LESSON 5-1
Word Formation
All languages have words,
and words are probably the most accessible linguistic units. As lessons 2-4 have amply demonstrated, in
order to get a sense of the sounds which are used in an utterance and how they
are organized, a good deal of analysis is required, and most speakers (unless
they are taking Intro to Ling. at Hamline Univ.!) cannot easily identify these
sounds.
Morphology is the study of word formation; it seeks to
determine:
w
The morphemes,
which are minimal meaningful units in a given language;
w
How these morphemes can
be categorized; and
w
How morphemes are
combined to form words.
To understand the notion of
‘morpheme’ let us consider a couple of examples. We’d all agree that books is a word in English. Let’s see if we can break it down into
smaller meaningful units: book+plural ending.
In contrast, the word book cannot be broken down further. We’ll say that the word books
consists of two morphemes, while book contains only one. Similarly, the word uninspiring has
three morphemes (neg+inspire+adjectival ending ing) and disrespect
has two. Now you tell me how many
morphemes the words irresistible and applauds have. If you said 3 and 2 respectively, you are
correct.
As these examples
demonstrate, morphemes cannot be further reduced into meaningful units; hence,
they are said to be minimal, meaningful units in a given language.
In linguistics, explicit
accounts/analyses of languages include a lexicon, which is a listing of
the morphemes along with their meanings and other linguistic properties. For example, take the word bachelor. One simple way to categorize
it is by grammatical category, such as a noun, verb, adjective,
etc. In the lexical entry for the word bachelor,
we’d indicate that it is a noun, just as you’d do in an ordinary dictionary.
However, that wouldn’t be sufficient, would it, given the ungrammaticality of
*Jane is a bachelor –where * indicates ungrammaticality. In the lexicon, we’d have to state this
restriction. (One way of doing so,
which I will not expect you to learn the details of, would be: ‘bachelor’: +N
(noun); unmarried male.)
As you may have noticed
already, all morphemes are not equal in terms of the semantic content they
carry. Content morphemes/words
are those that have identifiable meanings on their own; they would be the basic
entries in the lexicon, with a referential meaning attached to them (roughly,
they refer to some entity in the world). Function morphemes/words, on
the other hand, serve to indicate some sort of grammatical function. Examples are in order here: in the phrase, in
the garden, ‘garden’ is a content word and ‘in’ and ‘the’ are function
words. In eats (as in she
eats), ‘eat’ is a content morpheme and ‘s’ is a function one—serves as the
grammatical indicator for simple present tense.
Another way of categorizing
morphemes is by considering whether they can stand on their own (i.e., be a
word by themselves), or they always have to be attached to another morpheme. The best way to explain this is by looking
at an example: in lessons, ‘lesson’ would be considered a free
morpheme (since we could say a lesson) whereas the plural ending ‘s’
is said to be a bound one. The
plural ending has to be part of another word; it cannot simply stand
alone. Likewise, the ending ‘er ‘ (as
in reader) is a bound morpheme because it cannot function as a freestanding
word.
Derivation and inflection
enable us to create new words or grammatical forms. Derivational morphemes are so categorized because when
they are conjoined to other morphemes (or words), a new word is derived,
or formed. The derived word is often in
a different grammatical category than the original/underived word, but it doesn’t
have to be. Let us look at some
examples:
w
When a verb is
conjoined with the ending (suffix) –able, the result is an adjective, as in desire+able
or enjoy+able. That is, we are
forming adjectives from verbs here.
w
When a noun is
conjoined with the suffix –ish, the result is an adjective, as in boy+ish
and fool+ish.
w
When the prefix a-
occurs preceding an adjective, it creates another adjective, as in a+moral. Clearly, we are not changing the grammatical
category here: it is an adjective with or without the prefix a-.
w
When the prefix semi-
is attached to an adjective, another adjective is derived, as in semi-annual.
In inflectional
morphology, inflectional morphemes (usually endings) simply create different
grammatical forms of existing words, rather than entirely new words. Some
examples will illustrate this point:
w
The English plural
ending –s is attached to nouns to create plural forms of those nouns, as in teachers
and students.
w
The comparative suffix
–er is appended to adjectives and adverbs to create comparative forms of those
adjectives and adverbs, as in younger and fastest. (See
p. 115 in your textbook for a list of the inflectional affixes in English.)
Let us now go to Lesson 5-2 for further discussion of Morphological
Processes.