323 Morphology

1
323 Morphology

• The Structure of Words
• 2. Basic Concepts

2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms Words are not easy to
define. A preliminary definition is based on the
English orthographic system. The spaces used in
orthography represent words (usually). Most
dictionaries list only one word of an inflected
set E.g. sing, sang, sung, singing,
sings. The form sing is always chosen as a
dictionary entry. The form is technically an
infinitive. In linguistics the term is lexeme
represents the basic or dictionary form of the
word. Lexemes are usually written in CAPS
SING Lexemes are abstract representations, which
presumably are listed in the brain in a component
called the lexicon. Each inflected form of a
lexeme is called a word-form. E.g. sing, sang,
sung, singing, sings are each a word-form and
each one belongs to the lexeme SING. The set of
word-forms of a given lexeme is called a
paradigm.

2
2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms
By convention in each language, the dictionary
representation may be the infinitive form of the
verb as in Russian, the first person singular in
Latin (which has no infinitive), the third person
singular in Arabic, or perhaps by some other
form. The entry form for nouns in normally the
singular nominative case form of the noun Latin,
Russian, English, Czech, German. A lexeme
family, or less formally a word family, is a set
of lexemes that are related. They should share
some phonological properties and be related
semantically. The latter is easier said than
determined. E.g. print, printable, unprintable,
printer, printability, reprint. This list is not
necessarily complete. Complex lexemes are
lexemes formed with an affix (a morpheme). E.g.
able, un, er, ity, re in the above
list. Complex lexemes must each be listed
separately in a dictionary as the meaning may
differ. The various word-forms of a given
lexeme do not change the meaning of the
lexeme. Which affixes that occur with which
basic lexeme is not predictable. E.g. we find
in English un-happy, un-ripe, but not un-sad,
un- red, un-tall, and so forth.
3
2.1 Lexemes and Word Forms
Sometimes a lexeme with an affix occurs but the
basic form does not exist E.g. dis-gruntled
but not gruntled, in-cognito, but not cognito,
un-gainly, but notgainly. Sometimes the
expected affix does not occur but another affix
does E.g. natural-ness in place
natural-ity. Or the expected affix occurs with
another meaning E.g. cook, cook-er (an
instrument for cooking, not a person who
cooks, which is simply the noun
cook. Kinds of morphological
relationship inflection the relationship
between the word-forms of a lexeme. E. g. mask,
masks sit, sat, sitting, sits blue, bluer,
bluest. derivation the relationship between
lexemes of a lexical family. E. g. singer,
singer write, writer cookV, cookN,
cooker. Derivation usually implies forming one
lexeme from another lexeme in the same lexical
family. E.g. sing -gt singer, write -gt writer,
cookV, cookN and cooker. Word is used whenever
the distinction between derivation and inflection
is uncertain. (no examples currently). Compound
lexeme) refers to words that are made up of two
or more lexemes doghouse, catfish, greenhouse,
whiplash, tattletale, and so forth.
4
2.2 Morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest constituent with a
function. I prefer this distinction to smallest
constituent with meaning. There are some forms
that appears to be constituents but have no
discernable meaning, but have a function in terms
of word building E.g. doof-us, radi-us, cf.
radi-al, radi-an. Some inflectional morphemes
have no true meaning, but they have a grammatical
function E.g. he, him who, whom they,
them, The suffix -m marks the accusative
(objective) Case. This is a syntactic relation
and no meaning can be associated with it. The
term function includes meaning. To go one step
further than H., the hierarchy for constituents
is Sentence -gt phrase -gt word -gt
morpheme. Phrases are very important constituents
in syntax. Some grammatical categories cannot be
expressed in terms of morphemes. For example,
note the following partial inflection of the
English verb sing and others similar to
it E.g. sing, sang, sung. The past tense is
marked by a change of the root vowel. The latter
form marks two distinct grammatical functions
the passive form of the verb and the perfect form
of the verb. Each form is a distinctive morpheme
with a different function but phonologically the
same.
5
2.3 Affixes, Bases and Roots
Affixes are morphemes that are adjoined to the
left of the base of a word or to the right of the
base of a word A prefix is an affix that is
adjoined to the left of the base of a
word. E.g. un- in un-happy, un-regulated
re- re-do, reheat, re-write, and so forth. A
suffix is an affix that is adjoined to the right
of the base of a word. E.g. s in book-s,
cat-s eat-s, smell-s linguistic-s. An infix is
an affix that is inserted into the base of the
word forming a non- contiguous base. There are
no infixes in English. Infixes occur in the
Semitic language. E. g. ktb is the base for
book and read and words which refer to
book/read in some related sense. To form the
noun in Arabic, the infixes I and a are
inserted into the base between the firsts two
consonants and the second two consonants,
respectively E.g. kitab. A circumflex is an
affix that occurs on both sides of the base.
(H.) E. g. (per H) German ge-les-en read
(passive participle). English dialects
a-walk-ing, a-read-ing.. The English a- is
etymologically related to the German ge-.
Stem, Base and Root A root is a morpheme that
cannot be broken down into further morphemes. A
base is one or more morphemes formed of a root
plus affixes.
6
2.3 Affixes, Bases and Roots
A stem is a base that has lexical meaning
(meaning that is stored in the lexicon). It is
also called a lexeme E. g. Pen is a root, a
base and a stem (null affix) (a lexical
item). E. g. Gruntle is a root, but a stem
since no lexeme corresponds to it. E. g.
Disgruntle is not a root, it is a base, but not a
stem. E. g. disgruntled is not a root, but it
is a base and a stem. E.g. -ed is a suffix it
is not a root, base or stem. In English the
word dog, for example, is a root since it cannot
be broken into further morphological units E.
g. do is not a morpheme of dog, it is basically
a verb. There is no morpheme og that has any
kind of function. Dog is also a base. It has
lexical meaning. The English word disgruntled
consists of three morpheme dis-, gruntle, and
ed. dis is a prefix, and ed is an inflectional
affix marking the past tense among other
functions. The morpheme gruntle is a root, since
two affixes are adjoined to it. It is not a
base, since it has no lexical meaning (what does
gruntle mean?) Once both affixes are adjoined to
it, then disgruntled, which is a base, is a
lexical stem since it does have
meaning. Technically, the prefix dis- is
adjoined first to gruntle to form the base
disgruntle. Apparently this form has no
lexical meaning and remains a base. Once the
adjectival suffix -ed is added to disgruntle
then the base receives lexical meaning and is a
stem. English has several words usually
considered compounds, where at least one member
of the compound doesnt behave like a normal
prefix or affix.
7
2.4 Formal Operations
E. g. tele-graph. Although graph may have lexical
meaning, tele- does not. It does not occur in
isolation. The form is borrowed from Greek where
it means far. It is more like a root that
cannot become a stem in its own right, but it
may be adjoined to a stem to form a new stem.
2.4 Formal Operations Some words such as
derive imply a process. A true process is a
historical phenomenon and does not imply a
process in terms of how language is represented
in the mind (the grammar of a language).
Diachronic refers to a temporal process. E.
g. Middle English -gt modern English. Synchronic
refers to a grammar at a particular point in
time. E. g. Modern English, Modern French. In
addition to affixation and compounding, there is
another process or operation that refers to
inflection formed without affixation and word
formation formed without affixation. It is called
a non-concatenative operation (Some) Albanian
nouns form their plural by palatalizing their
final consonant E. g. armik (Sg.), armiq c
(pl.) enemy, ies. A few nouns in English are
formed from verbs by voicing their final
consonant E. g. hoof (Sg.), hooves (Pl.).
8
2.4 Formal Operations
Causative verbs in Arabic are formed by
geminating the second root consonant. Gemination
is the doubling of a consonant E. g. darasa
(root DRS) learn, darrasa cause to
learn. The first person singular of Huallaga
Quechua verbs is formed by lengthening the final
stem vowel E. g. aywanqui you (Sg.)
go,aywa I go. Stem AYWA. Intransitive
verbs are formed by shortening the stem vowel of
Hindi transitive verbs E. g. maar kill,
trans. mar die. Adjectives in Chalcontongo
Mixtex are derived from nouns by raising the tone
on the final vowel of the noun E. g. ká?ba
filth, ká?bá dirty. The past tense of a
certain class of English verbs and verbs of
several Indo-European languages replace the stem
vowel of the verb with another E. g. sit -gt
sat sing -gt sang German sing-en -gt sang sing,
sang. The replacement (which it really isnt)
of Arabic vowels in inflection and derivation is
called transfixation E. g. root KTB write,
book, kataba wrote. H mentions several other
operations such prereduplication,
postreduplication, duplifxation,and subtraction.
(pp. 23 and 24). With the addition of the above
operations, the definition of a stem as a root
plus affixes is obviously insufficient.
definition a stem is a root plus morphological
operations (both concatenative and
non-concatenative). I prefer to think of these
morphological operations in terms of set theory.
Set theory belongs to pure logic and is used in
various logic-related fields such as mathematics
where extensive use of it is made. I will delve
in set theory just a tiny bit to enlighten the
class.
9
2.4 Formal Operations
A set is a group of one object or two or more
objects. Any two or objects can form a set. In
linguistics, we will restrict a set to two or
more objects that are related in some linguistic
way. E. g. noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
quantifier (and so forth) E. g. infix, suffix,
prefix E. g. all vowels are a set a, e, o. I,
u in 5 vowel languages. E. g. all lexemes are a
set. E. g. all phrases are a set. E. g. each
alternating vowel in a paradigm is a set i, a,
u in S_NG. One vowel is consider the default or
basic vowel, the others are marked in that they
occur in specific contexts. E. g. a occurs in
the context of the past tense, and u occurs in
the context of the passive and the perfect
grammatical categories of the English verb sing.
I is the default, since it occurs in
word-formation sing-er. The evidence that is
beginning to appear in neural representations of
language is the formal lexical representation of
the lexeme SING is more properly SI, A, UNG. In
the present tense, the default vowel I is
selected from the set. In the past tense the
vowel a is selected from the set. I cant go to
much further here at this time. I will make
reference from time-to-time of set theory in
linguistics, but I will not make this the
standard theory here.
10
2.4 Morphemes and Ållomorphs
An allomorph is one of the variant forms of a
morpheme E. g. the two forms of the English
lexeme HAVE ha-, and hav(e), phonetically /hæ/
and /hæv/ as in ha-d, ha-s and have,
hav-ing. The dropping of the letter e in the
progressive participle is an orthographic
(spelling) operation unrelated to morphology. In
set theory, a member is the generic name for
subsets in linguistics each member of a
morpheme is called an allomorph. This
alternation is a true morphological alternation.
The morpheme is a set, which contains two
members (allomorphs), /hæ/ /hæv/. Note in
set theory, a comma means the two or more members
are ordered. Here there is no ordering.
Therefore, a comma cannot be used to separate the
two allomorphs. One thing that most
morphologists do is confuse the nature of the
alternation. For example, the past tense if
almost always said to consist of three
allomorphic suffixes -?d, -d, and -t. In a
technical sense, the alternation is determined
by phonological rules, not morphological rules.
-d is the default (the elsewhere condition),
-t is the variant following voiceless
obstruents, and ?d is the variant which occurs
between homorganic stops. E. g. loved
l?v-d, play-ed, cite sayt-?d. Note
allophones are members of the set called the
phoneme. We note from H that Korean has two
allomorphs for the accusative singular suffix
ul lul. It is obvious that ul follows
consonants and lul follows vowels. If the
phonological rules of Korean predict that alter
alternation ø and l, then the alternation
phonological. If it cant be, then the
alternation is morphological.
11
2.4 Morphemes and Ållomorphs
In Turkish the first person possessive suffix has
5 forms im, üm, um, / m and m. Turkish
is well-known of the vowel harmony which occurs
in the language.. All these variations are part
of the phonological system. H p. 26. In German
final voiced stops become voiceless at the end
of a word or if they precede a voiceless
obstruent. H p. 26. Assimilation is definitely
phonological and if word boundaries count as
phonological markers (they do), then we can
consider obstruent devoicing as part of the
phonological system. In English there are subtle
differences when the voicing stops in final
voiced obstruents. This is purely phonological.
In Russian and nearly all of the Slavic
languages, the vowels /e/ and /o/ (which are
reduced in Russian and Byelorussian, are deleted
if they are not stressed. This does not happen to
all of them, just certain classes. This is a
morphological alternation and it is
phonologically unpredictable. Underlying
Forms The standards theories since about 1960
or so is that there is an underlying from for all
the allomorphs of a particular morpheme and all
the allophones of a particular phoneme.
12
2.4 Morphemes and Ållomorphs