Notes (Berndsen)

(Additional materials to Fromkin & Rodman Ch. 2)

Some Preliminary Questions

I have just invented the following English word:

• mough

What can you say about this word?

• The moughs of the car are in poor condition.

What can you say about this word now?

Can you say how is is pronounced?

Another invented word:

• rough

What can you say about this word?

• He roughs every day before he goes to school.

What can you say about this word now?

It is pronounced analogously to the actual English word though. Are there problems with this?

Preliminary Exercise

1. Invent your own English word.

2. State the principles you used in doing this.

3. Provide the word with a grammatical context.

4. Provide the word with a pronunciation.

Morphology

Morphology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and the relationships among words.

Questions asked in connection with morphology (taken from Akmajian et al. 1990:12ff)

• How are more complex words built up from simpler parts?

• What are the basic building blocks in the formation of complex words?

• How is the meaning of a complex word related to the meaning of its parts?

• How are the individual words of a language related to other words of the language?

Morphemes and Morphs

The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function which words are made up of. (Katamba, 1993:20ff)

• -er e.g. sing-er, help-er
• -ness e.g. kind-ness mad-ness
• -less e.g. hope-less, help-less
• ex- e.g. ex-minister, ex-husband
• pre- e.g. pre-dinner, pre-lecture
• mis- e.g. mis-conduct, mis-manage

The analysis of word into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs.

A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). (Katamba, 1993:24)

• cats
• dogs
• horses

Exercises

1. Analyse the following words and define their parts of speech and whether the affixes are inflectional or derivational
   1. redo
   2. unwind
   3. manageable
   4. eating
   5. winner
   6. bigger
   7. modernise
2. Make a list of 5 verbs which take the suffix -able and 5 which do not.
3. Invent a long word in English and name the morphemes it contains.
4. Classify the following compounds:
   1. landlord
   2. underdog
   3. earthbound
   4. oversee
   5. bittersweet
   6. wildfire
5. Which of the words below belong to the same lexeme? (Katamba, 1993:18)

   see catches taller boy catching sees

   sleeps woman catch saw tallest sleeping

   boys sleep seen tall jumped caught

   seeing jump women slept jumps jumping

6. Identify the morphs in the following data (Katamba, 1993:24):
   1. I parked the car.
   2. We parked the car.
   3. I park the car.
   4. He parks the car.
   5. She parked the car.
   6. She parks the car.
   7. We park the car.
   8. He parked the car.

Some Additional Literature and Links

• Akmajian, A; R. A. Demers; A. K. Farmer & R. M. Harnish (1990, 3rd edition): Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass & London. Chapter 2.

• Katamba, F. (1993): Morphology, The Macmillan Press Ltd: Houndmills, Basingstoke and London. Chapter 2.

• Have a look at the Dictionary of Neologisms at
  http://www.net22.com/neologisms/

Student Group Report

Student Group Report: Martina M"uhlenbernd, Tina Bertelsmann, Kristen Kretzer