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PBI V D
MORPHOLOGY
MARTOS ALFITRI
PBI V D
10714000764
Morphology Martos Alfitri 2
PBI V D
Morphology
Morpheme
Classification of Morphemes
1. According to their position in the word:
(8) in-de-cipher-abil-ity
Inflection (inflectional morphology)
Creates word forms of a lexeme
(9) CAT:
cat (Singular) cats (Plural)
(10) a. SING:
sing Base form
sings 3sg Present Tense
singingPresent Participle
sang Past Tense
sung Past Participle (Perfect/Passive Participle)
b. WALK:
walk Base form
walks 3sg Present Tense
walking Present Participle
walked Past Tense
walked Past Participle (Perfect/Passive Participle)
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(12) a. COLD:
cold Positive
colder Comparative
coldest Superlative
b. GOOD:
good Positive
better Comparative
best Superlative
Morphological operations
Morphological operation =def ‘concrete change made to a word form in order to
signal a derivational or inflectional process’
Consonant change:
house [haus] ~ (to) house [houz]
knife [naif] ~ knives [naivz]
Stress shift:
(a) cóntrast ~ (to) contrást N~V
(Languages with tones may use tone alternations to realize grammatical processes)
Conversion: word of one class treated as belonging to a different class without any
overt morphological operation:
N V:paper ~ to paper (the wall)
skin ~ to skin a rabbit
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head ~ to head a department, an inquiry, a phrase
police ~ to police a town, a regulation
V N:walk ~ go for a walk
fall ~ take a fall
sleep ~ get a good night’s sleep
Also phrasal verbs:
take off ~ a smooth take off
put down ~ a cruel put down
run through ~ a quick run through (one’s lecture)
A N:the good, the bad and the ugly
N A:orange (balloon), primrose (wallpaper)
A V wet (the paper), dry (the dishes)
Types of inflectional processes
All English prefixes and most suffixes are derivational.
• Inflectional
Affixes can be divided into inflectional morphemes and derivational
morphemes. This reflects two major morphological (word building) processes:
Inflectional Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes do not change grammatical category of the base to which
they are attached. They do not change the meaning of the base. They only carry
relevant grammatical information, e.g. plural. Thus, book and books are both nouns
referring to the same kind of entity.
The number of inflectional affixes is small and fixed. NO new ones have been added
since 1500.
-s N Plural book-s
Inflectional affixes make different grammatical forms of the same word. English has
only 8 productive inflections:
There are several unproductive inflections too, like the plural -en in oxen, and the
participial -en in given.
stem + ending (inflectional suffix)
reprints ‘ Present Tense RE[PRINT]] = ‘print again’’
re print s
FREE BOUND
most prefixes and suffixes (Derivational and
most roots in English
inflectional)
but: adept, inept (BOUND
ism (free suffix) ex, pro, con (free prefixes)
ROOT)
Word-formation processes
MAJOR
MINOR
• ACRONYMS:
extreme form of reduction; -are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words
2 kind of them: “alphabetisisms”->CD, DNA-pronunciation consist of the set of
letters; -second are pronounced as a single word-> NATO, NASA, UNESCO, PIN
some acronyms lose their capitals to become everyday terms -> laser
• BACKFORMATION:
a word of one type(usu a noun) is reduced to form another word of a different
type(usu a verb); -worker->work, donation->donate…hypocorisms-a longer word is
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reduced to a single syllable, then –y or –ie is added to the end: movie, telly-
>television
Synchronic perspective on language-together; at the same point of time
Diachronic perspective on language-not together; in different points of time; showing
changes, how the language evolve in time.
• BLENDING:
taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word;
clipped and then compounded word eg. smog (smoke +fog), motel, bit, brunch,
telecast, Chunnel.
• BORROWING:
very common word –formation process; it’s social phenomenon means, the taking
over of words from other languages; -it takes place when a speaker of one culture
come to contact with another one; -the borrowing will be taken from the most
influential culture
Loan-words – words adapted from other languages
Loan-translation (calque) – it’s a direct translation of the elements of a word into the
borrowing language.
There’s always change in phonological structure.
• CLIPPING:
clip=to cut; -making words shorter, reducing them; a word of more then one syllable
is reduced to a shorter form; -esp in casual speech; -gas, bus, piano, bra
• COINAGE:
The invention of totally new terms
Proper names or trade names for one company’s product become general terms for
any version of that product.(eg. kleenex, Guy Fox->guy(any human being); -meaning
of the words is broaden and broaden.
• CONVERSION:
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a change in the function of a word(eg. when the noun comes to be used as a verb
without any reduction)other names are: “category change” I “functional shift”; very
productive in English, do not exist in Polish eg. cut,paper, butter, bottle, vecation, spy.
some converted forms shift in meaning when they change the category.
• PSEUDO ACRONYM
Reduce sentence into some letters e.g. I C Q : I Seek You, C U : See you, SQR :
secure, etc.
• ONOMOTOPEOIA
Words created from sound
e.g. Meauw > Cat, etc.