UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SIMON RODRIGUEZ

NUCLEO ARAURE
MORPHOSYNTAX GUIDE
BY: MARISABEL VLEZ. A-2017

UNIT II. WORD FORMATION

In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is

sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning.
The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a
new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to
it in form.
Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions,
although words can be formed from multi-word phrases.
VERBS NOUN ADJECTIVE ADVERB
sadden Sadness Sad
satisfaction satisfied unsatisfied
satisfy
dissatisfaction satisfactory unsatisfactory
save safety safe safe unsafe
Scarcity scarce
scene scenery scenic
science scientist scientific scientifically
Season seasonal
secure Security secure insecure
select Selection selective
sensation sensitive
insensitive senseless
sense Sense
sensible insensible
sensational
separate separable
separate Sepatation
inseparable
serve service servant
Shade shady
shame Shame shameless ashamed
 shameful
sharpen Sharpness sharp
shorten Shortage Short
sign Signature
Silence silent
similarity
similar dissimilar
dissimilarity
simplify Simplicity simple simply
situate Situation
Sincerity sincere
sleep sleep sleeper sleepy sleepless asleep sleepily
slip slip slipper slippery
smooth smoothness smooth
soften Softness Soft
solve Solution
Sorrow sorry sorrowful
speak Speech speechless
spell spelling
misspell misspelling
stability
stabilize stable unstable
instability
state Statement
Stone stony
stop stopper stoppage
straighten straightness straight
strengthen Strength strong
Stupidity stupid
succed Success successful
Sun sunny suntanned sunburned
suffice Sufficiency sufficient insufficient
support support supportive
 supporter
suspect Suspect suspicious unsuspicious
sweeten Seetness sweet
systematize System systematic unsystematic
sympathise Sympathy sympathetic unsympathetic

COGNADES AND FALSE COGNADES

N COGNADES FALSE COGNADES

01 Reduce Technology Lecture Attend
02 Idea Error Rest Realize
03 Electricity Illuminated Exit Actually
04 Ambulance Drama Library Succes
05 Incident Doctor Carpet
06 Class Philosophy Parents
07 Type Important Record
08 Silence Parts Notice
09 Energy Different Assist
10 Complete National Sentence

Read the sentences and translate them

1. Food is the source of energy for the body. 6. You look tired, you need a rest
2. She wrote her complete name in the form 7. Mirtha wrote some sentences on the
3. Paul didn`t come to class in the morning. board
4. Electricity is necessary for Industries. 8. We are going to the library.
9. The teacher notices you are nervous.
5. It was not a good idea going to that place alone.
10. I will visit my parents tomorrow.

Identify friends and false friends and translate the sentences

1. Production of the month has been increasing progressively

2. Research is quantitative
3. The Library of Congress is closed
4. The food has little salt
5. Technology has had an important impact on society
6. Studies of cancer have made little progress and the last decade
7. The abstract of the research is very necessary
8. Advertising campaign was a great success
9. This rose is beautiful
10. The route is long
11. Your secret will be safe with me
 12. The art of pleasing is the art of deception
NOW: write sentences from your own using cognades and false cognades

COMPOUND WORDS

There are words called compounds. They contain two or more words (or more
accurately, two or more roots, all, one, or none of which may be bound; cf. blueberry with
two free morphemes, and astronaut with two bound morphemes). Generally, one of the
words is the head of the compound and the other(s) its modifier(s).
In bucksaw, saw is the head, which is modified by buck. The order is significant:
compare pack rat with ratpack. Generally, the modifier comes before the head.

In ordinary English spelling, compounds are sometimes spelled as single words, as

in sawmill, sawdust; sometimes the parts are connected by a hyphen, as in jig-saw; and
sometimes they are spelled as two words, as in chain saw, oil well. (Dictionaries may differ
in their spellings.) Nonetheless, we are justified in classifying all such cases as compound
words regardless of their conventional spelling for a variety of reasons.
First, the stress pattern of the compound word is usually different from the stress
pattern in the phrase composed of the same words in the same order. Compare:

COMPOUND PHRASE

White House white house

funny farm funny farm
blackbird black bird
flatcar flat car

In the compounds the main stress is on the first word; in the phrases the main stress
is on the last word. While this pattern does not apply to all compounds, it is so generally
true that it provides a very useful test. Second, the meaning of the compound may differ to
a greater or lesser degree from that of the corresponding phrase.
A blackbird is a species of bird, regardless of its color; a black bird is a bird which
is black, regardless of its species. A trotting-horse is a kind of horse, regardless of its
current activity; a trotting horse must be a horse that is currently trotting. So, because the
meanings of compounds are not always predictable from the meanings of their constituents,
dictionaries often provide individual entries for them.

They do not do this for phrases, unless the meaning of the phrase is idiomatic
and therefore not derivable from the meanings of its parts and how they are put together,
e.g., raining cats and dogs. Generally the meaning of a phrase is predictable from the
meanings of its constituents, and so phrases need not be listed individually. (Indeed,
because the number of possible phrases in a language is infinite, it is in principle
impossible to list them all.)
Third, in many compounds, the order of the constituent words is different from that in the
corresponding phrase:

Sawmill, mill for sawing

sawing horse, horse for sawing
sawdust, dust from sawing

Fourth, compound nouns allow no modification to the first element.

This contrasts with noun phrases, which do allow modification to the modifier:
compare *a really-blackbird and a really black bird.

There are a number of ways of approaching the study and classification of compound
words, the most accessible of which is to classify them according to the part of speech of
the compound and then sub-classify them according to the parts of speech of its
constituents.

1. Compound nouns
a. Noun + noun: bath towel; boy-friend; death blow
b. Verb + noun: pickpocket; breakfast
c. Noun +verb: nosebleed; sunshine
d. Verb +verb: make-believe
e. Adjective + noun: deep structure; fast-food
f. Particle + noun: in-crowd; down-town
g. Adverb + noun: now generation
h. Verb + particle: cop-out; drop-out
i. Phrase compounds: son-in-law
2. Compound verbs
a. Noun + verb: sky-dive
b. Adjective + verb: fine-tune
c. Particle + verb: overbook
d. Adjective + noun: brown-bag
3. Compound adjectives
a. Noun + adjective: card-carrying; childproof
b. Verb + adjective: fail safe
c. Adjective + adjective: open-ended
d. Adverb + adjective: cross-modal
e. Particle + adjective: over-qualified
f. Noun + noun: coffee-table
g. Verb + noun: roll-neck
h. Adjective + noun: red-brick; blue-collar
i. Particle + noun: in-depth
j. Verb + verb: go-go; make-believe
k. Adjective/Adverb + verb: high-rise;
l. Verb + particle: see-through; tow-away
4. Compound adverbs
uptightly
cross-modally
5. Neo-classical compounds
astro-naut
hydro-electric
mechano-phobe
English compounds (bauer, 1983)

An alternative approach is to classify compounds in terms of the semantic

relationship between the compound and its head. The head of a compound is the constituent
modified by the compounds other constituents.

In English, heads of compounds are typically the rightmost constituent (excluding

any derivational and inflectional suffixes). For example, in traffic-cop the head is cop,
which is modified by traffic; in line-backer the head is backer,which is modified by line.

Linguists distinguish at least three different semantic relations between the head and
modifier(s) of compounds:
First, the compound represents a subtype of whatever the head represents.
For instance, a traffic-cop is a kind of cop; a teapot is a kind of pot; a fog-lamp is a kind of
lamp; a blue-jay is a kind of jay. That is, the head names the type, and the compound names
the subtype. These are called endocentric compounds.

Second, the compound names a subtype, but the type is not represented by either the head
or the modifier in the compound. For example, Deadhead, redhead, and pickpocket
represent types of people by denoting some distinguishing characteristic. There is typically
another word, not included in the compound, that represents the type of which the
compound represents the subtype. In the case of Deadhead, redhead, and pickpocket this
other word is person, so a Deadhead is a person who is an enthusiastic fan of the
band The Grateful Dead. These are called exocentric compounds.

Third, there are compounds in which both elements are heads; each contributes equally to
the meaning of the whole and neither is subordinate to the other, for instance, bitter-sweet.
Compounds like these can be paraphrased as both X and Y, e.g., bitter and sweet. Other
examples include teacher-researcher and producer-director. These can be called
coordinative compounds.

Exercise
For each set of words below, say whether the words are endocentric,
exocentric, or coordinative compounds. Justify your identification.

a. redneck, yellowjacket, cocktail, blackhead

b. armchair, breathtest, rockopera
c. secretary-treasurer, scholar-administrator
 DERIVATION

Affixes are classified according to whether they are attached before or after the form to
which they are added. Prefixes are attached before and suffixes after. The bound
morphemes listed earlier are all suffixes; the {re} of resaw is a prefix.

Root, derivational, and inflectional morphemes

Besides being bound or free, morphemes can also be classified as root, derivational, or
inflectional. A root morpheme is the basic form to which other morphemes are attached. It
provides the basic meaning of the word. The morpheme {saw} is the root of sawers.

Derivational morphemes are added to forms to create separate words: {er} is a derivational
suffix whose addition turns a verb into a noun, usually meaning the person or thing that
performs the action denoted by the verb. For example, {paint}+{-er} creates painter, one
of whose meanings is someone who paints.

Inflectional morphemes do not create separate words. They merely modify the word in
which they occur in order to indicate grammatical properties such as plurality, as the {-s}
of magazines does, or past tense, as the {ed} of babecued does. English has eight
inflectional morphemes, which we will describe below.

We can regard the root of a word as the morpheme left over when all the derivational and
inflectional morphemes have been removed. For example, in immovability, {im-}, {-abil},
and {-ity} are all derivational morphemes, and when we remove them we are left with
{move}, which cannot be further divided into meaningful pieces, and so must be the words
root.

We must distinguish between a words root and the forms to which affixes are attached. In
moveable, {-able} is attached to {move}, which weve determined is the words root.
However, {im-} is attached to moveable, not to {move} (there is no word immove), but
moveable is not a root. Expressions to which affixes are attached are called bases. While
roots may be bases, bases are not always roots.

Exercise
Use the words in capitals to form a word that fits into the space next to it!
1. A ______________________ of foreign languages, especially French and German, is
required for the job. (KNOW)
2. Judo requires both skill and ______________________ (STRONG).
3. We decided to buy the house because the price was very ______________________
(REASON)
4. The ______________________ of the mountain is about 2000 metres (HIGH).
5. Tea or coffee? If I had the ______________________ Id take tea (CHOOSE).
6. She was very ______________________ and hoped to become a lawyer before she
reached the age of 35. (AMBITION)
7. Thank you for everything youve done. Youve been very ______________________
(HELP).
8. The painting looked real, but the ______________________ was obviously a forgery
(SIGN).
9. Last year the company made a ______________________ of over $10 million (LOSE).
10. I could never live in Saudi Arabia because of the ______________________ (HOT).
11. She passed all of her exams with ______________________ (EASY).
12. I do not think it is a good idea to go to the beach today. Its too
______________________ (CLOUD).
13. The police are looking into the ______________________ disappearance of the old
man (MYSTERY)
14. Dont touch that snake. Its extremely ______________________ (POISON).
15. I think its a very ______________________ thing to wait before you buy the house.
Prices might go down (SENSE)

PHRASAL VERBS

2. They ____ all the money ____ to the people poor.

give .... away

take .... on
put .... in
bring ... up

3. The firemen are trying to _____ the cause of the fire.

get in
look up
look for
find out

4. The british athlete _____ a new world record.

set up
obtain on
get up
received in

5. My daughter _____ her brother.

 seems in
looks at
takes after
leaves in

6. The plane is going to ______ in twenty minutes.

fly away
take off
blow up
let up

7. My brother uses my things and never ____ them ____ .

drive ... back

return ... up
put .... back
set .... up

8. The music is too loud. ____ it ____ , please.

come ... down

put .... down
let .... down
turn .... down

9. The police said:_____ your hands and don't move a muscle!

put on
put up
put away
put along
10. ____ your coat and make yourself comfortable.

take off
take up
take on
take in

The history of Halloween

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and
death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to
have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people
would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the
eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to
honorall saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints Day, incorporated some
of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows
Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular,
community-basedevent characterized by child-friendly activities such as
trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days
grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the
winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.
Halloweens origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain
(pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is
now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their
new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the
harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was
often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before
the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead
became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebratedSamhain,
when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In
addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the
presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic
priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely
dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an
important source of comfort and directionduring the long, dark winter.
Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England
because of the rigidProtestant belief systems there. Halloween was much
more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and
customs of different Europeanethnicgroups as well as the American Indians
meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The
first celebrations included play parties, publicevents held to celebrate the
harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each others
fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the
telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the
nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween
was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with
new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing
Irelands potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of
Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans
began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or
money, a practice that eventually became todays trick-or-treat tradition.
Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or
appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings
or mirrors.