Morphology

General Linguistics

Sheena Shah
Today’s lecture
What is morphology?
Words and their parts: Morphemes and allomorphs
How do we make new words?
✓ Affixation
✓ Derivation vs. Inflection
✓ Cliticisation
✓ Compounding
✓ Back formation and reduction
✓ Stress and tone placement
✓ Reduplication
✓ Internal change: Ablaut and umlaut
… and a few crumbs …
Morphology

• Morphology is the study of the internal structure

of words. The list of all the words of a language is
called the lexicon, so morphology can be thought
of as the study of the lexicon.

• “Morphological analysis typically consists of the

identification of parts of words, or, more
technically, constituents of words.”
(Haspelmath and Sims, Understanding Morphology, 2013)

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What is a word?
Consider:
• 1. Fly
• 2. Flies
• 3. Desks
• 4. Dislike
• 5. He
• 6. Triumphed
• 7. The greenhouse is blue.
• 8. The green house is green.
• 9. I don’t like wi-fi, laser, fastfood, pickpockets and shopping centres.

Morphology: Words have internal structure 4

 What is a word?

• ‘Well-formedness’:

• Distribution:
(1) The cat sleeps on the mat.

(2) *The sleeps cat on mat the.

Different word classes are distinguished according to their relative

position: How words combine together.

• 2 main types: Lexical and Grammatical 5

MORPHEMES

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Morphemes

Definition:
Minimal units of meaning.
Smallest possible string of sounds that carries information
about meaning or function and cannot be reduced any further
(e.g. in, come, -ing, forming incoming).
1. to mean something
e.g. -al in autumn-al (having the quality of x)
2. to mark something
e.g. -ed in talk-ed (marking past tense)
What about sing-er, happi-er? Or handbag? Or carpet?
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Morphemes

Convention: Morpheme boundaries are often made

graphically visible by the sign “-”

Words are composed of morphemes, sometimes only 1,

sometimes more.
e.g. train  1 morpheme  simple word
e.g. reactivate  ?  complex word

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Allomorphs

e.g. an apple, a pear

• different realisations of one single underlying morphological
representation

 In English, the morpheme used to express indefiniteness

has two forms.
a  before words beginning with a consonant
an  before words beginning with a vowel

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In cases of allomorphy: Formulate rules that derive the
appropriate pronunciation for a particular context
e.g. allomorphs of an abstract plural morpheme
a. dog-[z]
b. cat-[s]
c. bush-[ɪz]
• a. plural allomorph [z] occurs when the word stem ends in a
voiced sound;
• b. plural allomorph [s] occurs when the word stem ends in a
voiceless sound;
• c. plural allomorph [ɪz] occurs when the word stem ends in a
sibilant 10
BUILDING WORDS

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Word building: Free and bound morphemes

• Free: Can be a word by itself

• Bound: Must be attached to another element.

e.g. My friend My friend-s

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Complex Words

More than one morpheme: root + affixes

Root: Major component of the word’s meaning →

belongs to a lexical category.
e.g. noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), preposition (P).

Affix: Does not belong to a lexical category, always

bound morphemes.

friends friendly

Root? Affix?

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Base/stem

The form to which an affix is added. Often same as

root, but not always, can be a complex word

e.g. a. black

b. black-en

c. black-en-ed

• black is the root and base for verb black-en,

• black is root for blackened, but its stem/base is

blacken, to which the affix -ed is added.

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Tree structure

Represents the word’s internal organisation.

• The adjective friendly, consists of the root noun friend

and the affix -ly (-ly is a bound morpheme that
combines with the root to give the meaning ‘in the
manner of a friend’).

• What about unfriendly?

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Constraints in word building

• Hierarchy: The internal structure of complex

words is hierarchical.

• Well-formedness: Each step in word formation

must produce a well-formed word in the language.

• So… how would you draw the tree for

‘unfriendly’?

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MORPHOLOGICAL
PROCESSES
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Affixation
Addition of an affix
• Form: Prefix, infix, suffix
1. Prefix: An affix that is attached to the front of its base (un-do,
de-compose)
2. Infix: A type of affix that occurs within a base (very rare in English).
3. Suffix: An affix that is attached to the end of its base (govern-ment,
kind-ness, teach-er)
Arabic infixes
Root: 3 consonants (in bold in example)
Affixes: consist of 2 vowels inserted in root in a manner that
intersperses vowels among consonants.
katab ‘write’ kutib ‘have been written’

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Affixation: Productivity

Often, a language will have more than one affix that it can
use to derive a particular kind of word.
e.g. Several suffixes in English that can form a noun
referring to an action based on a verb:
kiss-ing
decorat-ion, organiz-ation
agree-ment
approv-al
All suffixes are not equal. They differ in how productive
they are.

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Affix Derivation vs Inflection

Construction of new words by means of phonetically realised

affixation.

Derivation: Can change word class, results in new meaning

Inflection: Does not change word class (tense, number,
person, case).

If a derivational affix is added to a base, then we speak of

affix derivation. If an inflectional affix is added to a base,
then we speak of inflection.
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Derivation

Word formation process by which a base is combined with

an affix to form a word with a meaning and/or lexical
category distinct from that of its base.
(V) + -er = (N) ‘one who does X’
teach (V) + -er = teacher (N)
write (V) + -er = writer (N)
Derivation can apply more than once (i.e. it is possible to
create multiple levels of word structure).
Once formed, derived words become independent lexical
items that receive their own entry in a speaker’s mental
dictionary.
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In English

2 types of derivational affixes in English:

 Class 1 affixes: Often trigger changes in the consonant or
vowel segments of the base and may affect stress placement,
often combine with bound roots, mostly of Latinate origin.
e.g. san-ity, democrac-y, product-ive, part-ial, public-ize, nat-ion
 Class 2 affixes: Tend to be phonologically neutral, having no
effect on the segmental makeup of the base or on stress
placement
e.g. prompt-ness, hair-less, hope-ful, quiet-ly, defend-er, self-ish,
commend-able

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When both affix types appear in the same word, the Class 1
affix must normally occur closer to the root than the Class 2
affix (normally forms in which a Class 2 affix appears closer to
the root are not possible words)
fear -less -ness
root 1 2
*fear -ness -less
root 2 1

Distinction between Class 1 and Class 2 affixes is made so

that we have a tool to describe these findings and predict/
generalise from them.
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Inflection

Modification of the form of a word (through affixation, internal

change, reduplication or suppletion) to indicate the
grammatical subclass to which it belongs.
General example: inflection marks/signals contrasts such as
singular versus plural and past versus non-past
• Stem: Base to which an inflectional affix is added.
Regular vs. irregular inflection in English: most inflection in
English involves regular affixation (i.e. inflected forms are
constructed as needed in accordance with a general
morphological rule).
However, some words mark inflectional contrasts irregularly
(forms must be stored permanently in the language user’s
memory).
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Examples of Inflection
Person and Number
• Number: Morphological category that marks contrast of countable
quantities
English -s marks plural
• Person: Morphological category that marks the participant role of a
referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others.
• Person + number can be marked by 1 inflectional form
e.g. Spanish verb agreement
Person Number
Sg Pl
1. canto cantamos
2. cantas cantais
3. canta cantan 25
Verbal paradigm or conjugation: Set of inflectional forms
associated with a verb
Agreement: A category A agrees with a category B if it is
inflected for properties (such as person and number) of
category B
e.g. in French adjectival phrases, the adjective agrees with the
noun in number and gender
Gender: Masc, Fem
Number: Sg, Pl
Examples: café chaud-ø (Masc, Sg) cafés chaud-s (Masc, Pl)
soupe chaud-e (Fem, Sg) soupes chaud-es (Fem, Pl)
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Tense: Category that encodes the time of an event with
reference to the moment of speaking.

English inflects for present (walk - walks) and past (walked);

French inflects for:

present (chanter - chante)

imperfect (chantait)

simple past (chanta) and

future (chantera)
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Noun Class: Some languages divide nouns into classes
based on shared phonological and/or semantic properties (for
example: gender system)
SiSwati: Persons, body parts, fruit, instruments, animals,
abstract properties, locations

Case: Category that encodes information about the

grammatical role of an element (subjects, direct object, etc.)
e.g. nominal paradigm or declension: Set of related nominal
forms

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Languages of the world can be classified into 2 groups
depending on the pattern of how verbal arguments (subject,
direct object) are marked.
Accusative case marking pattern: In some languages,
the subject of intransitive and transitive verbs receive the
same case marking (nominative). The direct object of a
transitive verb receives a special case marker (accusative).
Ergative case marking pattern: In other languages, the
subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object of a
transitive verb receive the same case marking (absolutive).
The subject of a transitive verb receives a special case
marker (ergative).
e.g. Basque is a language with ergative pattern
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To sum up… Inflection vs Derivation
3 criteria to distinguish between inflectional and derivational
affixes:
1. Category change
• Inflection does not change grammatical category or type of
meaning found in the word to which it applies, e.g. walk (V), walk-ed
(V)
• Derivational suffixes characteristically change the category and/or
the type of meaning of the form to which they apply and are
therefore said to create a new word, e.g. walk (V), walk-er (N)

2. Order
Derivational affix combines with base before inflectional affix
(alignment: root - affder - affinfl) e.g. neighbour neighbour-hood
neighbour-hood-s
 inflection takes place after derivation
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3. Productivity
Degree to which native speakers use a particular
grammatical process (in this case: inflection and
derivation) with new bases of the appropriate category to
produce novel forms
• Inflectional affixes: Highly productive (i.e. easily apply to new
appropriate bases)
• Derivational affixes: Lowly productive (i.e. apply to restricted classes
of bases)

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Another morphological process: Cliticisation

French: l’eau (the water), la pomme (the apple), le gateau

(the cake)
English: I’m; you’re; she’s; they’ll; they’ve

Clitic: Words that cannot stand alone as independent forms

for phonological reasons. Word that syntactically functions
as a free morpheme, but phonetically appears as a bound
morpheme; must be attached to another word (= host).
2 types of clitics:
• Proclitics: attach to the following word
• Enclitics: attach to the preceding word
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Cliticisation vs. affixation
Cliticisation superficially resembles affixation: In both cases
an element that cannot stand alone is attached to a base
E.g.
a. The President’s eloquence. The President of India’s eloquence.
b. Several Presidents of India have visited Canada.
*Several President of Indias have visited Canada.

Difference?
• unlike affixes, clitics are members of a lexical category
(verb, noun, pronoun, preposition)
• suffixes must be attached to the word to which they
belong to in terms of grammar and meaning
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And another: Compounding
Word formation: Study of the structure of complex words, concerned
with the rules of combining smaller building blocks to form bigger units.
Also referred to as “word syntax”.
Compounding of lexical categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs,
prepositions) to create a larger word.
Elements making up a compound can all typically occur as independent
words elsewhere in language.
1. street light campsite
2. bluebird happy hour
3. swear word scrub lady
4. overlord in-group
5. (N) + (N)
6. (A) + (N)
7. (V) + (N)
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8. (P) + (N)
Compounding

• Cranberry morphemes???
• Compound or not compound?
e.g. green house greenhouse
1. Stress: Adjective-noun compounds have main stress on their first
component; in non-compounds consisting of an adjective + noun, the
second element is generally stressed
2. Tense + plural markers cannot be attached to the first element,
although they can be added to the compound as a whole.
3. To identify compounds with Adj as first element: The adjective in the
compound cannot be modified by a word like very.
• The morpheme which determines the word category and the
meaning of the entire word is called the head of the word. In most
compounds, the head is the rightmost morpheme (in English).
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Compounds: Endocentricity vs. exocentricity

Grammatical and semantic features of the head determine the

grammatical and semantic features of the whole compound. The
grammatical and the semantic head of a word can be word-internal or
word-external.

• Endocentric compound: Rightmost component of the compound

identifies general class to which meaning of the entire word belongs
• e.g. cave man  type of man

• Exocentric compound: Compound in which the grammatical or the

semantic head, or both, are not visible in the word, i.e., the meaning of
the compound is not the sum of the meanings of its parts.
• e.g. Bluebeard: ’blue’ is an adjective, ’beard’ is a noun. ’Beard’ is the
head of the compound, determining its category (N, not Adj).
However, ’beard’ is not the semantic head of the compound:
Bluebeard is not a beard which is blue, but a man with a blue beard.36
In English:
endocentric exocentric
oak leaves (Toronto) Maple leafs
policemen Walkmans
wisdom teeth Bluetooths

Note this difference between endocentric vs. exocentric in

English compounds, when head of compound has
irregular plural…
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And a few more morphological processes…

Backformation: Creation of a neologism by removing a real

or supposed affix from a word perceived as derived, and
thereby reconstructing a base which did not exist before
e.g. baby-sitter baby-sit

Word reduction: Shortening/abbreviation of an original word.

Resulting word is equivalent to the base in meaning and
lexical category
Types of word reduction:
• Clipping: Shortening of a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more
syllables
e.g. demo(nstration), (E)lisa(beth), (tele)phone, (we)blog
• Blending: “Mixture“ of non-morphemic parts of two already existing
items, usually the first part of one and the final part of the other
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e.g. smog (smoke+fog), motel (motor+hotel), brunch (breakfast+lunch)
Acronym formation: Initial letters of (some or all) words in
a phrase or title are contracted and pronounced as a word
e.g. PIN (Personal Identification Number
Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation)

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Reduplication

Marking of a grammatical or semantic contrast by

repeating all or part of the base to which it applies

2 types of reduplication:

Partial reduplication: Repetition of a part of the

base, e.g. (Tagalog) lakad ‘run’ lalakad ‘will walk’

Full reduplication: Repetition of the entire base, e.g.

(Indonesian) oraɳ ‘man’ oraɳ oraɳ ‘all sorts of men’

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Stress and tone placement

Change in the placement of stress or tone to

reflect a contrast in lexical category

e.g. ímport (V) impórt (N)

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Internal change: Ablaut and umlaut
Process that substitutes one non-morphemic segment for another.
e.g. sing (present) sang (past)
Ablaut: Vowel alternations that mark grammatical contrasts
Umlaut: Fronting of one vowel under the influence of a vowel in the
following syllable.
e.g. foot feet
Internal change vs. infixation:
Infixation  the base into which a real infix is inserted exists as a
separate form in the language
Internal change  there is no separate infixless form in the language,
e.g. foot/feet and sing/sang, but no forms *ft ’lower extremity of the leg’
or *sng ’produce words in a musical tone’.
The segment that are affected by the internal change are not
morphemes. 42
Suppletion: Root morpheme is replaced by a
phonologically unrelated form in order to indicate a
morphological contrast.
e.g. go - went

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And a few more…

Word manufacture (Coinage): Creation of a word “from

scratch”; especially common for product names

e.g. kodak, teflon, wi

Onomatopoeia: Creation of a word to sound like the thing it

names

e.g. tick-tock, swoosh, zap, beep, buzz

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