)
- adjective-to-adverb: -ly (personal → personally)
- noun-to-adjective: -al (recreation → recreational)
- noun-to-verb: -fy (glory → glorify)
- verb-to-adjective: -able (drink → drinkable)
- verb-to-noun (abstract): -ance (deliver → deliverance)
- verb-to-noun (concrete): -er (write → writer)
Derivational Affixes
Derivational affixes do not necessarily modify the syntactic category. Nevertheless, they modify the meaning of the base. In many cases, derivational affixes change both the syntactic category and the meaning: modern → modernize (“to make modern”). The modification of meaning is sometimes predictable: Adjective + ness → the state of being (Adjective); (white→ whiteness).
A prefix (write → re-write; lord → over-lord) will rarely change syntactic category in English. The derivational prefix un- applies to adjectives (healthy → unhealthy), some verbs (do → undo), but rarely nouns. A few exceptions are the prefixes en- and be-. En- (em- before labials) is usually used as a transitive marker on verbs, but can also be applied to adjectives and nouns to form transitive verb:circle (verb) → encircle (verb); but rich (adj) → enrich (verb), large (adj) → enlarge (verb), rapture (noun) → enrapture (verb), slave (noun) → enslave (verb).
Note that derivational affixes are bound morphemes. In that, derivation differs from compounding, by which free morphemes are combined (lawsuit, Latin professor). It also differs from inflection in that inflection does not create new lexemes but new word forms (table → tables; open → opened).
Derivation may occur without any change of form, for example telephone (noun) and to telephone. This is known as conversion or zero derivation.
Compounding
Compounding is the combination of lexical categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs or prepositions) to create a larger word.
Noun + Noun Adjective + Noun Verb + Noun Preposition + Noun Street lightBluebirdSwear wordOverlordCampsiteHappy hourWashclothOuthouseBookcaseHigh chairScrub ladyIn-group
Some words can stand alone and still has meaning; on the other hand, there are some words are joined into one new word to convey a new meaning. The example is horseshoe. This kind of word is called as compound word. A compound word is a union of two or more words to convey a unit idea or special meaning that is not as clearly or quickly conveyed by separated words. Compound words may be hyphenated, written open (as separate words), or written solid (closed).
A hyphenated compound—also called a unit modifier—is simply a combination of words joined by a hyphen or hyphens. The hyphen is a mark of punctuation that not only unites but separates the component words; thus, it aids understanding and readability and ensures correct pronunciation. Words are hyphenated mainly to express the idea of a unit and to avoid ambiguity. For the examples:
- shell-like cloud-to-ground strokes
- well-to-do roof-to-wall construction
- Mesozoic to Cenozoic north-trending graben
- fluvial-paludal floodplain system
An open compound is a combination of words so closely associated that they convey the idea of a single concept but are spelled as unconnected words: lowest common denominator canyon head
A solid (closed) compound combines two or more words into one solid word (e.g., breakdown). The use of compounding in our language is an evolving process. As expressions become more popular or adopt special meanings, they follow a gradual evolution from two or more separate or hyphenated words to single words.
- audio visual …………………..audio-visual……………………audiovisual
- copy editor…………………….copy-editor …………………….copyeditor
- wild life………………………….wild-life ………………………….wildlife
Formal Classification of Compounding
Noun-noun compounds
Most natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the language, i. e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc
Verb-noun compounds
A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European language is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun. This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are spoilsport, killjoy, breakfast, cutthroat, pickpocket, dreadnought, and know-nothing. Also common in English is another type of verb-noun (or noun-verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund, such as breastfeeding, finger-pointing, etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: (a mother) breastfeeds (a child) and from them new compounds mother-child breastfeeding, etc.
Verb-verb compounds
Verb-verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine clause structure. In a serial verb, two actions, often sequential, are expressed in a single clause. For example, “turn leave”, means “turn and leave”.
SUMMARY
- Morphology is a field of linguistics focused on the study of the form and formation of the words in a language. A morpheme is the smallest indivisible unit of a language that retains meaning; morphemes are words, word stems, and affixes, basically the unit of language one up from phonemes.
- Words are the smallest free forms found in language; it means that it can occur in isolation and/or combined with the other forms with the rule of neighbouring.
- Morphemes divided to two kinds, there are the free and bound .
- Allomorphs are the variant forms of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically) without changing meaning.
- The word structure consist of roots and affixes. Roots carries the major component of the word’s meaning and belongs to a lexical category. Affixes don’t belong to a lexical categories and are always bound morphemes.
- A base is the form to which an affix is added.
- Cliticization are some words that unable to stand alone as independent forms for phonological reasons. Such elements, called clitics, must be attached another word in the sentences. Certain verb forms have reduced variants (‘m for am, ‘s for is and ‘re for ‘are).
- Internal change is a process that substitutes one non-morphemics segment for another. Example: singà sang, driveà drove.
- Suppletion is a morphological process whereby a root morpheme is replaced by a phonologically unrelated form in order to indicate a grammatical contrast. The example: the use of went as the past tense form of the verb go, and the use of was and were as the past tense form of be.
- Stress & tone placement in English divides the function of the word as a noun (stressed on the first syllable) or a verb (stressed on the second syllable).
- reduplication is the process of duplicates all or part of the base to which it applies to mark a grammatical or semantic contrast. It doesn’t found in English.
- Compounding is the combination of lexical categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs or prepositions) to create a larger word.
- There are 2 types in compounds:
*Endocentric. Compound which identifies the general class to which the meaning (real meaning).
*Exocentric. Not real meaning.
- Cranberry morphemes (or fossilized term) is a type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning or a grammatical function but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other.
- Derivation is the formation of a new word or inflectable stem from another word or stem. It typically occurs by the addition of an affix.
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