Vladimir Ž.

Jovanović

ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
Lecture 1
MORPHOLOGY, MORPHEME,
ALLOMORPH
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
MORPHOLOGY
– a scientific study of
language
– a branch of linguistics
– studies words and their
structure.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 What does structure mean?
= It is the relationship that exists
between certain elements
themselves and their relationship
to the whole.
MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 InLinguistics, structure means a
network of interrelated linguistic
elements.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 The name of the subject:
 Greek words morphos = “shape,
form” and logos = “study”.
 The term originated in biology to
mean the “formal structure of an
entity” (can be come across in
medicine).
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
As it is interested in the
internal organization within
the word, its meaningful
elements, the relations
between them, etc. >
“word grammar”.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 Asidefrom dealing with the form of
words, it also deals with the ways
lexemes are formed.
 Determines the division within
Morphology into two subfields:
– INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
– DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY -
interested in the grammatical
form of words, in the modalities
of changing the form of a word to
achieve a function (grammatical
meaning), without any
corresponding change in the
lexical meaning of the word.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
The resources at the disposal of
English IM are only SUFFIXES.
All other relations are
established by means of
prepositions, sentence
positioning, etc.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED

v.to impress
 impresses
 impressed
 impressing
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY -
concerned with different
lexemes that are related to one
another.
 It is interested in the derivation
of words, the ways more
complex lexical structures are
constructed.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
The means for forming
words are affixes, prefixes,
suffixes, additional roots,
but there are other ways of
forming new lexemes.
 MORPHOLOGY DEFINED
v. to impress
 noun = impression,
impressiveness, impressionablility
 adverb = impressionably,
impressively
 adjective = impressive,
impressionable »
 MORPHEME
 Morpheme - a very important
concept in linguistics, an abstract
unit of language structure.
 Many authors have offered more
or less similar definitions.
 Three complementary sections of
the definition of morpheme:
 MORPHEME

The unit must be a part of

word or a word that has
meaning or grammatical
function.
 cat, loveliest, undergo
glisten?
 MORPHEME
Morpheme – a form-meaning
pairing.
drank, flank, rank, sank, tank
Is there any consistent,
identifiable meaning of -ank?
 MORPHEME

 Morphemes are not further divisible.

 They cannot be divided into smaller
elements without violating the
meaning. This is to say that
morpheme is the smallest meaningful
unit in language.
 Ball vs Ball
 MORPHEME
The unit has to be able to
appear in various
environments, occur in other
places, with no considerable
change of its meaning.
MORPHEME
 MORPHEME
 The third criterion means that the
morpheme -est should be able to
appear in combination with other
morphemes rich-est, funni-est .
 Also, the morpheme should not change
its meaning in different combinations:
understatement, underachiever,
undermine...
 MORPHEME
A Morpheme is the smallest unit in
language structure that carries at
least some meaning.
 A form – meaning pairing. {-y}
 Phonemes, smaller units of language
than morphemes, do not possess
meaning on their own, but only form,
bringing about a change in meaning.
 MORPHEME
 In morphology - the phonemic and
not orthographic form of units
matters. Why?
 1. Certain alternations in speech
cannot be seen in writing.
looks vs brains
 2. The alternations in writing depend
on features of the pronunciation.
proofs vs proves (to prove)
 MORPHEME
 Morphemes consist of certain
phonemes or graphemes, and their
phonological or graphical content can
vary, from one element to many.
 MORPHEME

InLinguistics,
morphemes are
marked with braces
-ed, anti-, car
 MORPHEME
 Two types of morphemes:
 Free morphemes – can be on
their own in a language
sequence.
 They have meaning and can be
uttered as one word sentences,
not needing any other element.
 MORPHEME
These can be divided into lexical
and functional morphemes -
equivalent to simple words.
The mere ability to stand alone in
a sentence - a guarantee for a
morpheme to be free.
dog, watch, smart, the, on
 MORPHEME
 Bound morphemes – cannot be on
their own in a sentence.
 Divided into derivational and
inflectional morphemes.
 These have to be attached or
combined with some other morphemes
in order to create a word.
 -ful  beautiful, dis-  dishonest, -ly 
friendly
MORPHEME
 MORPHEME
 There are words that consist of
bound morphemes only, words
such as edible, theology,
geography.
 In a sentence – often more
morphemes than words.
 In a language as a whole - more
words. Why? »
 MORPH
 Sincethe morpheme is an abstract unit,
we speak of their concrete realization in
language and call them morphs.
 Morphs are the actual realizations of
this abstract entity in speech, the
phonemic realization of it.
 {book} – as many times this is uttered,
as many morphs. »
 ALLOMORPH
 All morphemes do not have stable
phonological expression.
 They need not appear in the same
shape.
 Morphemes can have more than one
phonological form (related forms
paired with the same meaning).
 ALLOMORPH
DEFINITION: Different
manifestations of the same
morpheme, which share the
same meaning but have
different phonological form
are called allomorphs or
positional variants.
 ALLOMORPH
 Allomorphs are in complementary
distribution, because only one form of
the morpheme can be “employed” in a
word.
 Complementary distribution - all the
possible forms of a morpheme make up
100% of the cases of actual appearance
of that morpheme. One allomorph can
appear in 25% of the case, the other in
60% and the third in 15%. They
complement each other.
 ALLOMORPH
 This is best seen through an example:
 -s for plural of nouns has three allomorphs in
complementary distribution:
1. /s/ after nouns ending in /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, //.
2. /z/ after nouns ending in /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, //,
/m/, /n/, //, /l/, /w/, /r/, /j/ and all the vowels.
3. /iz/ after nouns ending in /s/, /z/, //,//, /d/,
and /t/
ZERO ALOMORPH?
 Most of the morphemes in English have only one
allomorph. »
 UNDERLYING FORM
This is also known as
underlying representation.
It is the morph of a set or
related morphs, or allomorphs
that has the widest distribution
in the set.
 UNDERLYING FORM
 In spelling, the morpheme for
regular plural markation in English
is represented by <-s> or <-es>.
 Phonemically, a representation
which we are predominantly
interested in, there are three
different manifestations.
 UNDERLYING FORM
 By a morphophonemic rule we
establish which allomorph will
be realized in which context,
etc.
UF is realized as /s/ after nouns
ending voiceless consonants.
 UNDERLYING FORM

UF is realized as /iz/

after nouns ending in
sibilants.
 FREE AND BOUND
ALLOMORPHS
The allomorph which can be
on its own is a free
allomorph of a set.
marks, marking, markation
> mark
 FREE AND BOUND
ALLOMORPHS
However, all allomorphs of a
morpheme need not be free.
There can be bound
allomorphs, so we can make a
distinction of this sort in a
selection of related morphemic
forms.
 FREE AND BOUND
ALLOMORPHS
{wife} has two allomorphs:
1. wife is free.
2. wive-, that occurs in the
plural wives is said to be a
bound allomorph.
 {clear}? »
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

Languages in the world differ

according to the structure of
their words.
Linguistic Typology -
classifies languages according
to their structural
characteristics.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

 Language typology studies and

compares languages on any level
of language organization or
structure.
 There are two classifications, a
traditional one, and a more
modern one.
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 ANALYTIC LANGUAGES
(ISOLATING LANGUAGES)
- 1.00-1.99 mpw
- no grammatical endings
whatsoever, but isolated root
forms, with different forms for
singular or plural, present or past
tense.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 Every word consists of only one
morpheme which in turn is a free
morpheme.
 They express grammatical relations
by means of separate words, usually
prepositions and auxiliaries.
 Examples: Vietnamese and classical
Chinese.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 English?
 The history of English - it hasn’t been
always the case.
 English has developed from an
inflectional language into an
analytical one.
 Until the 12th century, English nouns
had 9, verbs 10 and adjectives 13
different inflectional forms.
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

AGGLUTINATING
LANGUAGES (2.00-2.99
mpw) – languages which
form their morphological
structures by “gluing
together” of elements.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

The grammatical categories in

these languages are expressed
by simple adding or summing
up of suffixes to the word
roots.
One grammatical meaning,
one ending.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

 Most words have more than one

morpheme and they are ordered
one by one. Examples: Hungarian,
Finnish, Turkish, Swahili.
 Tur.gel “come”
gel-ebil “be able to come”
gel-ebil-ecek “will be able to come”
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

 SYNTHETIC LANGUAGES/
INFLECTING LANGUAGES
(2.00-2.99 mpw) –languages with
a highly developed system of
inflectional morphemes
responsible for expressing
different grammatical relations.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 The inflection endings merge, fuse or
“grow together” with the root and cannot
be always easily separated.
 One formal segment can express more
than one grammatical category. Examples:
Serbian, Greek, Sanskrit, Latin.
 Ser. sanja-m = first person
singular number
present tense
indicative mood
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

POLYSYNTHETIC
LANGUAGES/
INCORPORATING
LANGUAGES (3.00+mpw) –
the verb can incorporate its
object in the form of a single
word.
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

 The languages of north American

Indians and Inuits.
Inuit tuntussurqatarniksaitengqiggtuq
tuntu -ssur -qatar -ni -ksaite -ngqiggte -uq
reindeer -hunt -FUT -say -NEG -again -3SG:IND
‘He had not yet said again that he was going
to hunt reindeer.'
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
 INFIXING –inflectional elements in
the form of vowels are infixed in
stems. Arabic and Hebrew and other
Semitic languages are representatives
of this typological variety.
 Tagalog sulat = to write
s-in-ulat “was written”
 READING
 Chapter 1, 3