Chapter 3 Morphology Without grammar, little can be conveyed. Without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. (David Wilkins ,1972) Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.

2. Open class and closed class Open class words----content words of a language to which we can regularly add new words, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, e.g. beatnik(a member of the Beat Generation), hacker, email, internet, “做秀，时装秀…” in Chinese. Closed class words----grammatical or functional words, such as conjunction, articles, preposition and pronouns.

Morphemes-the minimal units of meaning word- the smallest free form found in language. e.g. The boys left. morpheme- the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning. It is a meaning and a stretch of sound joined together. Simple words & complex words

Morpheme--the minimal unit of meaning ---Words are composed of morphemes. Words may consist of one morpheme or more morphemes, e.g. 1-morpheme boy, desire 2-morpheme boy+ish, desir(e)+able 3-morpheme boy+ish+ness, desir(e)+abl(e)+ity 4-morpheme gentle+man+li+ness, un+desir(e)+abl(e)+ity 5-morpheme un+gentle+man+li+ness 6-morpheme anti+dis+establish+ment+ari+an+ism

Affix Prefix ---- morphemes that occur only before others, e.g. un-, dis, anti-, ir-, etc. Suffix ---- morphemes that occur only after others, e.g. -ful, -er, -ish, -ness, -able, -tive, tion, etc.

Free morpheme & bound morpheme Free morpheme- a morpheme which can be a word by itself, such as bed, tree, sing, dance, etc. Bound morpheme----a morpheme that must be attached to another one. They can not stand by themselves, such as “-s” in “dogs”, “al” in “national”, “dis-” in “disclose”, “ed” in “recorded”, etc. 黏着词素

Allomorph Some morphemes have a single form in all contexts, such as “dog, bark, cat”,etc. In other instances, there may be some variation, that is, a morpheme may have alternate shapes or phonetic forms. They are said to be the allomorphs of the morpheme, the plural morpheme may be represented by: map----maps [s] dog----dogs [z] watch----watches [iz] mouse----mice [ai] ox----oxen [n] tooth----teeth sheep----sheep Each of the underlined part is called an allomorph of plural morpheme.

Word structures A root is that part of the word left when all the affixes (inflectional & derivational) are removed, e.g. “desire” in “desirable”, “care” in “carefully”, “nation” in “internationalism”, “believe” in “unbeliev(e)able”… Affixes are always bound morphemes.

Derivational morpheme & inflectional morpheme 屈折 Derivational morphemes---- the morphemes which change the category, or grammatical class of words, e.g. modern---modernize, length---lengthen, fool---foolish, etc. Inflectional morphemes---- the morphemes which are for the most part purely grammatical markers, signifying such concepts as tense, number, case and so on; they never change their syntactic category, never add any lexical meaning, e.g. a) number: tables apples cars b) person, finiteness and aspect: talk/talks/talking/talked c) case: John/John’s

Morphological rules The rules that govern the formation of words, e.g. the “un- + ----” rule. unfair unthinkable unacceptable…

Two ways to form a new word Derivation Compound

Some points about compounds When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will be in this category, e.g. postbox, landlady, icy-cold, blue-black… When the two words fall into different categories, the class of the second or final word will be the grammatical category of the compound, e.g. head-strong, pickpocket… Compounds have different stress patterns from the non-compounded word sequence, e.g. red coat, green house… The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts.

Some other terms Root Stem Base

Stem A stem is part of a word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed, e.g. “undesirable” in undesirables

base A base is part of a word-form which remains when all derivational affixes have been removed,

root A root is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means any stem and base can be termed as a root.

The difference between root, stem & base A root can be added by both inflectional & derivational affixes while a stem can be added only by inflectional affixes; A base is derivationally analyzable (e.g. undesire in undesirable) while a root cannot be further analyzed, e.g. desire in undesirable; Root, stem and base can be the same form, e.g. desire in desired; Undesirable in undesirables is either a stem or a base; Desirable in undesirable is only a base.