Week 1: Introduction

English Morphology

Fernanda Barrientos

2024-10-22

What is morphology?

Short definition: study of word formation
This includes:
- How new words are coined in the languages of the world
- How forms of words are varied according to their use within a sentence
Native speakers have an intuitive knowledge of how words are formed in their language

Please note

Morphology is not about how words should be formed or what words “exist” or not, but about this intuitive knowledge

Sounds like an easy question, but it’s not…
In linguistics, a word is one or more morphemes that can stand alone in a language
- But what is a morpheme?
  - a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has its own meaning.
  - There are different types of morphemes: we have dog, or table, but also -ize, or -ify, or re-. The latter have their own meaning but cannot stand alone.
Words consisting of only one morpheme are called simple or simplex words, while those with more than one morpheme are complex words.

Are these simple or complex words?

Let’s count the words in this sentence

My friend and I walk to class together, because our classes are in the same building and we dislike walking alone.

If you counted 21: you counted tokens
If you counted 20: you counted types (you counted “and” only once)
If you counted 16: you counted lexemes (“walk” = “walking”, “class” = “classes”, “we” = “our”, “my” = “I”)

We might have not heard of this word before, but we know what it means
It might also not be listed in the dictionary
This shows that we have a mental lexicon: an internalized dictionary with not only words but also word formation rules that allows us to create and understand new words.

Having one very specific word for every single thing would be EXHAUSTING! E.g. having “wash” and “glorb” instead of “wash” and “rewash”
But: see Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984: plusgood, doubleplusgood
Thus, we can find processes such as:
- Category-changing lexeme formation
  - V \(\rightarrow\) N: amuse \(\rightarrow\) amusement
  - V \(\rightarrow\) A: impress \(\rightarrow\) impressive
- Meaning-changing lexeme formation
  - A \(\rightarrow\) A “negative A”. Happy \(\rightarrow\) unhappy
  - N \(\rightarrow\) N “place where N lives”. Orphan \(\rightarrow\) orphanage
- Both:
  - V \(\rightarrow\) “able to be Ved”. Wash \(\rightarrow\) washable

We also use morphology just to make words fit in a grammatical context. This is called inflection.
- Number (singular/plural/dual)
- Tense (present/past)
- Person (first, second, third)
- Case (nominative, accusative, genitive…)
English has relatively little inflection in comparison to e.g. Romance languages, but more than e.g. Mandarin Chinese

Which of the following is true?
- German has more inflection than English.
- Not all languages have morphology.
- Word formation rules are not part of the mental lexicon.

Morphology is the study of word formation
Wods are one or more morphemes that can stand alone in a sentence
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning
Type \(\neq\) token \(\neq\) lexeme
Derivation are processes that change a word’s meaning (lexeme change), and inflection refers to the changes in a word to make them fit in a grammatical context.