BY JOSEPH POULSHOCK, PHD

WORDS AND RULES

▸ Key Questions for self-quizzing before and after.

▸ What is morphology?

▸ What is a listeme?

▸ What is a free morpheme?

▸ What is a bound morpheme

▸ What re inflectional and derivational morphemes?

Clint Eastwood is Dirty Harry. He’s a police officer in San Francisco. In this scene, he enters a restaurant during a wedding party. In front of his wife and family, he accuses a man of murder.

WORDSCAN KILL

And Dirty Harry kills the man. How does he kill him?

Main ! Point With morphology, we study word structure. We will look at four basic pieces of word structure that help us build and change the meanings of words, and we’ll better understand how these morphological tools give us more verbal power.

What’s a Word?

• Words are hard to define.

• We have no universal definition of words.

• Look at these listemes. They are like words.

• (A) kick the bucket, (B) spill the beans, (C) go bananas,

• (D) bite the bullet, (E) hit the fan, (F) give up the ghost

• Take the following quiz. What are the fans doing? They are ***.

(A) kicking the bucket, (B) spilling the beans, (C) going bananas, (D) biting the bullet, (E) hitting the fan, (F) giving up the ghost

What is a Listeme?

• Why must we learn these listemes like words?

• (A) kick the bucket, (B) spill the beans, (C) go bananas,

• (D) bite the bullet, (E) hit the fan, (F) give up the ghost

• They are like words because we can’t understand or produce them by rules.

• We learn "kick the bucket" like the irregular verb "went."

Morphology

• Morphology is the study of word forms.

• We study the structure of words.

• It’s a powerful system.

NOUN

ADJ VERB

LEARN ABLE ITY

ADJ NOUN

Morphology (Pinker)

• “The component of grammar that builds words out of pieces (morphemes).”

Harvard’s Steven Pinker PneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosisPneumono-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis?

Morphology

• Pneumono-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis is the longest word.

• And like all words, we make it with morphemes.

• What is a morpheme?

• The smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language (SIL).

Words and Word Parts

• Morphology (形態論) studies word structure (構造).

• What are morphemes (形態素)?

• The smallest meaningful bits of a word.

The Singularity 技術的特異点 — Gijutsu-teki tokui-ten

What is the singularity. It is a point in time of great change. It is unimaginable change. The change is so great that we cannot imagine the future beyond it. We cannot imagine; we cannot understand; we cannot predict how much technology and culture will change. The big bang, the origin of life, the origin of language are singularities. Do you believe the singularity is coming?

Big Questions — A Singularity of Words

• Where does this picture come from?

• We can see the origin of the cosmos, life, and language as singularities.

• The origin of language explodes like a big bang of words.

Big Bang from Word Bits

• In one sense, words come from morphemes or word bits.

• Let’s take a look a 4 different kinds of Word Bits

• Free, Bound, Inflectional, Derivational Morphemes

Two Kinds of Morphemes

• A free morpheme (自由形態素) is an independent word.

• music, strong, believe, habit, day, rehearse

• A bound morpheme (拘束形態素) is a dependent part of a word

• The musician strongly believes in habitual and daily rehearsal.

Morphemes

• A free morpheme (自由形態素)

• can be an independent word.

• Create

• A bound morpheme (拘束形態素)

• cannot be an independent word.

• -or, ive, ively

Morphemes

• Inflectional morphemes 屈折形態素 change a word’s role in a sentence.

• look•ed; bird•s; Joe’s (The inflection adds information to a word).

• Derivational morphemes 派生形態素 make new words from old words.

• connect + -or = connector; piano + -ist = pianist; teach + -able = teachable.

John Kimble (Schwarzenegger) is a cop. He goes to a party to find a witness of a crime. He needs her help to identify a criminal.

Kimble says, "Alright. Party is over. Everyone go home. Next time my place." A man says, "So who are you man?" Kimble says, "I’m the party-pooper."

Compound Words• Rule: we can make compounds from irregular plurals, not regular plurals.

• Men-bashing is okay, but

• not *gays-bashing. It’s gay-bashing.

• We have purple-people-eaters, but not

• *purple-babies-eaters.

• You can be a party-pooper.

• But you can’t be a *parties-pooper.

Compound Words

• Irregular plurals are listemes, stored as roots or stems.

• We do not make them by rules. We memorize them.

• Thus, we can feed them into the compounding rule.

• With compounding,

Compound Words• Experiment.

• A Monster who likes to eat trees. What’s he called?

• A tree-eater, not a *trees-eater.

• A Monster who likes to eat mice. What’s he called?

• A mice-eater. Not a mouses-eater.

• A Monster who likes to eat rats. What’s he called?

• He’s a rat-eater. Never a *rats-eater.

Compound Words

• We can only put the listeme in the first part of the compound.

• I’m the “party-pooper.”

• “Party” is not affected by rules. It’s a root — a listeme.

• We cannot put a rule-generated word in the first part of the compond.

• We can’t say, “I’m the *parties-pooper.”

Compound Words

• So what?

• This was Peter Gordon’s mice-eater experiment.

• Children instinctively distinguish between roots stored in the mental dictionary (listemes) and inflected words created by a rule.

• Instinctively make compounds from irregular plurals, not regular plurals.

Creative Commons photo by Michael D Beckwith

How do you say library in Spanish?

Inflectional Morphology

• Tense: 時制（じせい)

• ¿Donde está la biblioteca?

• ¿Donde estaba la biblioteca?

• ¿Donde estará la biblioteca?

• ¿Donde estaría la biblioteca?

• ¿Donde ha estado la biblioteca?

Inflectional Morphology

• Gender:文法における性（せい）

• la biblioteca, la universidad, la oficina

• el camino, el salón de clases, el equipo

• Number: 言語学における数（すう）

• las bibliotecas, las universidades, las oficinas

• los caminos, los salones de clases, los equipos

Gender Number Person Tense

• La niña estudia japonés

• Las niñas estudian japonés.

• Los niños estudian italiano. (language shows gender here)

• La niña es italiana. Las niñas son italianas.

• El niño es italiano. Los niños son italianos.

Morphology

• In sum, with morphology. . .

• We get a singularity of words.

• We combine morphemes and get word power.

• We see the complexity of how we put words together.

• Next week: put words into sentences, using syntax.