Handout Seminar L&S week 4 (Morphology)

Word formation
1. Which of the following pairs contains an example of calque? How would you
describe the other(s)?

(a) footobooru (Japanese) - football (English)- borrowings

(b) trening (Hungarian) - training (English)- borrowings
(c) luna de miel (Spanish "moon of honey") - honeymoon (English)
(d) jardin d'enfants (French "garden of children") - Kindergarten (German "children garden")

2. Can you identify the different word-formation processes involved in producing each of the underlined
words in these sentences?
(a) Don't they ever worry that they might get AIDS? acronym
(b) That's really fandamntastic! infix
(c) These new skateboards from Zee Designs are kickass. Compounding and conversion (endocentric;
androcentric?? )
(d) When I'm ill, I want to see a doc, not a vet. clipping
(e) The house next door was burgled when I was babysitting the Smiths' children. Backformation(verbe
from noun) and backformation
(0 I like this old sofa - it's nice and comfy. Borrowing, hypocorism
(g) I think Robyn said she'd like a toastie for brekky. hypocorism
(h) You don't need to button it because it's got velcro inside. Conversion, blending
3. When Hmong speakers (from Laos and Vietnam) settled in the USA, they had to create some new words
for the different objects and experiences they encountered. Using the following translations (from
Downing and Fuller, 1984), can you work out the English equivalents of the Hmong expressions listed
below?

4. When English words are borrowed into Japanese, they are subject to nativization, a process whereby
they are typically given a syllabic pronunciation, as in ingurishu (“English”). Can you reverse the
syllabification process to identify the following English words borrowed into Japanese? One list has items
you can get at a place kwnown as makudonarudo, the other has items connected to supootsu.
 Morphology

Quiz before the lecture - Taalpuzzel: Affixes in Indonesian

5. Fill in the blanks, after having looked at the data.
2. In the following puzzle, try to divide each Nahuatl word into its various parts (explaining what they
stand for), and then fill in the translations at the end. Note: The symbol ":" after a vowel simply means
that the vowel is pronounced longer than otherwise. It does NOT necessarily mean that the word must be
divided at that point.

3. Tepehua is a language spoken in Central Mexico. The table below shows a selection of numerals in
Tepehua. Study the forms and answer the questions. laqa
1.- tam 2-Qa 3.tutu 4. T’aaii
Notes

Zero/null morpheme

Sheep-> 2 sheep

Lip-stick> is a sort of stick= stick is the head