1. 323 Morphology The Structure of Words 1.1 What is Morphology? Morphology is the internal structure of words. V: walk, walk+s, walk+ed, walk+ing N: dog, dog+s A: cold, cold+er, cold+est Grammar syntax morphology conceptual (logical) form (meaning within grammar) argument structure lexicon One morpheme or two tax /tæks/: one morpheme tacks /tæks/: two morphemes: tack+s lapse /læps/: one morpheme laps /læps/: two morpheme: lap+s Words containing two or more morphemes are called complex words.

2. 1.1 What is Morphology? Definition 1 (Haspelmath) Morphology is the systematic covariation in the form and meaning of words. Definition 1 (DeArmond) Morphology is the systematic covariation in the form, function and sign of words. Form refers to whether a morpheme is a root, base, stem, affix or clitic. Function includes meaning. Some morphemes have no meaning. Sign refers to the phonological representation of a morpheme. Definition 2 (Haspelmath & DeArmond) Morphology is the study of the combination of morphemes to yield words This definition does not work in all cases. The term morphology is ambiguous in that it may refer to the study of morphology as a discipline or to the morphology of a specific language such as Sanskrit.

3. 1.2 Morphology in Different Languages A particular language may express a certain function through morphology — the use of inflectional or derivational affixes: English plural: affix (suffix): book, book+s Or plurality may be expressed by a distinct word: Yoruba: okùnrin man, àwon okùnrin men. Actually, English uses both methods to form the comparative and superlative of adjectives: red, redd+er, redd+est (positive, comparative, superlative) stupid, more stupid, most stupid. Today, many younger speakers tend to use both methods: more redder (or sometimes more red) Synthetic, Analytic and Isolating These terms refer to the degree which affixes are used: Synthetic refers to systems where affixation is used frequently to express certain functions: Russian, Czech, Sanskrit, Latin, German, Japanese Analytic refers to systems where affixation is modestly used: English, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish. Polysynthetic refers to systems where there is frequent affixation and perhaps compounding and phrasal incorporation: Greenlandic Eskimo (Inuit), Turkish, Salishan languages.

4. 1.3 The Goals of Morphological Research The goal of morphological research is to observe (account for all data), describe (determine the best analysis) and to explain the morphological patterns of human languages. Elegant description all languages should be described in an elegant and intuitively satisfactory way: the past tense is formed by adding the suffix “ed” to the left of the stem (basic form of verb) — elegant many computer programs list the present tense form and then the past tense form: play, played; walk, walked; punch, punched — inelegant. elegant includes simplicity. elegant includes generality. Cognitive realistic description A description should be related to a speaker’s cognitive apparatus that the speaker has unconsciously arrived at. In English, speakers subconsciously add -ed to new verbs, e.g. “tomb” -> “tombed” in the past tense. This can be done consciously, but not necessarily.

5. 1.3 The Goals of Morphological Research A computer that lists the present and the past forms cannot produce the past tense of “tomb”. However, it possible to write a computer program that will do it. The hard part is writing the program. The easy part is feeding the information to the computer to compute. E.g. tomb+[past] -> tombed. (I’ve tried it.) System-external explanation This trying to explain certain phenomena that occur outside the language system. H. mentions the case of plural forms. Whatever the language, the forms are the result of historical accidence, not by any universal property of language. We can also cite the past tense morpheme of languages. English has four variants of the morpheme: the default (regular) form “-ed”, the non-default forms “-t”, “-d”. and the past tense of verbs marked by a change in the vowel: sing, sang, sung. All these variants are the result of historical accidence. H. mentions a possible universal citing Corbett: If a language has morphological plural forms of nouns at all, it will have plurals of nouns denoting people. One must be careful of the proposed universals. It is common for a universal to be disproved by languages which who them not to be true. This one could be true, and it seems to make sense, as people are the most important things in all human languages.

6. 1.4 The Goals of Morphological Research A restrictive architecture for description Constraints are developed for a grammatical description (grammar). For example, in syntax phrases and in some languages words may or must be fronted to the beginning of the sentence: John bought a new car. What did John buy? However, parts of a word (morphemes and words making up a compound word) may not be fronted leaving the rest of the word behind: John bought books. *S John bought book. *Book John bought s. John slept in the doghouse. The doghouse John slept in. *House John slept in the dog. *Dog John slept in the house. H suggests that the following may be a possible architecture:

7. 1.4 The Goals of Morphological Research I consider H’s architecture inadequate. I prefer the following: The right arrow indicates the projection of sound from meaning (to the listener) and the left arrow indicates the interpretation of the sound to determine the meaning. The lexicon plays a very important role in the architecture of grammar.

8. 1.4 The Goals of Morphological Research