HUL

225 - Morphology

Indian Ins(tute of Technology Ropar

Course Instructor Dr. Somdev Kar

Atul Bhagat
2011ME1086

Course Content

Morphology as a subsystem of grammar-word structure

Lexical morphology

Inec(onal and deriva(onal morphemes

Word forma(on processes

Models of morphological analysis

Rela(ons between phonology

Morphology and syntax

Problem solving in morphology (analysis)

Genera(ve morphology

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Course Outline

Marks Distribu(on and Grading Policy (Yet to be decided)

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Major Language Sub-System

Linguists recognize seven major language subsystems:

Phone(cs - The sounds of the human speech.

Phonology - The systema(c use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human
language.

Morphology - The structure of meaningful units of a language or a scien(c study of

form and structure, usually without regard to func(on.

Syntax - The principles and rules for construc(ng phrases, clauses.

Seman(cs - The meaningful content of words, sentences, or other language elements.

Pragma(cs - The ways in which context contributes to meaning in natural language use.

Lexicology - The study of words.

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What is Morphology?
Morphology is the study of the word structure and word

forma(on.

We use words to form sentences (that has a meaning) to

communicate with each other. So, sentences can be

broken down to smaller units i.e. words.
Similarly, a word can be broken down into smaller

meaningful parts, and they are called morphemes.

Words can classied broadly into mono-morphemic

words and poly-morphemic words.

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Morphemes
Morpheme: the minimal units of meaning
Morphemes can be words on their own, and/or can

o[en be combined with other morphemes to make

words

E.g. the word book has one morpheme

E.g. the word books has two morphemes:

book + -s

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Types of Morphemes
Free Morphemes : is a morpheme that by itself can func5on as a word
in a language
Examples : Boy , desire , gentle , man.
Bound Morpheme : is a morpheme that cannot stand by itself to form
a word; it must be joined to other morphemes. It is bound
because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone.
Examples : -ish -ness -ly

dis-

trans-

Free morpheme : Bad

Bound morpheme : ly
Word : Badly

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Work Done
Chapter 1 & 2 of An Introduc5on To The English

Morphology : Words and Their Structures By

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy.

HUL 225 - Morphology _ Atul Bhagat v1

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HUL 225 - Morphology _ Atul Bhagat v1

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