U214 A Linguistic Toolkit Chapters 4-6

Chapter 4 – Word building Morphology Is the meaning of compound words the same as the meaning of the individual words combined? Metronome (=metro+gnome??), carpet (=car + pet??), catnap, overcome? housewife, classroom, toothbrush… ? Does a “boomerang” boom?

Chapter 4 – Word building (2) Morphology What is a morpheme ? – Morphemes are the smallest unit of grammar that has meaning p. 26 Free morphemes : can be found either on their own or in combination with other morphemes. class / classroom Bound morphemes : never occurs on its own un + [happy, tidy, true] When free morphemes are combined with other free morphemes, they form compounds [toothbrush, flagpole, fingerprint, upload, downsize] Compound words are often hyphenated, but that is not always consistent[ high-light, code-switch]

Chapter 4 – Word building (3) Derivation Derivation involves adding a bound morpheme to a stem to form a new word a. with a different meaning : disagree; b. and very few morphemes will produce a different part of speech: o ‘er’ player (changing play from a verb into a noun.) ; o ‘be’ befriend (changing friend from noun into a verb), o ‘post’ post-war (changing war from a noun into an adj.) ; o ‘-ness’ sadness (changing sad from a adj. into noun) ; Affixe s are bound morphemes that are added to some stems. Affixes can be prefixes which refers to affixes which come before the stem [unhappy /disagree]; or suffixes which come after the stem [friendship/ quickly or friends/ quicker].

Chapter 4 – Word building (4) Derivation Sometimes new derivations are made in conversation of words you cannot find in the dictionary, or which you haven’t heard before, but you have no trouble understanding them [See full contextual examples p. 27 of: cakeage, poodleism, … and think of some of your own]. There usually is a specific acceptable pattern of derivation, which allows for certain bound morphemes to be added to specific word classes only [-ness is usually added to adjectives only ‘happiness’, ‘illness’ but not to nouns], while [You can say super-sad, super- good, & supermarket as well as ‘hyperactive’ and ‘hypermarket’ added to both adjectives and nouns]

Chapter 4 – Word building (5) Derivation vs. Inflection Examples playhappy plays happier playedhappiest playinghappily playfulhappiness player unhappy When you change the word class, or the meaning of the word, you have derived a new word. When you create a new word, by unexpectedly, unconventionally changing the word class of an existing word, that is conversion, e.g. bigged/ AOUism, cakeage, smellify… (see Activities 4.3 & 4.4 on DVD)

Chapter 4 – Word building (6) Derivation vs. Inflection “Linguists use the special term lexeme to talk about a word in all its related forms”(p.29) How many words are there in the list below? o Entrap, entrapment, trapper, trap, trapped, trapping, traps i.traps trapped trapping are forms of the same word trap, and fall under one dictionary heading, or the lexeme: trap. ii.entrap entrapment trapper trap are four lexemes.

Chapter 4 – Word building (6A) Inflections In the examples in the previous slide: traps trapped trapping, the affixes indicate a grammatical variation but do not create a new lexeme. These affixes are called inflections : they don’t change the word class or meaning, and in English they are usually suffixes/ word endings. Old English and Latin had many more inflections than modern English; German, a Germanic language of the same origin as English, till has lots of inflections, for different number, gender+ case indications. See examples p.30 Try to circle the inflections used in Obama’s speech pp. 30,31.

Chapter 4 – Word building (6B) Inflectional affixes in English: See Table 4.1 p. 31 Plural –s Possessive ‘s Present tense –ed Past participle –en or –ed Present participle –ing Comparative –er Superlative –est

Chapter 4 – Word building (6D) Allomorphs Alternative forms of the same morpheme (say of the past participle en & ed) are called allomorphs. boys, boxes, pets liked, made, swam, watched, happened, driven

Chapter 5 – Word that go together Collocation is the tendency of words to keep company with each other (p.32) Collocation is useful to understand how there are some “restrictions” that may apply on the choice of words that go together while there would be or “high probability of occurrence”(p.32) options. coffee goes with table; tooth goes with brush home goes with owner / work

Chapter 5 – Word that go together If we were to complete the following sentence “I enjoy ” the options will be limitless. (swimming, cold weather, spending time with friends). But if we were to complete “One shouldn’t simply to his whims” the mostly likely option would be restricted: surrender/ give –in/ …. and any other option such as rise, go, jump, sleep, eat, drink …. would be unacceptable or unlikely.

Chapter 5 – Word that go together The reasons words collocate is usually based on “sense of the items involved” (p.32). But sometimes “unlikely” collocations happen, such as “greased lightening” “chocolate teapot” Words with congruous senses (synonyms) don’t always collocate with the same combinations of words. See p. 33 Table 5.1: -- It was full of difficult/tricky/ hard words. {but not knotty words} -- She hit a difficult/tricky/ hard/ knotty problem.

Chapter 5 – Word that go together Computers now help us predict and learn about the frequency of word collocations (p.33). But internet word searches will give responses indicating multiple meanings and uses of the same word. Based on the word combinations, a word may adopt a different sense. “hard” in a) What is hard water? is different from b) This is a hard surface. or c) This is a hard problem.

Chapter 5 – Word that go together Idioms are when words not necessarily expected to be combined together are linked tightly and function as single unit. Example: in the nick of time (at the last moment), a fresh pair of eyes, take someone to the cleaner (cheat someone of all their money), a lot on my plate, a steal (an excellent deal), put a sock in it (shut up about it), bag of bones, bad apple (pp.35-7)+ “The meaning of an idiom is not predictable from the meaning of the words it contains” (p.37) The literal translation of idioms doesn’t work at all, and so, most idioms when translated will be senseless in other languages. “The form of an idiom is relatively fixed.”(p37) Some claim that idioms are absolutely fixed, but creative use of idioms is very frequent in everyday conversations ‘a whole bag of chips on his shoulders’ instead of ‘ a chip on his shoulder’(p.37) For sometimes idioms, a literal translation makes sense too. land on your feet (p.37)