Homework #6: Morphology

Posted Monday October 12th; due Tuesday October 20th.

Answers to Questions on this homework.

Reading for this week is material on Morphology: Pinker Chapter 5; Fromkin & Rodman Chapter 3, pp.63-86, pp.89-98. Reading for the following week is on Syntax: Pinker Chapter 4; Fromkin & Rodman Chapter 4.

In this assignment you will use some of the morphological concepts discussed in class this week to analyze words in English and other languages, to figure out whether a morpheme of English is productive or not.

Resources that may help you in doing this assignment include (i) the chapter on Morphology in your textbook, (ii) your class notes and the on-line lecture notes. Also, remember that the instructors and the LING 101 tutors are available to answer your questions and help you.

1. How big is your mental dictionary?

Chapter 3, exercise 1 (p.98). The goal of this question is to generate a rough estimate of the size of your vocabulary. Recommendation: this will be easiest if you use a medium-sized dictionary, rather than a pocket-sized or boulder-sized dictionary.

Note: the kind of estimate of your vocabulary that this exercise generates could be considered very low, given that you only count each verb form once, e.g. you know the words run, runs, and ran, but they only count once in your total.

Extra Credit: we can draw a distinction between your passive vocabulary, the words that you recognize and (more or less) understand, and your active vocabulary, the words that you think you would be likely to use in your own speech and writing. For most people, the active vocabulary is rather smaller than the passive vocabulary.

• Using the method that you used to estimate your passive vocabulary, now estimate the size of your active vocabulary.
• How many words do you estimate are in your active vocabulary, and what percentage of your passive vocabulary does this make up?
• Comment on how you decided whether or not a word is in your active vocabulary or not.

2. Some words of English

Chapter 3, exercise 2 (p.99). In addition to listing the morphemes, you should justify your analysis by giving one other word formed using the same morpheme. For example, in order to justify the analysis of greatly as great+ly you could point out that 'great' can occur on its own (i.e. it is a free morpheme) or in greatness, and that -ly also occurs in the word quickly.

3. Zulu

Chapter 3, exercise 5 (p.100). Tip: we recommend that you work through all of this exercise before writing up your answer.

4. Dutch

Chapter 3, exercise 7. (brief answer)

5. Swahili

Chapter 3, exercise 8 (p.101-102)

6. Productivity of English Morphemes

Consider the following three English affixes:

-ment (as in consignment, agreement, containment)

re- (as in reinvent, retry, replay)

-able (as in drinkable, unthinkable, readable, remarkable, allowable)

Briefly state the rule for what each of these morphemes combines with and what category is produced (e.g. "this prefix combines with a verb to create a noun").

• Can the morpheme be used productively in English?
• Is the meaning of the new word that is created always predictable? What is/are the meaning(s) created by the morpheme?
• Provide examples of possible (or impossible) words to justify your answer.

For finding words that use the same suffix, it can be useful to use a rhyming dictionary - some of these are available on-line:

• Write Express Online Rhyming Dictionary
• The Semantic Rhyming Dictionary (at Carnegie Mellon University)