Reporter: Renjie D.

Oliveros
A morpheme is a unit of sound.

Just an allophone is a variation of a single

phoneme, an allomorph is a variety of a
single morpheme.
An allomorph is an alternate
pronunciation of a phonological form
of a morpheme in a particular
linguistic environment.
The English plural morpheme has 3
allomorphs:

 /Schwa z/ or /әz/… as in busses

/z/… as in twigs
 /s/… as in cats
The allomorph is conditioned by the
phonetic or sound environment of the
word…
 [әz] [s] [z]
(Schwa z)

Bushes Cats Pens

Judges Tips Dogs
Buses Books Cars

1. [әz] occurs on nouns ending in s, z, s, z, c, j.

(sibilants)
2. [s] occurs following all other voiceless sounds
3. [z] occurs following all other voiced sounds
The allomorphs of English plural are:

[әz] [s] [z]

Wish/wished Grab/grabbed Want/wanted
Talk/talked Love/Loved wait/waited
Kiss/kissed

ADD [t] if ADD [d] ADD [әd] if

Following following an
Voiceless sound alveolar stop
The past tense inflectional morphemes
that mark the past tense are:

[t] as in talk/talked
[d] as in grabbed
[әd] as in want/wanted
central principle of lexical morphology:
-the morphological component of the
grammar is organized in a series of
hierarchical strata
English affixes can be grouped in two
broad classes on the basis of their
phonological behavior: neutral and non-
neutral
non-neutral affix: effect on segmental or
suprasegmentalstructure of the base
Example for non-neutral affixes: -ic, -ee
‘strategy –stra’tegic, ‘morpheme –mor’phemic,
‘photograph –photo’graphic
em’ploy–emplo’yee, de’tain–detai’nee, ‘absent –
absen’tee
-ic is a pre-accenting suffix (syllable immediately
before it is stressed)
-ee is an auto-stressed suffix (attracts the stress
itself)
neutral affix: no phonological effect on the base to
which it is attached
Examples: -ness, -less
‘abstract –‘abstractness, ‘serious –‘seriousness,
a’lert–a’lertness
‘home –‘homeless, ‘power –‘powerless, ‘paper –
‘paperless
the neutral/non-neutral distinction corresponds
to the more traditional distinction between
primary( = non-neutral) and secondary(= neutral)
affixes and the classic distinction of weak
boundary (‘#’) between neutral suffix and base vs.
strong boundary (‘+’) between non-neutral suffix
and base in SPE
secondary affixes can produce segment sequences
that are disallowed in a single morpheme example:
no geminate consonants in morphemes:
example: no geminate consonants in morphemes:
miss [ms]
no geminate consonants with attached primary
affix: ad-duce [ədju:s]
geminate consonants with attached secondary
affix: thin-ness [θnn s]
typically (there are exceptions) primary affixes are
Greek or Latinate, secondary affixes are Germanic
(affixes tend to combine with bases from the same
source)
Basic principles of the Lexical Phonology/Morphology
Model
•level ordering: affixes are added at different
strata/levels
•each stratum/level has associated with it a set of
morphological rules that do the word-building
rules that do the word-building.
•the morphological rules are linked to phonological
rules that indicate how the structure built by
morphology is supposed to be pronounced.
•underived lexical items are listed in the lexicon
primary affixes are attached at level 1 -secondary
affixes and compounding at level 2
[root]
[level 1 affix –root–level 1 affix]
[level 2 affix –level 1 affix –root–level 1 affix –level 2
affix]
level 1 affixes are always closer to the root, level 2 (i.e.
neutral) affixes are on the outside
Mendel Mendel-ian Mendel-ian-ism *Mendel-ism-ian
Mongol Mongol-ian Mongol-ian-ism *Mongol-ism-ian
grammar grammar-ian grammar-ian-ism *grammar-ism-
ian
Shakespeare Shakespear-ian Shakespear-ian-ism
*Shakespear-ism-ian

-ian: pre-accenting (accent shift to syllable before –ian)

vowel shift ([mɒŋgəl] –[mɒŋgəʊlɪən]) -ism:neutral suffix
(no phonological changes on the base)
-ian as level 1 suffix always closer to the root than level 2
suffix
What kinds of information should lexical entries of
affixes contain?
-meaning
-to which bases (category and other criteria) can the
affix attach?
-grammatical category of the created word
-at which level does affixation take place (affixes at
the same level share traits, thus generalities are
captured)?
Base Word/Root
Look at the sentence below. What can you notice
about the underlined words?

Although I enjoy playing tennis, I am not one of the

best players on my team.

In fact both have the same base word (or root), that is
play. In English it is possible to form many different
words to convey different meanings using the root.
Let’s look at the example below.
ABLE -Ability
-Enable
-Disable
In this case able is the base word . Ability, disable and
enable are words which stem from this base word.
Each of this words has a fundamentally different
meaning, however there is always going to be some
connotation(or relation) between base word and the
words which are formed from it.
Words are normally adding AFFIXES to the base word.
Affixes can be divided into three- PREFIXES, INFIXES,
SUFFIXES.

PREFIXES are particles added in font of the base word,

whereas
SUFFIXES are particles which are added in the middle
of the word, and can have both a prefix as well as a suffix
attached to them
Below there are examples to illustrate prefixes and
suffixes.
It is important to note that English has very few true
infixes, and the ones it has are normally highly colloquial
or else found in extremely technical terminology
AFFIXES
PREFIXES SUFFIXES
illegible approval
irresponsible friendship
displeased information
unpopular popularity
Prefixes

Although affixes are ‘small particles’ , they carry

a lot of meaning. For example, prefixes are
normally used to change a word from positive to
negative, or to show that an action is repeated.

Inother cases they are used to refer to size-

that is something is very small, for example
Hints: The prefix il- is normally put before
Words beginning with I-
The prefix ir- is normally put before
words beginning with r-
The prefix im- is normally put
before words beginning with p-
Suffixes
Suffixes are normally used to change the class of a
word, for example, from an adjective to a noun, or
vice versa. They are also used to change words into
verbs or adverbs.

Intelligent (adjective) -Intelligence (noun)

Friend (noun) -Friendly (adjective)
Clear (Adjective) -Clarify (verb)
Slow (adjective) -Slowly (adverb)
The most common NOUN suffixes are the
following:
1.-al
2. –ation
3.-ence
4. –ion
5. –ism
6. –ity
7. Ness
8. -ment
The most common NOUN suffixes are the
following:
9. –ship

For example: -imagination

-parallelism
-immortality
The most common ADJECTIVE suffixes are the
following:
1. -al For example:
2. -able -eventful
3. -ful - edible
4. Ible -attractive
5. -ive
6. -less
7. -ous
8. -y
The most common VERB suffixes are the
following:
1. -en For example:
2. -ify -behave
3. -ise -clarify
4. -ist -symphatize
5. Ize
6. -ve
The most common ADVERB suffix is –ly
For example: -peacefully
-clearly
-slowly
However, like most things in the English
languages, there are also a few exceptions to this
rule.
For example: -good (adj.) -well (adverb)
-fast (adj. ) -fast (adverb)
1. In conclusion, affixes can be said to be the
building blocks of any language in that they
can be put together to form different shapes, or
in this case, words.
2. It is for a reason that a person’s vocabulary can
be as extensive as the figures mentioned in the
introduction.