Lecture 3: Morphology ILecture 3: Morphology I[Note: these are lightly edited versions of overheads and notes used in class. They are provided in order to help you study, but they are not a substitute for coming to class and being prepared. The notes are incomplete, and will often be hard to make sense of if you were not in class.]
In morphology we're interested in finding out what we know about words and how to construct them. Put another way, what we're interested in is what is in the "dictionary" in everybody's head. Does it have the same kind of information and the same organization that you find in printed dictionaries like Websters, or does it look rather different?
First try... "Mental dictionary contains words you've heard (or read) before."
But this isn't enough, because it fails to account for our ability to easily understand (and create) words that we have never heard before.
Here are some words you've (probably) never heard or read before. They're no problem to understand.
Here are a couple of words that you've never heard before, because they're made-up nonsense words. But you have no problem figuring out the plural form (if I tell you they're nouns) or the past tense (if I tell you they're verbs).
Second try... "Mental dictionary contains all the words you know (previously and not yet heard)"
But this won't do either, because people can know more words than they could likely ever store in their heads.
Verbs in Spanish: 40+ forms per verb
Verbs in Nimboran (Papua New Guinea): 25000+ forms per verb
Nimboran is a language which can combine many morphemes to form complex words, like the following:
This word may be broken down into pieces as follows:
And here is a (partial, approximate) list of the available inflectional distinctions for verbs in Nimboran. Note that this language is not especially exotic - we find very many languages with similar properties.
A rough calculation of the number of forms that this allows per verb yields the following. This would mean that a speaker who knows one thousand verbs (a very low figure) would need to store 27 million verb forms in his mental dictionary - unlikely!
Third try... "Mental dictionary contains meaningful word-pieces a.k.a. 'morphemes'"
But just listing these morphemes in the mental dictionary is not enough. We need to explain why we can't make morpheme combinations like the following:
Fourth try... "Mental dictionary contains morphemes and instructions for combining them"
a. Bound vs. Free morphemes
Free
Bound
b. Affixes
Prefix
Suffix
Infix
| fikas | 'strong' | fumikas | 'to be strong' |
| kilad | 'red' | kumilad | 'to be red' |
| fusul | 'enemy' | fumusul | 'to be an enemy' |
Circumfix
| chokm+a | 'he is good' | ik+chokm+o | 'he isn't good' |
| lakn+a | 'it is yellow' | ik+lakn+o | 'it isn't yellow' |
| tiww+i | 'he opens (it)' | ik+tiww+o | 'he doesn't open (it)' |
c. What category are the combined morphemes?
Right-head rule (English)
A problem with prepositions: Words containing prepositions are never prepositions
Explanation: prepositions are closed class words
d. Open and closed class items in mental dictionary
Open Class
Closed Class
Open vs. Closed class: neurological evidence
Broca's aphasia
Production:
Comprehension: