The morphological structure of a word the morpheme

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

The
morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes.
Allomorphs.

Structural
types of words.

Principles
of morphemic analysis.

Derivational
level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of
words.

There
are two levels of approach to the study of word-
structure:
the level of morphemic
analysis
and the level of derivational
or
word-formation analysis.

Word
is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest
on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of
linguistic analysis.

It has
been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a
composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the
morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible
two-facet language units.

The
term morpheme
is derived from Greek
morphe
“form ”+ -eme.
The Greek suffix –eme
has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the
minimum distinctive
feature.

The
morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these
cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech
only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a
word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of
the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are
composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and
affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are
called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process
of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The
root-morpheme is
the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract
lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words
constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach,
teacher, teaching.
Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of
meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which
is not found in roots.

Affixational
morphemes
include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes.
Inflections
carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the
formation of word-forms. Derivational
affixes
are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically
always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same
types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of
them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally
the important part of the word as they condition the
lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component
of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes
building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or
adverbs.

Roots
and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the
difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words
helpless,
handy, blackness, Londoner, refill,
etc.: the root-morphemes help-,
hand-, black-, London-, fill-,
are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less,
-y, -ness, -er, re-
are
felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free
morphemes coincide
with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious
that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme
boy-
in the word boy
is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable
there is only one free morpheme desire-;
the word pen-holder
has two free morphemes pen-
and hold-.
It follows that bound
morphemes are those
that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all
derivational morphemes, such as –ness,
-able, -er are
bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes
theor-
in the words theory,
theoretical, or
horr-
in the words horror,
horrible, horrify; Angl- in
Anglo-Saxon; Afr-
in Afro-Asian
are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It
should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic
shapes. In the word-cluster please
,
pleasing
,
pleasure
,
pleasant
the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution
or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the
given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or
morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The
combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in
linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members
together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones,
allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/
-tion/ -sion/ -ation
are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in
meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form
depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are
considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its
allomorphs.

Allomorph
is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a
specific environment and so characterized by complementary
description.

Complementary
distribution is
said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the
same environment.

Different
morphemes are characterized by contrastive
distribution,
i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different
meanings. The suffixes –able
and –ed,
for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because
adjectives in –able
mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs
will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the
initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two
or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of
complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as,
for instance, in long a:
length n

Structural
types of words.

The
morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims
at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic
units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number
and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound,
shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English
words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive
ways of word building.

According
to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic
and polymorphic.
Monomorphic
or root-words
consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small,
dog, make, give,
etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:
derived words and
compound words
– according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived
words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational
morphemes, e.g. acceptable,
outdo,
disagreeable,
etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two
root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being
insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in
compounds as in pen-holder,
light-mindedness,
or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade,
eye-ball, etc.

These
structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct
understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful
consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing
wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency
is by far the most important factor. According to the available word
counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words
numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing
wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total
number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15%
and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a
trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words
come to approximately 12%.

But
we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant
place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about
60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of
adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of
adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37%
respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in
nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that
constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that
are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned
that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability
and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other
structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root-
words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and
compound words.

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Identifying a Word.
Morphological
Structure of the Word
Lecture 5
 5.1.Problems of the Definition of the
Word
 5.2. Lexical and Grammatical Words
 5.3. Morphological Structure of the
Word
 5.4. Types of Morphemic
Segmentability
The Problems of the Definition
A word has many different aspects:
 1) phonological, as it has a sound form;
 2) morphological, as it is a certain
arrangement of morphemes;
 3) syntactic, as it may occur in different word
forms and signal different meanings.
The Problems of the Definition
A word is defined as:
 minimum free form (L. Bloomfield)
 association of a given meaning with
a given group of sounds susceptible
of a given grammatical employment
(A. Meillet)
The Problems of the Definition
A word is an autonomous unit of the
language in which
 a particular meaning is associated with
 a particular sound complex
 capable of a particular grammatical
employment and
 able to form a sentence by itself.
The Problems of the Definition
 Orthographically words may be spelt
differently: teapot, tea-pot, tea pot. Words are
written separately, but not all words fit this
category, e.g. will not – two words; cannot –
one word.
 There may be found different forms but
different forms are not necessarily regarded
as different words, e.g. teach, teaches,
taught, teaching; nice, nicer, nicest – are not
separate words.
The Problems of the Definition
 Some words can have the same forms but
completely different and unrelated meanings,
e.g. fair.
 The existence of idioms and phrasal verbs
seems to upset attempts to define words in
any formal way, e.g. to kick the bucket – “to
die”, to put off – “to postpone”.
The Problems of the Definition
 A lexeme is the abstract unit which
underlies some of the variants we have
observed in connection with 'words'.
 Thus, teach is the lexeme which
underlies some of the variants teach,
teaches, taught, teaching which are the
word-forms.
The Problems of the Definition
 The term lexeme is also connected with
more than one word-form expressed by
such lexical items as:
 Multi-word verbs, e.g., to catch up
with;
 Phrasal verbs, e.g., to clear up, to
switch off;
 Idioms, e.g., kick the bucket.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
 Lexical words are full words or content
words. They include nouns, adjectives, verbs,
adverbs and belong to the open classes of
words. They carry a higher information
content and are syntactically structured by the
grammatical words.
 LW form an open class of words because
they are subject to diachronic change,
changes in form and meaning over a
period of time.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
Nouns
 A noun is a naming word. It gives the name to a
person, place, thing, etc.
 Most nouns possess the category of number and
have a plural form (-s/ -es).
 Some words make their plural forms in a different
way.
 Others never change their singular forms to make
their plurals.
 Some nouns never occur without the plural marker.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
Adjectives
 Adjectives denote a property or quality of an
object. All adjectives fall into two groups:
gradable and non-gradable.
 Gradable adjectives take grammatical forms
and represent degrees of comparison:
positive, comparative, superlative.
 Adjectives in English may appear either
before a noun or after a verb, e.g. juicy apple,
get wet, be happy. Not all adjectives appear
in both positions.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
Verbs
 There are two classes of verbs – lexical and
auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs denote actions
or states. Each verb has five associated
grammatical words, e.g., ask – asks – asked
– asking – asked; go – goes – went – going –
gone.
 Verbs like ask are regular, they form the
majority of verbs in English. Irregular verbs
like go have different forms.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
Adverbs
 Two classes of adverbs – degree and general.
 Degree adverbs are a small group of words like quite,
far, very, more, and most. They always appear with
either an adjective or a general adverb, e.g. She
drives very well. His story is quite interesting.
 General adverbs form a large class and may appear
without a degree adverb, e.g. He cooks well.
Adverbs denote degree, manner, place, time.
Adverbs have no inflected forms, they take
comparisons like adjectives.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
 Grammatical words comprise a small
class of words that includes pronouns,
auxiliary verbs, determiners,
prepositions, conjunctions. They are
also known as functional words, or
empty words.
 Grammatical words constitute a closed
class, i.e. they do not accept new
members.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
 Pronouns are words that take the place of
nouns, noun phrases. Different types:
personal (I, we, she), demonstrative (this,
those), possessive (mine, yours),
interrogative (whom, whose, which), etc.
 Auxiliary verbs such as have, do, did, will
determine the mood, tense, or aspect of
another verb in a verb phrase.
 Conjunctions serve to connect words,
phrases, clauses, or sentences, e.g. and, but,
for, or, nor, yet, so.
Lexical and Grammatical Words
 Determiners introduce nouns; they are
articles (a, an, the), quantifiers (some, much).
 Prepositions are words that show the
relationship between a noun or pronoun and
other words in a sentence. They indicate
locations in time or space (at, in), agency
(by), comparison (like, as . . . as), direction
(to, toward, through), place (at, by, on),
possession (of), purpose (for), source (from,
out of), and time (at, before, on), etc.
Morphological Structure
Words consist of morphemes.
 A morpheme is the smallest meaningful
unit of speech, which cannot be split up
into smaller segments.
 A morpheme is not autonomous.
Morphemes
occur in speech as
constituent parts of words, not
independently.
Morphological Structure
 A word may consist of a single morpheme or
contain several, e.g. shelf (one morpheme),
indisputable (3 morphemes) – in-disput-able.
 The morpheme in can be found in words
insignificant, inexpensive; the morpheme
able – in words excusable, reliable; the
morpheme dispute – in such words as
disputing, disputes.
Morphological Structure
 Some
morphemes have only one
phonological form, while others may
have a number of variants which are
known as allomorph.
 Pronounce: please, pleasing, pleasure,
pleasant.
 The representations of the given
morpheme are called allomorphs or
morphemic variants.
Morphological Structure
 An allomorph is a positional variant of
a morpheme occurring in a specific
environment and characterized by
complementary distribution.
 Cows, cats, pigs, horses, sheep, oxen, mice
Allomorphs occur among prefixes.
 The morpheme in may have the following
phonological forms:
 im occurs before bilabials – impossible;
 ir occurs before r – irregular;
 il occurs before 1 – illegal;
 in occurs before other consonants and
vowels – inability, indirect.
Morphological Structure
 Semantically morphemes fall into root-
morphemes and non-root
morphemes.
 The root-morphemes are the lexical
centers of the words, as the basic
constituent part of a word without which
the word is inconceivable.
Morphological Structure
 Words hairless, lofty, darkness, refill – the
root morphemes are hair, loft, dark, fill
 The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of
a word; it has an individual lexical meaning
shared by no other morpheme of the
language.
 The root-morpheme is the morpheme
common to a set of words making up a wordcluster, e.g. dance in to dance, dancer,
dancing.
Morphological Structure
 Non-root morphemes include inflectional
morphemes (inflections) and derivational
morphemes (affixes).
Morphological Structure
 Inflections carry only grammatical
meaning, they build different forms of
one and the same word, e.g. cheap,
cheaper, cheapest.
 Affixes supply the stem with
components of lexical and lexicogrammatical meaning. They are
classified into prefixes and suffixes, e.g.
chain – unchain, broad - broaden.
Morphological Structure
 A suffix is a derivational morpheme
following the stem and forming a new
derivative in a different part of speech or
a different word class, e.g., -en, -y, less in hearten, hearty, heartless.
 A prefix is a derivational morpheme
standing before the root and modifying
meaning, e.g., to hearten - to dishearten.
Morphological Structure
Structurally morphemes fall into
 free morphemes,
 bound morphemes,
 semi-free (semi-bound morphemes).
Morphological Structure
 A free morpheme is defined as one that can
occur by itself as a whole word, e.g. cloudy –
cloud, excusable – excuse. A great number
of root morphemes are free morphemes, e.g.
child in the words childhood, children,
childish is naturally qualified as a free
morpheme because it coincides with one of
the forms of the noun child.
Morphological Structure
 A bound morpheme is attached to another
and is a constituent part of a word. Bound
morphemes are of two types: inflectional
morphemes and derivational ones.
 Inflectional morphemes: watch – watches,
look – looked, etc.
 Derivational morphemes are affixes, e.g. ness, -ship, -ize, dis-, de- in the words like
happiness, relationship, to displease, to
demoralize.
Morphological Structure
 Semi-free or semi-bound morphemes can
function in a morphemic sequence both as an
affix and as a free morpheme, e.g. half-ready,
seaman, womanlike.
Morphological Structure
 According to the number of morphemes
words fall into monomorphic and
polymorphic.
 Monomorphic or root-words consist of
only one root-morpheme, e.g. long, car,
make, drive, etc.
Morphological Structure
 All polymorphic words according to the
number of root-morphemes are
classified into two subgroups:
monoradical or root words and
polyradical words, i.e. words which
consist of two or more roots.
Morphemic Segmentability
 As far as the complexity of the
morphemic structure of the word is
concerned all English words fall into two
large classes:
 segmentable words, those allowing of
further morphemic segmentation, e.g.,
quickly, fearless, agreement;
 non-segmentable words, e.g., house,
girl, cat, woman.
Morphemic Segmentability
 The main aim of the morphemic
analysis is to split a word into its
constituent morphemes, determine their
number and type.
 It's called the method of immediate
and ultimate constituents.
Morphemic Segmentability
DISAGREEMENT
DISAGREE
DIS
AGREE
MENT
Morphemic Segmentability
There are three types of morphemic
segmentability:
 complete,
 conditional and
 defective.
Morphemic Segmentability
Complete segmentability:
 the individual morphemes are clearly singled
out within the word and can easily be
isolated. The constituent morphemes are met
in other words with the same meaning,
 e.g. speechless – two morphemes: speech
and less.
 Speech → speech, speeches, less →
nameless, useless.
Morphemic Segmentability
Conditional segmentability:
 the segmentation into the constituent
morphemes is doubtful for some semantic
reasons, e.g. retain, contain, detain.
 The words can be split into the following
re–tain, con–tain, de–tain. The constituent
part -tain unites these three verbs, but we
cannot trace the common meaning in each
verb, consequently we cannot regard -tain as a
morpheme.
Morphemic Segmentability
 Similarly we may find re-, con-, de- in
other verbs (recall, remind, consist,
confuse, delay, defeat), but each group
of words does not share a common
meaning. Such morphemes are called
pseudo-morphemes or quasimorphemes.
Morphemic Segmentability
 Defective segmentability is the property of words
whose constituent morphemes are seldom or never
met in other words.
 A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as
meaningful because the constituent morphemes
display a more or less clear denotational meaning.
cranberry → two morphemes: cran and berry.
 The morpheme -berry occurs in strawberry,
blackberry, etc.
 Cran does not recur in any other English word, thus,
this morpheme is unique.
Thank you for your attention.
Don’t forget to get ready for the
seminar.