The System

Words
 A definition of morphology
• The area of grammar (the system dog red
that we are describing) dogs redd-ish
concerned with the structure of bulldog redden
words and with relationships redenned
between words involving the walk redder
constituents that compose them walks
• The constituents we call walked
morphemes. walking
Moonwalk
• Morphemes are the part of Read – Reads – Reader –
words that we recognize as being Readable – Readability –
meaningful or functional Reread – Reading –
Readableness
Hindi
Examples
 Word structure is weird
• Anything that a language does with morphology, it
usually can also do more straightforwardly with
syntax; and there is always some other language
that does the same thing with syntax
• In most cases, in English we add /-s/ to indicate
plurality: dog ~ dog-s
• But we can also use syntax to construct a phrase
that has the same meaning:
– more than one dog
– one or more dogs (indefinite)
 Chinese does it differently
• Modern Standard Chinese
(also known as "Mandarin"
or "Putonghua") makes
exactly the opposite choice:
there is no morphological
marking for plurality, so we
can be succinctly vague
about whether we mean
one or more of something,
while we need to be more
long-winded if we want to
be specific (in Pinyin
orthography)
 So do Japanese and Indonesian
Indonesian:
Saiga makan dua buah semangka (se) tiap hari
I eat two fruit melon every day
‘I eat two melons every day.’
Japanese:
mainichi futatsu-no meron-o tabemasu
every.day two-gen melon-obj eat.imperf
‘I eat two melon every day.’
English: fish, shrimp, sheep
 Quirks
Convert Nouns to Verbs
• iconify from icon and -ify, meaning “make into an
icon”
• Many languages lack any general way to turn a noun
X into a verb meaning "to make into (an) X", and so
must use the longer-winded mode of expression.
• Indeed, while there is a process in English, it is
rather erratic: we say
Noun vapour - vapour-ize but not *vapour-ify
*emulsion-ify but emuls-ify
terrify: cause to feel extreme fear
terrorize: strike terror in/into, fill with terror
 Combinatoric irregularity -
morphology

• morphology typically differs from syntax (where

words are mostly combined logically and
systematically) in this irregularity
 An example: Places and people
• Bhutanese, Chinese, Guyanese, Japanese,
Lebanese, Maltese, Portuguese, Taiwanese,
Burmese
• African, Alaskan, American, Angolan, Cuban,
Jamaican, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Indian
• Argentinian, Armenian, Australian, Brazilian,
Canadian, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Iranian, Jordanian,
Palestinian, Serbian
• Irish, British, Flemish, Polish, Scottish, Swedish
• Afghani, Iraqi, Israeli, Kuwaiti, Pakistani
• French, German, Greek (?)
• To make it worse, the word for citizen of X and the
general adjectival form meaning associated with
locality X are usually but not always the same.
• Pole/Polish, Swede/Swedish, Scot/Scottish,
Greenlander/Greenlandic.
• There are some oddities about plurals: "the French"
and "the Chinese" not "the Frenches" and "the
Chineses" but "the Greeks" and "the Canadians".
 Bushisms
"If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll
have a statement."
Quoted by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, June
16, 1999

"Keep good relations with the Grecians."

Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999

"Kosovians can move back in."

CNN Inside Politics, April 9, 1999
 What is a word?
• An orthographic definition
• A phonological definition
• A semantic definition
• A syntactic definition
 Latin or warlbiri or russian

• Latin, for example, words can usually be scrambled

into nearly any order in a phrase with essentially the
same meaning, but some difference in emphasis
facis amice "you act kindly" amice facis
• The morphemes that make up each of these two
words must occur in a fixed order.
amice: the stem /amic-/ "loving, friendly, kind" + the
adverbial ending /-e/;
facis: /fac-/ "do, make, act" and the inflectional ending
/-is/ (second person singular present tense active
voice).
 German idea of words

• Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübe
rtragungsgesetz

rind+fleisch+etikettierung+s+über+wachung+s+aufga
ben+über+tragung+s+gesetz
• cattle+meat+labelling+/+over+seeing+/+duty+transf
er+/+law

"the law concerning the delegation of duties for the

supervision of the labelling of beef"
[[[[[Rindfleisch-]etikettierung-s]-über-
wachung-s]-aufgaben-über-tragung-s]-
gesetz]

"the law concerning the delegation of

duties for the supervision of the labelling
of beef"
 An orthographic definition
• Words as units in the writing system: words are
uninterrupted strings of letters
• For ex. writing is a word because there are blank spaces
surrounding it
Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the
slithy toves
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
All mimsy were the
And the mome raths outgrabe.
borogoves,
And the mome raths
outgrabe.
The orthographic word may not coincide
with our intuitions
Compound words:
apartment building, parking ticket, ground floor, United
States.
Phrasal verbs (single meaning)
get up, look after, put up with.
Other:
• John’s girl friend lives in a high-rise apartment building
• Mary’s a policewoman in the United States.
- Is John’s / Mary’s one or two words?
- Building, parking has recognisable internal parts?
- Is high-rise / policewoman one or two words?
 A phonological definition
• Words as phonological units: spoken in isolation
each word can only have one main stress
Words as elements of the system (underlined
characters indicate main stress, and each of those
red units are words)
Problems:
• Function words (i.e. words such as as, of, the) do
not seem to have a main stress
• Clitics (i.e. -s in the example below) do not seem
to have a main stress
Jane’s in the garden: -s, in, the are not
stressed.
 A semantic definition
• Words as meaningful units:
a. Words express unified concepts
b. Words are the minimum meaningful units
of a language
Problems:
• Concepts can be expressed by larger-than-a-
single-word units
the man who lives next door ~ neighbour
• Function words may not have an easily identifiable
meaning (for ex. can you specify the meaning of
the or if ?)
 A syntactic definition #1
a. Words are the smallest syntactic elements in a
sentence:
• They belong to certain word classes (and follow
the rules of these word classes as well as
syntactic categories)
• Words can be grouped into 2 main categories:
Open-class words: classes of words which can
contain an infinite number of words
(i.e. nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
Closed-class words: classes of words which
contain a limited number of words
(i.e. pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and modal
verbs, conjunctions, determiners)
 A syntactic definition #2

b. Only words (and groups of words) can be moved to

a different position in a sentence
1. She can ride the bike
2. Can she ride the bike?
3. She has ridden the bike
4. Has she ridden the bike?
5. *She has-en ride the bike.
The relationship between words
and meanings
Words with unpredictable meanings: dog, door,
desk, book, pen, read, language, tall, on, etc.
must be learned and stored as separate items
(lexemes) in the lexicon
Words with predictable meanings: unhappy,
helpful, madly etc. can be constructed and
comprehended by the application of some
general rules – word-building or word-
formation rules.
 Language users knowledge
• Therefore, a part of language competence is
– the ability to construct and
– the ability to interpret words.
• This system of
– categories and
– rules
involved in word formation and interpretation is
called morphology.
 Non-words and meanings
Entities that are larger than a word
with unpredictable meaning
Idioms: pull someone’s leg; kick the
bucket; …
Collocations: hard work, white
coffee, white-collar worker …
Proverbs: All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy, beauty is in
the eye of the beholder, birds of a
feather flock together, a bad
workman blames his tools, …
जो गरजते ह
वो
बरसते नही ं .
 Taking words apart
• Why is the meaning of the following words
predictable to a certain extent?
• unbelievable, capitalistic, mismatched,
disproportional, misunderstanding, irregularity.
• lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment
building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard,
sickness benefit.
 Complex words: 1. Affixation
• Words are made up of morphemes, put together in a
systematic fashion, so that the meaning of the
whole can reliably be composed from the meaning
of the smaller parts.
– un-believe-able, anti-capital-ist-ic, de-colony-ize-
ation, dis-proportion-al, mis-under-stand-ing, ir-
regular-ity.
• This group contains words which are divisible into:
– a component that carries most of the meaning
(root or stem)
– other elements that are associated with it to add
some other aspects of meaning
• The process through which these words are formed
is called affixation.
 Affixation/constituency
• [ un-[believe-able] ]
• [anti-[[ capital-ist]-ic]]]
• [ [de-[colony-ize] ]-ation]
• [anti-[[[dis-[establish-ment]]-arian]]ism]
Complex words: 2. Word compounding
• lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, main-building,
maggi-shack, campus-hub, concentration camp...
• Words which are divisible into two other words.
• These component words can be found
independently in an English dictionary, but when
they associate they form a compound word
• The meaning of the union is not necessarily a
function of the meaning of the two combining
words. For ex. a lighthouse is neither a light nor a
house. This process is called word compounding.
• Internal constituent structure [[mosquito-control]-
committee]
Samās
Hierarchical structure of a compound

Wall-mounted
toothbrush holder

Wall- toothbrush holder

mounted

toothbrush
Wall mounted

tooth brush
 A morpheme must
• Also contribute in some way to
• Be identifiable the meaning of the whole word
from one word Squish-able
to another Eat-able
Attack Read-able
Stack Work-able
Tackle This extra meaning is not
necessarily equal in all cases,
Taxi (/tæksi/) e.g. readable, does not mean
‘can be read’ in a literal sense,
but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.
 How can I recognise a
morpheme?
Morphemes must be identifiable from one word
to another: identifying affixes:
– un- : uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear, …
– -able: variable, changeable, solvable, …
– de- : deselect, dethrone, detoxify, …
– -al: cultural, federal, liberal, modal, …
– -ize: computerize, realize, …
 Identifying the core element
• Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly; happier,
happiest
• Change: change-able, chang-er, un-chang-ed;
changes, chang-ing
• Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly; selects,
selected
• ?Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber-ty
• ?Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al
• Some morphemes express some general sort of
referential or informational content independent of
the grammatical system of a particular language
• Other morphemes are heavily tied to a grammatical
function, expressing syntactic relationships between
units in a sentence, or obligatorily-marked categories
such as number or tense.
 Distinguishing between
morphemes
• Bound vs free morphemes
• Free morphemes can occur on their own:
– happy, change, select, green, house, …
• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are
attached to other morphemes:
– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)
– liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …
• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy,
materi-al
 General tendency
• The core vocabulary of English is generally composed
of words of Anglo-Saxon origin
• There is a general tendency for core elements to be
free morphemes
• E.g. Hand
• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,
Bound morphemes as core
elements: from Latin
Circul- Circular Liber- Liberty

Circulati Liberatio
on n
Circulat Liberaliz
or e
Circulat Libertin
ory e
 Problem case: Verbs of Latin
origin
receive deceive conceive perceive
revert convert pervert
relate collate translate
reduce deduce conduce
Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme?
Or prefix + bound morpheme?

Over- and under-whelmed, un-kempt, di-shevell-ed, in-ept, in-

evitable, be-wildered, in-hibited, re-linquish, dis-gruntled, super-
stitious!