LING 101: Morphology

This page was prepared by William Idsardi as a study resource for his LING 101 course at UDel. You may find it useful when preparing for exams. Note that the material covered by these notes may not exactly match the topics covered in LING 101 when taught by other instructors. To return to the "Study notes" page use the navigation bar at the left.

Review

Recall that Language is a CODE for thoughts. The speaker communicates his thoughts to the listener by encoding the thoughts into sound. The listener then decodes the meaning from the sounds.
SOUND <===> MEANING

Morpheme

The MORPHEME is the smallest unit that relates sound and meaning.
Meaning "dog" <===> Sound [dag] (English)
Meaning "dog" <===> Sound [kanis] (Latin)
Speakers must MEMORIZE each morpheme.
The collection of morphemes is one thing that speakers KNOW about their language.
The sounds that are used to make up the morphemes are arbitrary. There is nothing about dogs that forces the word for "dog" to contain [g] or [k] or [d].

Word Classes

Content Words
Nouns, Verbs, Adjective, Adverbs
Speakers can add new Content Words to the language.
Function Words
Pronouns, Conjunctions, Auxiliaries, ...
In general speakers cannot add new Function Words to the language.

Word Relations

Words can be related to other words,
happy -- unhappy
The rules that relate such sets of words are called Word Formation Rules.
Thus, the morphology contains
- fundamental elements -- morphemes
- rules of combination -- Word Formation Rules

Morphemes

Words like "unhappy" which consist of more than one piece (morpheme) are called morphologically complex.
In the case of "unhappy" the two pieces are
- "happy" and
- "un-" (meaning "not").
Likewise the word "happier" has two pieces:
- "happy" and
- "-er" (meaning "more").
We then can ask how even more complicated words (with more than two morphemes) are constructed.
Let's begin with "unhappier". This word obviously has three pieces:
- "happy",
- "un-" (= not), and
- "-er" (= more).
What is the way that they are combined?
What difference would it make?
A difference in meaning:
- not ( more ( happy ) ) versus
- more ( not ( happy ) )
Which is correct?
more ( not ( happy ) )
An unhappier person is more sad than someone else, not just not happier.
This means that the "more" meaning includes the "not" meaning inside it, that is that "-er" must have scope over "un-".

We draw these relations between the morphemes (and the resulting words) as graphs or trees:

    Adjective
     /    \
Adjective  -er
  /   \
un-  Adjective
          |
        happy

The relative scope of a morpheme determines what it modifies. Thus in "unhappier" the "un-" modifies "happy" and "-er" modifies "unhappy".
Different combinations can result in different meanings.
We must also know the relative position of the morphemes. Here "un-" is a prefix (it attaches to the beginning of "happy") and "-er" is a suffix (it attaches to the end of "unhappy").
We know three things about every morpheme:
1. its meaning
2. its form (the sounds that make it up)
3. a rule of combination (put it before/after/... the stem) (Stems such as "happy" do not require rules of combination by themselves. They are "free" to occur alone.)

Bound and Free Morphemes

In the word "doors" there are two morphemes: "door" and "-s".
"door" can be used by itself, so it is called a FREE morpheme.
"s" cannot be used by itself --
"How many doors did you shut?"
"More than one." OK
"s" Not OK
so "-s" is called a BOUND morpheme.

What does "-s" mean?

What does the bound plural morpheme "-s" mean?
It seems to mean "more than one": one door, two doors; but consider:
- There are no red doors.
- I have zero dollars.
- It's negative one degrees outside.
- The current is 0.4 amperes.
A better explanation is that "-s" means "not one"

Affixes

Morphemes added to free forms to make other free forms are called affixes.
There are four principle kinds of affixes:
1. prefixes (at beginning) -- "un-" in "unable"
2. suffixes (at end) -- "-ed" in "walked"
3. circumfixes (at both ends) -- "en--en" in "enlighten"
  (These always seem to consist of otherwise attested independent prefixes and suffixes.)
4. infixes (in the middle) -- "-bloody-" in "in-bloody-credible"
  (These are not used very much in English but occur frequently in other languages.
  For infixes it is necessary to say WHERE inside the word it goes. The "-bloody-" expletive infix goes before the stressed syllable, thus *"incred-bloody-ible".
  How did we learn this?)
The infixes in other languages can go in different places, such as after the first consonant.
Consider the data from Bontoc:

Adjective Meaning Verb Meaning
kilad 'red' kumilad 'to be red'
fikas 'strong' fumikas 'to be strong'
the form of the infix is -um-
the rule of combination is that it combines with adjectives to make verbs, going after the first consonant
the meaning of the infix is "to be Adjective" where Adjective is the meaning of the stem

A Rule for Forming some English Words

Consider the following pairs of English words:

Adjective Verb
dark darken
black blacken
red redden
steep steepen
What generalization (rule) can we make?
Add "-en" to the end of Adjectives to make Verbs with the meaning "to make (more) Adjective"
Notice the three parts of the word formation rule for the affix:
1. Form: "en"
2. Combination: At the end of Adjectives (suffix) to make Verbs
3. Meaning: "to make (more) Adjective"

We can draw a diagram to show the internal structure of one of the words:

        Verb
        /   \
Adjective    -en
   |
 black
Meaning: "to make (more) black"

Likewise we can draw a partial structure (tree diagram) which shows the three properties of rule of combination for the affix:
```
        Verb
        /   \
Adjective    -en
Meaning: "to make (more) Adjective"
```
"black" as an adjective also has the trivial tree diagram
```
Adjective
   |
 black
```
And the two trees are combined by joining them at the common part (Adjective)

Another Rule for Forming some English Words

Consider the following pairs of English words:

Verb Noun
sing singer
dance dancer
write writer
compute computer
What generalization (rule) can we make?
Add "-er" to the end of Verbs to make Nouns with the meaning "someone (something) that Verbs"
```
   Noun
   /   \
Verb    -er
Meaning: "someone (something) that Verbs"
```

Using Word Formation Rules Together

Notice that when we combined "-en" with "black" the diagrams "overlap" at the adjective node
Notice also that
- "-er" takes Nouns and makes Verbs
- "-en" takes Verbs and makes Adjectives
So can we "overlap" the rules at Verb?

Yes!

             Noun
            /    \
         Verb    -er
        /   \
Adjective   -en
    |
  white
Meaning: "something that makes (more) white"

Rules that don't change category

Some affixes create the same kinds of words that they attach to, such as making nouns out of other nouns:
```
    Noun
   /    \
Noun    -ian
  |
Boston
Meaning: "someone from Boston"
```

Zero Morphemes

Some affixes consist of no sounds at all
Consider the following words:

Adjective Verb
yellow yellow
brown brown
green green
purple purple
The relation between "yellow" (adjective) and "yellow" (verb) is the same as between "white" and "whiten"
But the form of "yellow" doesn't change

So we say that we added a zero suffix:

        Verb
       /    \
Adjective    -Ø
  |
yellow
Meaning: "to make (more) yellow"

Zero morphemes are hard to spot because you can't hear them!
You have to notice what ISN'T there.
(Sherlock Holmes solves a mystery by noticing that a dog DIDN'T bark. But it was a situation where any dog would have barked. This is the kind of thinking you have to do to find zero morphemes.)

Allomorphy

But now we have two ways to make Adjectives into Verbs meaning "to make (more) Adjective": "black-en" and "yellow-Ø"
How do we know which rule to use?
That is, why not "yellow-en"?
One possible answer is that we just have to memorize which affix to use for each stem. We just memorize that "black" takes "-en" and "yellow" takes zero.
But we would like a better explanation.
The best place to look is "near" the affix. Since "-en" is a suffix, let's look at the end of the stems.
What we find is that we can divide the Adjectives into two classes based on what the last SOUND (not letter) of the stem is:
- Use "-en" if the last sound is: t, k, d, p, S ("fresh-en"), ...
- Use "-Ø" if the last sound is a vowel, r, l, n, m
Another example of allomorphy in English is the choice of the negative prefix "il-/ir-/im-/in-"
The rules are:
Use "il-" when the stem begins with "l": "il-legal"
Use "ir-" when the stem begins with "r": "ir-responsible"
Use "im-" when the stem begins with "m, b, p": "im-mobile", "im-balanced", "im-possible"
Otherwise (elsewhere) use "in-": "in-active", etc.
Notice that there is a rule that applies when the other (more specific) rules cannot. This is the DEFAULT or ELSEWHERE rule. The ELSEWHERE concept plays an important role in linguistics and we will encounter it again in this course.
Sometimes there are just exceptions, or morphemes used with only a limited number of words, such as plural "-en" as in "ox-en", "child-(r)en".
Some words are so irregular that they have no analysis, for example "went" is the SUPPLETIVE form for what would otherwise be "go-ed". Children often make these kind of OVERGENERALIZATION mistakes when learning words.

Compounds

The combination of two free forms is called a COMPOUND.

         Noun
        /    \
Adjective    Noun
    |          |
  black      bird
Meaning: a particular kind of bird

In English the HEAD of a compound is usually the right-hand member (bird).
The head supplies the category (Noun) and basic meaning (bird-ness) for the whole compound.

Compounds can be used with affixation to produce larger words:

        Noun
       /    \
    Verb    -er
   /    \
Verb    Verb
  |       |
sleep   walk
Meaning: Someone who walks and sleeps at the same time

      Noun
     /    \
  Noun     Noun
    |     /    \
window  Verb    -er
         |
        painter
Meaning: Someone who paints windows

Bound Roots

Both "blackberry" and "blueberry" are kinds of BERRIES, and "black" and "blue" exist as free forms too. So these look like fine compounds.
But what about "cranberry", "huckleberry", "strawberry"?
We'd like to keep the "berry" part separate, but then what are "cran", "huckle" and "straw"?
We call these cases BOUND ROOTS.

Homophonous Morphemes

Sometimes two morphemes have the same pronunciation (form) with different meanings.

One example form English is the two morphemes "un-":

    Adjective
   /        \
 un-       Adjective
Meaning: "not Adjective", for example "unhappy"

    Verb
   /    \
 un-    Verb
Meaning: "do the reverse of Verb", for example "undo", "untie", "unlatch"

This can lead to ambiguity in some words with "un-", such as "un-tie-able".

There are two possible structures for "un-tie-able":

    Adjective
     /     \
   Verb    -able
   /   \
un-    Verb
        |
       tie
Meaning: able( un (tie) ) = "can be untied"

    Adjective
   /        \
un-         Adjective
            /       \
         Verb       -able
           |
          tie
Meaning: un( able (tie) ) = "can't be tied"

The relative scope of "un-" and "-able" are different in these two cases, leading to a difference in meaning.
The difference in meaning also correlates with whether "un-" is modifying a verb or an adjective.
When a difference in meaning correlates with a difference in structure like this we call this STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY.

Reduplication

Reduplication is the copying of a part of a word.
As in the case of infixes, we need to say what part of the word is copied.
Consider the data from Samoan:

Verb 3 singular 3 plural Meaning

manao mananao 'wish'
atamaki atamamaki 'be wise'
malosi malolosi 'be strong'
Rule: find the next to last vowel, and copy the vowel and the preceding consonant

Other ways of Forming Words

Back formations
Where one "falsely" uses a rule.
"peddler" refers to a person
analyze "peddler" as "peddle" + "-er"
Blends: "smoke" + "fog" = "smog"; "motor" + "hotel" = "motel"
Words from Names: "jumbo", "sandwich"
Truncation (Clipping): "gym(nasium)", "(tele)phone"
Acronyms: "AIDS" = "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"

Inflectional Morphology

Morphology that interacts with syntax (sentence structure) is called INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Some examples are:
person
number
gender
noun class
case
tense
Inflectional morphemes never change the category.
Inflectional morphemes do not change the "core" meaning of the word.
Inflectional morphemes usually occur "outside" derivational ones:
"Boston-ian-s" not *"Boston-s-ian"
But some left-headed compounds have the plural "inside":
"attorney-s-general", "mother-s-in-law"
But there is a tendancy to re-analyze these compounds: "attorney-general-s".

Author: William James Idsardi
Email: idsardi@udel.edu
Last Updated: Sep 15, 1996

Adjective	Meaning	Verb	Meaning
kilad	'red'	kumilad	'to be red'
fikas	'strong'	fumikas	'to be strong'

Verb 3 singular	3 plural	Meaning
manao	mananao	'wish'
atamaki	atamamaki	'be wise'
malosi	malolosi	'be strong'

Adjective	Verb
dark	darken
black	blacken
red	redden
steep	steepen

Verb	Noun
sing	singer
dance	dancer
write	writer
compute	computer

Adjective	Verb
yellow	yellow
brown	brown
green	green
purple	purple