Words vs sentences

Meaningful building-blocks of language

highest Sentence (consists of one or more clauses) Clause (consists of one or more phrases) Phrase (consists of one or more words) Word (consists of one or more morphemes)

lowest Morpheme

Simple vs complex words elephant crime whisper vegetable life morpheme

elephants crimes whispers vegetables lives morphemes

What’s the difference?

Simple vs complex words – cont.

elephant crime whisper vegetable life morpheme

elephants crimes whispers vegetables lives morphemes

Simple words(one morpheme

ONLY!) MONOMORPHEMIC

Complex words

morpheme + morpheme(s)

POLYMORPHEMIC

What about the list below?

Simple or complex?

plain careless

part secure

care willing

fortunate

predictable

Based on previous examples:How to define a morpheme?

Take into account two main characteristics :a) a morpheme must be identifiable from one word to anotherb) contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word…and also, some other ones:c) it cannot be divided into further unitsd) it can vary in length (from one single letter to a whole word)e) morphemes are recyclable units. One of the most important properties of the morpheme is that it can be used again and again to form many words.

Thus, a morpheme can be defined as the smallest meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided or analyzed. In other words, morphemes can

be described as the minimal units of meaning.

Some examples:

help

helpful

helpfulness

carelessness

careless

care

trust

trustworthy

untrustworthy

How many morphemes in the words above?

Morphemes

Bound Free

How to distinguish the different morphemes in a word?

helpfulness carelessness untrustworthy

In how many morphemes can we break down the words above?

Remember the distinction between words, morphemes and lexical items?

The most basic distinction is bound vs free morpheme

Bound morpheme is a morpheme that does not have a meaning on its own.Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on its own and has a full/ complete meaning.

In writing we can divide morphemes by hyphens as below:

Help-ful-ness care-less-ness un-trust-worthy

The easiest way for non-native speakers of English si to check the dictionary and see which

morpheme is listed in it.

Some more examplesHelpHelperHelpfulHelplessHelpfulnessHelplessnes

s

What about the ones below???

a. read-able b. leg-ible

hear-ing audi-ence

en-large magn-ify

perform-ance rend-ition

white-ness clar-ity

dark-en obfusc-ate

seek-er applic-ant

In the majority of the cases, in English words there is one free morpheme BUT not alwaysas can be noted from column b! That is why morphemes in b are sometimes categorized as

Combining forms

berry

cran

black

blue

straw

The morphemes above: bound or free?

Can we use them outside this frame of reference?

Types of morphemes

• Not all morphemes are equally central to the formation of a word. • They are of two types: roots and affixes. • A root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. It is the part that must always be present. • Every word has at least one root and they are at the centre of word derivational processes. They carry the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derived. • Morphemes such as chair, green, ballet, father, cardigan, America, Mississippi are roots, and they all happen to be free forms, i.e. independent words. • On the other hand, there are roots like seg in segment, gen in genetics, brev in brevity, or cran in cranberry which cannot stand alone as words. They are called bound root morphemes, or bound bases, as distinct from free root morphemes or free bases. • Most of bound roots found in English today are of classical origin, some of them are of Germanic origin.

Consider: permit, commit, submit OR receive, perceive, conceive.

Morphemes

Bound(Affixes)

Free(Roots)

It must be noted that although roots are usually free it is not always the case!!!

Consider the ones below:

teacher, clipper, toaster, faster, stronger, kinder - er kindly, decently, firmly, strongly, vehemently, slowly – lyhonorable, predictable, washable, readable, doable – ablehorrible, responsible, visible, discernible – iblewonderful, spiteful, dreadful, hateful, mouthful – fulhopeless, thoughtless, fearless, motherless – lesshappiness, peacefulness, fairness, foolishness – ness

Affixes at the end of a morpheme are called

SUFFIXES

Consider OTHER ones below:

defrost, dethrone, dehydration- de disagree, disadvantage, dishonest - distransfer, translate, transcontinental - transpredict, prepare, preheat - prepostwar, postscript, postdatemalcontent, maladjusted, malnutritionsubstitute, subtraction, subwayAffixes at the begining of a morpheme are called

PREFFIXES

Morphemes and their allomorphsDifferent pronunciations of one morpheme is called allomorphy and the variants of that morpheme are called allomorphs. Allomorph are subject to:

a) Phonological conditioning,

b) Morphological (also known as grammatical) conditioning, and c) lexical conditioning

c) Lexical conditioning

Phonological conditioningThe choice of allomorph for a particular morpheme is determined by the local phonological context i.e. the choice of allomorph is predictable on the basis of the pronunciation

For example:

English plural indefinite articleStacks, cats, hats - s an - before vowelsBirds, dogs, frogs – z a - before consonantsBushes, boxes, nurses – iz

Allomorphs of the regular past tense morpheme/id/ after d,t : hated/t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked/d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged/im/ before bilabial sounds : impossible/il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal/in/ elsewhere : independent

Morphological conditioning

The choice of allomorph is determined by particular morphemes, not just by their pronunciation or phonological context i.e. it may be dependent on the presence of a particular grammatical element.

PRESENT PAST ALLOMORPHWalk walked [-t]Kiss kissed [-t]Grasp grasped [-t]Weep wept [-t] Sweep swept [-t] Shake shook [- k] Take took [- k]

Lexical conditioning

The choice of allomorph is unpredictable, thus memorized on a word-by-word basis. E.g. the plurals ox-oxen, Sheep- sheep, child - children are lexically conditioned because they cannot be predicted from general knowledge about English morphology or phonology.

Exercises (homework)

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 5

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