Begleitseminar Student Reports

-the words every speaker knows- no matter which language he speaks- are part of his linguistic knowledge
-when you know a word, you know both, its pronuniation and its meaning
-but once you know a particular sound has such a meaning, you store it in your mental dictionary, so: the form and the meaning of a word are inseperable
EXAMPLE: the two identical meanings of the words couch and sofa are represented by two different strings of sounds and the words crab and crab have identical pronunciation but different meanings. This was pointed out by the nineteenth century Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who discussed the arbitrary union between sound and meaning of the linguistic sign.
-to know a word means pairing a string of sounds with a particular meaning
-the spelling or orthography of most of the words, but also whether they join the grammatical category or the syntactical class is included in our mental dictionary

Dictionaries
-all dictionaries provide following information about each word:
1) spelling
2) the standard pronunciation
3) definitions (to represent the words one or more meanings)
4) parts of speech
other information may be the etymology or history of the word
BUT: all speakers know more about the word in their mental dictionaries than can be found in any published dictionary
- lexicographers spend years writing dictionaries with the information that young children learn very easily

Classes of words
1) Lexical content words
-nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
-make up largest part of the english vocabulary
-called open class words, because we can add new words to these classes

2) Function words
-conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns
-called closed class words, because one cannot think of new prepositions, articles...

-these classes of content and function words appear to have psychological and neurological validity, because
-brain-damaged patients have more difficulties to use or understand or read function words than content words, or just the opposite

Word Sets
-Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, and of rules by which words are formed
-words like undesirable, unlikely, unhappy... consist of at least two meaningful units:
un+desirable, un+happy, un+likely...
-in english we form a negative meaning of a word by prefixing it (adding it to the beginning) and not by suffixing it (adding it to the end of the word)

Report,30.10.97,part II,Begleitseminar Anglistik,Tina Bertelsmann I.MORPHEMES:THE MINIMAL UNITS OF MEANING boy / boy + ish / boy + ish + ness / gentle + man + li + ness / anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism Differences in length: a single sound a single syllable more than one syllable Affixes: 1.Prefixes (un-/pre-/dis-/...) 2.Suffixes (-ist/-er/-ly/...) 3.Infixes 4.Circumfixes (= discontinuous morphemes) Bound morphemes (all affixes) Free morphemes (man,lady,water...) Definition: A morpheme is the basic element of meaning,a phonological form that is arbitrarily united with a particular meaning and that cannot be analyzed into simpler elements. We have to add: Some morphemes are not meaningful in isolation but acquire meaning only in combination with other specific morphemes. Monomorphemic words Root morphemes ( Table at p. 47 ) II.RULES OF WORD FORMATION morphological rules Derivational morphemes examples: adore(VERB)+able(SUFFIX)=adorable(ADJECTIVE) light(ADJ.)+en(SUFFIX)=lighten(VERB) sweet(ADJ.)+ie(SUFFIX)=sweetie(NOUN) faith(NOUN)+ful(SUFFIX)=faithful(ADJ.) preach(VERB)+er(SUFFIX)=preacher(NOUN) careful(ADJ.)+ly(SUFFIX)=carefully(ADVERB) moral(NOUN)+ize(SUFFIX)=moralize(VERB) (productive) rules 1. VERB+able="able to be VERB-ed" move+able ="able to be moved" 2. un+ADJECTIVE="not-ADJ." un+believe+able ="not believable"

Report 30.10.97 - Kristin Kretzer A.) WORD COINAGES 1.) COMPOUNDS - consist of two or more free morphemes - combinations of words that are regarded as a unit - therefore they are written as one word - the meaning of the expression is clear from the meaning of the bases - in most cases the basic meaning is conveyed by the last word a.) two words in the same grammatical category = the compound will be in this category - bittersweet, rainbow, sleepwalk b.) two words fall into different categories, the class of the final word will be the grammatical category of the compound - poorhouse, spoonfeed, pickpocket c.) compounds formed with prepositions are in the category of the unprepositional part - sundown, afterbirth, downfall d.) meaning of compounds the meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meaning of its parts - blackboard : a board may be green - laughing gas : gas does not laugh 2.) ACRONYMS - words derived from the initials of several words - acronyms are pronounced as words - they are also called syllable words laser : lightwave amplification by stimulate apparatus aids : acquired immune deficiency syndrome 3.) ABBREVIATIONS - consist of a number of first letters - abbreviations are pronounced as a series of letters - they are also called letter words AI : Amnesty International VIP : Very Important Person 4.) CLIPPING " short forms " of words that are now used as whole words - prof : professor - fiche : microfiche 5.) BLENDS - blends are the fusion of the forms and meanings of two lexemes - the first item usually loses something at the end, and the second something at the beginning - they are also called portmanteau words the german word is Schachtelwort - motel : motor and hotel - brunch : breakfast and lunch - camcorder : camera and recorder 6.) BACK-FORMATION words formed from existing words by " subtracting " an affix - hyper : hyperactive - edit : editor - ept : inept 7.) WORDS FROM NAMES words in the english vocabulary that derive from proper names of individuals or places sandwich : named for the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put his food between two slices of bread B.) GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES 1.) INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES - morphemes that represent such concepts as " tense ", "number ", " gender "," case " and so forth - the spellings -`s, - s, -s` are not differentiated in pronounciation common case: singular: student plural : students possessive case: singular: student`s plural : students` 2.) EXCEPTIONS there are a small number of inflectional exceptions in plural formation - child - children - man - men C.) MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX some grammatical relations can be expressed either inflectionally or syntactically - England`s queen is Elizabeth II. - The Queen of England is Elizabeth II.

11 | 11 | 97 - Begleitseminar Anglistik zum Grundkurs Linguistik - Lecturer: berndsen@spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de

Begleitseminar Student Reports: Morphology