UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD CENTRE FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS &

TRANSLATION STUDIES
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Program: M.A Duration: Nov–Jan, 2020-21

Semester: I Instructor: Viswanatha Naidu
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Course Number: AL-403 Title of the course: Morphology
Core / Optional: Core No. of Credits: 4
Lectures: 2 sessions (each 2h)/Week
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Introduction:

The primary intention of the course is to enable the student to develop an insight into
word structure and word formation. This course is both theoretical and practical in
nature. It is theoretical in that it provides the students with considerable knowledge of
morphological terms and processes. It is practical in that it helps the students to develop
their skills in morphological analyses. The topics cover morphological terms,
morphological processes, and morphological analyses of words in various languages.

It also introduces the student to the notion of word from various viewpoints: word as a
unit of lexicon, as a syntactic, semantic and phonological construct. In addition to the
structuralist notion of morphology the course also introduces the student to the
contemporary developments in linguistic thought and their impact on Morphology. Word
based Morphology and other modern theories of Morphology like Lexical morphology
and Relational Morphology are also introduced.

Mode of Teaching:

The classes will consist of lectures, demonstrations, practice sessions and discussions.

Mode of Evaluation:

The internal assessment is for 50 marks and end-semester examination is for 50 marks.
The internal assessment may comprise of assignments, tests, presentations, data analysis
etc. The best two of these will be considered for final evaluation.

Syllabus:
 1. Morphology: Scope and Nature, its relationship to the rest of the grammatical system.
Fundamental concepts: Morph, morpheme, allomorph and word.

2. Identification and isolation of morphemes: Principles and problems: Types of

morphemes determined by structure and distribution. Morphophonemic processes and/or
sandhi: internal and external sandhi - assimilation, insertion (apocope, syncope), vowel
harmony, metathesis, etc. Word formation processes.

3. Morphological constructions: Inflection vs. derivation. Lexemes and word forms. On

the definition of word as linguistic unit: Word vs. Morpheme. Morphological typology.

4. Models of morphology: Item and Arrangement (IA), item and process (IP), and word
and paradigm (WP) models.

5. Word-formation in Generative Grammar: Word Based Morphology. Modern

Morphological Theories: Lexical Morphology, Relational Morphology.
Essential Reading:

1. Aronoff, Mark. And Kirsten Fudeman. What is Morphology? Blackwell publishing Ltd. 2005.
2. Haspelmath, Martin and Andrea, Sims. Understanding morphology (2nd Ed). Routledge. 2002.
3. Katamba, Francis. Morphology. Modern Linguistics series. New York: SM Press. 1993.
4. Nida, Eugene, A. Morphology: A Descriptive Analysis of Words. (2nd Ed.) Ann Arbor: UMP.
1949.
5. Aronoff, Mark. Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass: MITP. 1976.
6. Chomsky, N. Remarks on Nominalization. In R. Jakobson and Rosenbaum (Eds.) Readings in
Transformational Grammar. Mass: Gleen Co. 1970.
7. Hockett, C.F.(1954). Two Models of Grammatical Description.word,10,pp 210-311. 1954.
Additional Reading:
8. Aronoff, Mark. Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass: MITP. 1976.
9. Chomsky, Noam. Remarks on Nominalization. In R. Jakobson and Rosenbaum (Eds.) Readings
in Transformational Grammar. Mass: Gleen Co. 1970.
10. Halle, M. Prolegomena to a Theory of word Formation. L1.4.1, 3-16. 1973.
11. Hockett, Charles F. Two Models of Grammatical Description.word,10,pp 210-311,
a. Also in joos , M. (Ed.) Readings in Linguistics,Vol.1. 1954
12. Nida, Eugene A. Morphology: A Descriptive Analysis of Words. (2 nd Ed.) Ann Arbor: UMP.
1949.
13. Singh, Rajendra and Stanley Starosta (Eds.). Explorations in Seamless Morphology. SAGE
Publications. 2003.
14. Spencer, Andrew. Morphological Theory: An Introduction to word structure in Generative
Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. 1991.
15. Spencer. Andrew, Zwicky, Arnold, M. (Ed.). The Handbook of Morphology. Blackwell
Handbooks in Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. 1998.
16. Uma Maheshwar Rao, G. Morphology. In Panchanan Mohanty (Ed.) Natural Language
Structures, CAIL, Vol.412, pp-1-22 CDE: University of Hyderabad. 2007.