Classifying morphemes

Classes of morphemes

• Potentially free morphemes

• Can stand alone but need not

• Have a lot of lexical content – i.e. meaning

• Not all that have lexical meaning though can be free

• When they appear with morphemes attach they are the base/stem

• Bound morphemes• Must be attached to

another morpheme• Cannot stand alone• Many have purely

grammatical meaning like –s, plural

IMPORTANT!

• Another way of classifying bound morphemes is by the terms

• Inflectional morphemes

• versus

• Derivational morphemes

• This is a crucial distinction

Inflectional morphemes

• Lexemes head of a family of words

• LOVE (V)– Love, loves, loved, loving– 3 of these have morphemes attached – The function of these morphemes is to fit

the word …in this case a verb into a particular grammatical context – these are the inflectional morphemes of English verbs

Other inflectional morphemes

• English Nouns-s plural marker

-‘s possessive marker/genitive case marker

( i don’t entirely agree that this is simple morpheme)

English Adjectives-er comparative

-est superlative

Features of inflectional morphology

Productive

can attach to almost every member of the word class it is associated with– Can you think of a verb you cannot add –s

to?– New word creations take them– Note productivity is a scale

• Regular (about meaning)

• The meaning is entirely regular and predictable

• When you add –s to a verb you always make the verb he/she/it + present

• Inflection never changes word class

• Adding –s to a verb it stays a verb

Derivational morphology• When derivational affixes are attached to a

base they create a new LEXEME• NICE NICE• Nice+ er but nice + ness• Same lex new lexeme NICENESS• Because lexemes have wordclass labels• Nice (adj) Niceness(n) cannot belong to

the same wordclass• Derivational morphemes need not change

wordclass but always creates new lexemes

• Derivational morphology

• Is not productive (about attaching)

• *unprobable

• Derivational morphology is not regular- (about meaning)

• -ful –adj having the quality of X– Beautiful – having the quality of beauty– Wonderful – having the quality of wonder?– Awful - *having the quality of awe

ordering

• Strong cross-linguistic evidence that DERIVATIONAL affixes are attached before INFLECTION

• ACT (N) -> act act act• +INFL acts acts• +DERIV *act-s-ivity active• +DERIV activity• +INFL activities• Can you think of compounds where th first noun is

plural?

Cross-linguistic patterns

• Because regularity and productivity of morphemes are language specific issues there is no real way of knowing what acts as an inflectional morpheme and what acts as derivation. There can be surprising differences

• Un-/im- etc neg prefixes are derivational in English,

• In Aulua this is completely regular prefoix se- therefore inflectional

• For languages other than English you will be told the status of morphemes.

Diyari is a language of S.E. Australia• Kintala dog tari youth

• Kintalawulu two dogs tariwulu two youths

• Kintalawara dogs tariwarangu near the

youths

• Kintalawulingu tariwulujita someone

• Near two dogs associated with two

youths• ONLY THE AFFIX MEANING ‘near’ is INFLECTIONAL

• Are KINTALAWULU and KINTALAWARA separate lexemes in this language?

• Can you expect there to be a word kintalangu in Diyari?

INFL vs DERIV

• INFL• Does not change

word class• Does not create new

lexemes• Is highly productive• Is highly regular

• DERIV• Can change word

class• Always creates new

lexemes• Is not as productive• Is not as regular

CliticsNot quite a word not quite a morpheme

• Some elements appear to have some features of a word and some features of a bound morpheme

• English contractions seem somewhere in the middle

• Means to lean on … rather than attach• ‘m for am ‘s for is and ‘ll for will• Can attach to both nouns and pronouns• John’ll go and get the milk• He’ll probably drink it on the way home• May not attach to the ‘actual’possessor