Lecture 2. The Morphology of English. English 3318: Studies in English Grammar. Dr. Svetlana Nuernberg

Transcription

1 Lecture 2 English 3318: Studies in English Grammar The Morphology of English Dr. Svetlana Nuernberg

2 Objectives Grammatical Prototypes Grammatical Meaning vs Grammatical Form Morphology

3 Grammatical Prototypes Form categorization classification of new forms nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs sorting of words into proper groups according to their form (part of speech) according to their behavior (the same with other members of that group difficulties with categorization words can belong to more than one group down (verb) to down a drink down (adverb) look down down (preposition) walk down a corridor down (noun) the fourth down in football down (adjective) feel down on a bad day words within one group can behave differently plural (cats, houses, references) no plural form (honesty, happiness)

4 Prototypical and Peripheral Cases Exceptions to grammatical rules concepts are not clear-cut categories to which members belong on an all-or-none basis some members are better examples of the class than others e.g., a word cup a mind picture (a bowl-like object with a handle), but not all of them have a handle and a bowl-like shape; function we drink beverages from cups distinguishing between cups and glasses or mugs is difficult, so concept named by cup is complex concept or class has a clearly defined center, where members (prototypical cases) exhibit all the characteristics associated with the prototype has fuzzy borders, where other members (peripheral cases) seem to belong, even though they exhibit only a few of the characteristics associated with the category.

5 Tasks for Learning a Language Master the criteria to be able to examine a new example Note its structure or habits (or both) Decide how to classify it Realize the fact that language is like nature gives us a fair set of prototypes of any category we can establish gives us a substantial number of peripheral examples: items that seem to belong to the category partly because they do not fit as well into any other category Learn criteria associate them with prototype

6 Example 1 The word happy is a prototypical adjective, its characteristics are typical of adjectives it ends in -y, a suffix added to many words to create adjectives: cheesy, grumpy, funny, funky it can be made comparative and superlative: happier, happiest it can be intensified with words like: very, rather, quite it can be a predicate adjective: I feel happy it can function as an object compliment: The new doll made her happy when it modifies a noun, as in happy child, its meaning can be paraphrased by a sentence in which its noun is the subject and it is the predicate adjective following a form of the verb to be: The child is happy

7 Example 2 Another situation shows us how linguists distinguish between a word's form and it's function A rock wall surrounded the field. A rocky path surrounded the field. both rocky and rock describe the nouns that follow them, wall and path, are they therefore adjectives? rocky is an adjective in the form, rock is a noun actual characteristics of the word might show the class to which it belongs rocky has all of the most important traits of an adjective it ends in the common suffix-y (like happy) it can be made comparative and superlative (rockier, rockiest) it can be intensified (very rocky, rather rocky) rock on the other hand doesn't have suffix -y (which is not required in red, tall or rich) it can't be made a comparative and superlative (*rocker, *rockest) nor can it be intensified (*very rock, *rather rock) it easily functions as a noun (a heavy rock, on the rock), which rocky can't do

8 Example 3 The little old house that stands on the corner of 12 th and Vine belongs to me. Stands corner little the on house of and 12 th that Vine the belongs to me. These means help to group and organize words into meaningful utterances word order, which can either change the meaning of the sentence or make it completely senseless word change, or alterations in forms (e.g., like, likes, liked) function words, which serve to connect words into meaningful utterances ( in in the example above) intonation pattern, as the main constituent feature of the sentence

9 The Subject of Descriptive Grammar The study of the grammatical structure of English Adequate and systematic description of English language phenomena Grammar is divided into 2 major parts: morphology (Greek: morph form + logos word) a branch of grammar concerning itself with the structure of words as dependent on the meaning of constituent morphemes the system of morphological oppositions including their grammatical categories as unities of form and content. syntax (Latin: syntaxis order) a part of grammar dealing with the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, sentences

10 Morphology Differentiate morphemes from words Differentiate between bases and affixes Identify bound and free bases Distinguish prefixes from suffixes Identify allomorphs of a morpheme Recognize and produce examples of all eight inflectional morphemes State whether or not a derivational morpheme has changed the part of speech of the base to which it is attached

11 Morphemes Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language {} are used to differentiate morphemes from words and syllables if a word cannot be divided into smaller meaningful components it is a morpheme too e.g., readable consists of two morphemes {read} and {able}, the first of which is also an independent word it is used to create and understand sentences e.g., adjective adverb pairs {ly}: happy-happily; sweetsweetly; prefix {un} (unkindly, unhappily) vs (*unsweetly, *unroughly)

12 Exercise 1 Suppose that you hear someone use the newly coined noun glub, and are told that it means a silly remark next you encounter an adjective from the noun - glubby. Using these two words as the basis, see how many of the following words you can create or understand From the noun glub, create a verb that means to say something silly. They always during discussion. From the noun glub, create another noun meaning someone who makes a silly remark. Sometimes she can be such a. From the noun glub, create an adjective other than glubby. That was certainly a thing to do. From the adjective created in #3, create an adverb. Jack always speaks so about his brother. From the noun glub, create another noun meaning one who hates silly remarks.

13 Morphological Clues and Grammatical Tags In addition to serving in creation of vocabulary, morphemes supply grammatical tags to words identifying on the basis of form the parts of speech we hear or read. e. g. Why is that groony stronker wigrifying his klummitzes so briggily? Groony ends in -{y} and comes between that and a nounlike word stronker with ending -{er} it is an adjective Stronker -{er} morpheme is often used to create noun meaning one who does biker, teacher, streaker. Wigrifying ends on two verbal morphemes: {fy} used to create verb like magnify, falsify, and -{ing} found on participles like biking, teaching Klummitzes looks like a plural noun, because of its ending -{es} Briggly seems to have the adverbial ending {ly} like unkindly

14 Rules of Thumb Characteristics of a Morpheme has a meaning that can be at least vaguely stated contain only one unit of meaning can be used with the same meaning within other words or as a word itself Steps of Morphological Analysis draw a vertical line between words whatever parts of words seem to you to be meaningful units in the sentence go back and check each division you made be sure that each contains only one unit of meaning try to state what the meaning or function of each unit is try to think of a way that you can use the unit with a similar meaning in another word or as a word itself

15 Morphological Analysis How would you divide yesterday because there is a word day (24 hour period) yester is less than a word, but it has a recognizable meaning (previous, one before this) yesteryear can it be divided into two or more morphemes? it can only if you are able to show that the units divided off can be reused with the same meaning in other combination baker's and banker's are alike bake or bank + {-er} (one who bakes or banks) + possessive suffix {-'s} oldest or smallest contain superlative morpheme {-est} {old} + {-est}

16 Complex Cases daughter, mother, sister, brother or younger *{-er} is not separable, the meaning is not one who daughts younger {young} + {-er}, but it does not mean one who does - it is comparative morpheme used to show varying degrees of adjectives away {-a}+ {way} prefix a- turns words into adverbs like aboard ran move rapidly {run} + {a} (peripheral cases) signal of the past tense - (run/ran) like want/wanted {-ed} ((prototypical cases); go/went; cost/cost) {run} + {-ed}

17 Allomorphs Allomorph is a variant of a single morpheme (good, better, best - adjective; have eaten, have walked - past participle morphemes - occur in a variety of forms) {-able} unbearable vs {-ible} incredible have similar pronunciations and meaning - capable of action - (more important than spelling) both are considered variants, or allomorphs, of the morpheme {-able}, as no difference in meaning coincides with the difference in pronunciation This morphological pattern occurs each time {-ity} is added to {-able}, thus producing a variety of pairs, such as: usable/usability, credible/credibility

18 Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes Morphemes that are used to create new words are called derivational to show grammatical relationships are called inflectional The important distinction the nature of base before and after affixing occurs when derivational morphemes are attached to the base, they create words with new meanings: walk an activity; walker a person who performs an activity when inflectional morphemes are added, the essential meaning and the part of speech of the word remain unchanged; it simply contributes additional information about the concept:walk and walked are verbs naming the activity, the only difference is tense.

19 English Inflectional Morphemes Morpheme function Form Combined Form Resulting Word Nouns Plural -s book+-s books Possessive -s Barbara+-s Barbara's Verbs Pres Tense (3 rd p.s.) -s walk + -s walks Past Tense -ed walk + -ed / eat +vowel change walked / ate Past Participle -en walk + -ed / eat + -en walked / eaten Present Participle -ing walk + -ing walking Adjectives Comparative - er big + -er bigger Superlative - est big + -est biggest

20 Inflections Example of Inflectional Suffixes Inflection {-s1} noun plural {-s2} noun possessive {-s3} verb present tense {-ed} verb past tense {-en} verb past participle {-ing} verb present participle {-er} adjective comparative {-est} adjective superlative Frame He has three desserts This is Betty's dessert Bill usually eats dessert He ate the dessert yesterday He has always eaten desserts He is eating the dessert now His dessert is larger than mine Her dessert is the largest

21 Verb Inflections Major Verb Past-Tense and Past-Participle Allomorphs Regular Verbs Past Tense {-ed} Past Participle {-en} Past Tense She walked/tapped She has walked/tapped and Past Participle forms It stayed/opened It had stayed/opened are identical He waited/waded He has waited/waded They stopped They were stopped Irregular Verbs {-ed} {-en} Vowel change She ate/rode She has eaten/ridden He sang/wept He has sung/wept They found They were found No change in form They hit They have hit They cut They were cu

22 Zero Allomorph Noun Inflection when the plural form is not expressed at all one sheep/three sheep zero allomorph representing it with the null sign Ø, as in {sheep} + {Ø} Verb Inflection when there is no visible difference between Present and Past Tense, for example cut/cut, hit/hit, put/put is shown as {put} + {-ed}; {hit} + {-ed}

23 Adjective and Adverb Inflections In English there are two possible inflections for adjectives comparative and superlative {-er} and {-est} can be added only to one or two syllable words: tall, taller, the tallest; heavy, heavier, the heaviest adjectives of more than two syllables do not accept inflectional morpheme, for them words like more and most are used to indicate comparative and superlative forms can also appear on a small number of adverbs: He drove longer and faster than anyone else more and most are applicable to many adverbs as well more securely, most effectively

24 Derivational Morphemes Create (derive) new words by recycling parts of existing words into new combinations attaching a variety of affixes (morphemes added to the beginnings or ends of words) to the basis noun friend you get nouns: friendship, friendliness, unfriendliness, friendlessness adjectives: friendly, unfriendly, friendless verb: befriend bound morphemes incapable of standing alone as words prefixes, affixes free morphemes can stand alone as words - friend base - to which prefixes and suffixes are attached - act not all bases are free morphemes

25 An Example of Derivational Morphology: {act} Derivational Derivational Bound Free Bound Prefixes Base Suffixes {in-} {act} {-ive} + {-ly} {in-} {act} {-ive} + {-ity} {in-} {act} {-ive} + {-ate} {re-} {act} {-ive} + {-ate} {en-} {act} {re-} + {en-} {act} {-ment}

26 Differences Between Derivational and Inflectional Suffixes 1. Always precede any inflectional suffixes 1. Always follow any derivational suffixes Example: {-ize} in authorizing Example: {-s} in statements {author} + {-ize} + {-ing} {state} + {-ment} + {-s} 2. Often change the part of speech of the base 2. Never change the part of speech of the base Example: boy (noun) Example: boy (noun singular) boyish (adjective) boys (noun plural) 3. Usually can combine with only a 3. Combine with almost all members of few subgroups of bases belonging a single part of speech to one or two parts of speech Example: human > humanize Example: human > humans * humanify pencil > pencils *humanate car > cars 4. Have some lexical (or dictionary) meaning 4. Have grammatical meaning Example: {-ize} > humanize Example: {-s} > humans Creates verbs meaning to cause Creates plural of a word that retains to become its original meaning

27 Form Classes and Structure Classes Words that can change form through the addition of derivational or inflectional morphemes belong to the category called form-class words four parts of speech nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs Words that are incapable of changing form through inflection or derivation belong to the separate category called structure-class words modals can, may, will, shall, could, would, might

28 Summary Morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a language, consist of bases and affixes bases may be bound or free affixes are, by definition bound, they can precede the base (prefix) or follow it (suffix) To analyze morphemes we divide the word into meaningful parts (morphemes) state the meaning or function of each, and show that it occurs with similar meaning or function as part of other words in the language English has eight inflectional morphemes The remaining morphemes are derivational