Morphology

(1)

Word status
 Morphology
Definition:
The study of the internal structure of words,
and of the rules by which words are formed.

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax
 Morphological knowledge
Knowledge of morphology is part of linguistic
competence.

thecatatetherat

kwapmuknanuk
‘they see us’ in Potawatomi (native American
tribe)
IFA, Descriptive Grammar:
Morphology, Syntax
IFA, Descriptive Grammar:
Morphology, Syntax
IFA, Descriptive Grammar:
Morphology, Syntax
 Knowledge of words
• Sound
• Meaning
• (Grammatical category)
Linguistic sign (F. De Saussure):
signifier / signified
(arbitrary relationship)
Each word is a sound-meaning unit
IFA, Descriptive Grammar:
Morphology, Syntax
Open and closed classes of words
• Open class: nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs
• Closed class: conjunctions, prepositions,
pronouns

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax
 The lexicon
Mental dictionary
- The average high school student knows
about ? independent words.
- (60,000)
- Lexical and functional (grammatical) words
are stored at different ‘locations’ in the
lexicon.

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax
 A word is ...
• Leonard Bloomfield: ‘minimal free form’
• Speech is a phonetic continuum, without
pauses between words. We need some
means of determing the boundaries of
words.

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax
 Formal criteria for wordhood
• 1. Orthographic: a word is what occurs between
spaces in writing.
• 2. Semantic: a word has semantic coherence; it
expresses a unified semantic concept.

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax
3. Phonological: (a) potential pause: a word occurs
between potential pauses in speaking. We may pause
between words, but not in the middle of words.
(b) stress: a word spoken in isolation has one and only
one primary stress.
4. Morphological: a word has an internal cohesion and
is indivisable by other units; a word may be modified
only externally by the addition of suffixes and
prefixes.
5. Grammatical: words fall into particular classes.
6. Syntactic: a word has external distribution or
mobility; it is moved as a unit, not in parts.
IFA, Descriptive Grammar:
Morphology, Syntax
 Problematic cases

grapefruit
travel agency
good-for-nothing
son-in-law
money-hungry
look over
passer-by

IFA, Descriptive Grammar:

Morphology, Syntax