Harvard Linguistics 110 - Class 14 Morphology I

Linguistics 110 Class 14 (11/13/02)

Zhang/Öztürk/Quinn

Morphology (1) What is a word? •

A word is the sequence of letters between two blanks. The good can decay many ways. It’s hard to recognize speech. The stuffy nose can lead to problems.

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The units of language that are the products of morphological rules, and which are unsplittable by syntactic rules. (syntactic atom) (a) black board (a board that is black) blackboard (the board teachers write on)

very black board *very blackboard

pick pocket (the act of picking pocket) pickpocket (one who steals from pocket)

pick his pocket *pick-his-pocket

poor house (a decrepit house) poorhouse (housing for the homeless)

poor gray house *poor-gray-house

(b) He picks pocket. He’s a pickpocket. •

The good candy came anyways. It’s hard to wreck a nice beach. The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

Question “pocket”:

What does he pick?

Question “pickpocket”: Question “pocket”:

What is he? *What is he a pick?

“Listemes”, i.e., the things in a language you learn as a rote list. (a) Root words:

man, woman, dog, cat, truth, fiction, red, tall, run, walk, live, die, hippopotamus, magenta, procrastinate, etc.

(b) Proper names: Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, George Burns, England, Bantu, Harvard, Pentium, etc. (c) Compounds: box boy (carries boxes) box score (summary of statistics) box car (enclosed railroad car) box office (ticket office at a theater) box seat (special seat in a stadium) box spring (has square frame) box turtle (has square shell) shoe box (shoes come in it) tackle box (keep fishing tackle in it) (d) Idioms:

Go fly a kite! kick the bucket spill the beans bite the bullet 1

kill two birds with one stone out to lunch go bananas a pain in the neck •

What are the differences between the last two definitions of “word”?

(2) What does it mean to know a word (listeme)? •

The arbitrary relationship between form and meaning: words are symbols. English: French: German: Russian: Hebrew: Arabic: Hausa: Korean: Taiwanese: Mandarin:

Tree Arbre Baum Derevo Ets Shajara Bishiya Namu tǸ!u a~ shu~

[dOg]

English: dog Hebrew: fish

[su:s]

Hebrew: horse Latin: pig

[mu:n] English: moon Korean: door

[bE®] bear (an animal) bear (give birth) bare (naked) [beI:] bail (money) bail (bucket) bale (bundle) [tÓu]

to (toward) two (2) too (also)

[mit] meet (join) meat (flesh) mete (allot) •

Shared knowledge about meaning and appropriate use: In Hausa, one would kaÎa … milk (English churn) thread (English spin) a coat (English shake) a tail (Englsih wag) one’s head (English nod)

You might

In English, one would break … a pot (Hausa fasa) a stick (Hausa karya) a rope (Hausa tsinke) a watch (Hausa ∫ata) a horse (Hausa hora)

lie to someone. commit perjury in court. prevaricate in a literary society. fail to avoid an untruth as a political candidate. fib to your little brother. con someone to get money. bullshit someone you don’t respect.

(3) Morphemes: the meaningful elements of a word • Some words cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units: Eat, print, apple, uncle, word, tall, soon, on, free, real, … Some words can: Eats, printed, apples, taller, reality, transformational, uncontrollably, callousness, … •

Roots and Affixes:

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Roots: morphemes that represent the core meaning of words, to which other morphemes can be added to modify their meaning. Affixes: morphemes that attach to roots or combinations of roots and affixes. •

Free morphemes and bound morphemes: Free morphemes: morphemes that can stand alone. Bound morphemes: morphemes that only function as parts of words.

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Are free morphemes the same as roots, and bound morphemes the same as affixes? nonchalant, uncouth, disgruntle, overwhelm, inept, cranberry… Root Affix

Free Bound dog, cat, man, woman, truth, lie, nonchalant, uncouth, inept, hippopotamus, procrastinate, cranberry, lukewarm, disgruntle, fast, slow, pink, mauve … overwhelm cats, falsehood, untrue, pinkish, pinker, pinkness, slowly, reconfirm, confirmed, formation

(4) Classifying affixes 1—positions of affixes • Prefixes: non-conformist, unfortunate, anticatholic, reconfirm, disfavor •

Suffixes: cats, falsehood, pinkish, slowly, confirmed, formation

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Infixes: Bontoc (Austronesian, spoken in the Philippines): fikas “strong” fumikas “to be strong” kilad “red” kumilad “to be red” fusul “enemy” fumusul “to be an enemy”

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Circumfixes: Chickasaw (Muskogean, spoken in Oklahoma): chokma “he is good” ikchokmo lakna “it is yellow” iklakno palli “it is hot” ikpallo tiwwi “he opens (it)” iktiwwo

“he isn’t good” “it isn’t yellow” “it isn’t hot” “he doesn’t open (it)”

Interleaving morphemes: Arabic: kitaaba “writing” kaatib “writer” maktab “office” miktaab “typewriter”

“he wrote” “he corresponded with” “library” “bookseller”

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kataba kaataba maktaba kutubii

English borrowings from Arabic: Moslem, Islam, salaam. (cf. slm ‘peace’).

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(5) Classifying affixes 2—functions of affixes • What are the differences between the following two kinds of affixes in terms of: (a) Does the meaning of the derived form differ from that of the base form? (b) Does the suffixation change part of speech? Affix type 1 false → falsehood form → formation confirm → reconfirm nation → national national → nationalist

Affix type 2 cat → sit → walk → break → walk →

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Derivational affixes—Affix type 1: a. b.

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Inflectional affixes—Affix type 2: a. b.

cats sits walked broken walking

(6) A closer look at English derivational affixes • Some derivational affixes of English: -ly -ness -al -able -ize -ation unre•

What do you know about these affixes? -ly:

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change Adj to Adv change N to Adj

(quick-quickly) (friend-friendly, ghost-ghostly)

-ness: change Adj to N

(clean-cleanness)

-al:

(ration-rational, nation-national) (dismiss-dismissal)

change N to Adj change V to N

-able: change V to Adj

(read-readable)

-ize:

(rational-rationalize) (subsidy-subsidize, creole-creolize)

change Adj to V change N to V

-ation: change V to N

(rationalize-rationalization)

un-:

change V to V change Adj to Adj

(do-undo, tie-untie) (happy-unhappy)

re-:

change V to V

(do-redo, adjust-readjust, wind-rewind)

In rule notation: Adjective + -ly → Adjective + -ness → Verb + -able →

Adverb Noun Adjective

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re- + Verb

→

Verb

(7) A closer look at inflectional affixes. • Some languages have dozens or even hundreds of inflectional affixes. They typically mark such things as: person of subject and object; number of subject and object; class of noun; tense of verb; negation of verb; causation of an action; doing something on behalf of, etc. •

San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Oto-Manguean, Oaxaca, Mexico): r-guèe’ez ‘hugs …’ (unmarked) r-guèe’ez-a’ ‘I hug …’ r-guèe’ez-yuu’ ‘you (sg. formal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-ùu’ ‘you (sg. informal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-iny ‘he (reverential) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ëb ‘he (formal) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ahzh: ‘he (respectful) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ëng ‘he (proximate) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ih ‘he (distal) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ëmm ‘he (animal) hugs …’ r-guèe’ez-ënn ‘we hug …’ r-guèe’ez-yud ‘you (pl. formal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-ad ‘you (pl. informal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-riny ‘they (reverential) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-rëb ‘they (formal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-rahzh: ‘they (respectful) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-rëng ‘they (proximate) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-rih ‘they (distal) hug …’ r-guèe’ez-rëmm ‘they (animal) hug …’

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Finnish (Finno-Ugric): Case Nominative Genitive Accusative Partitive

Function basic form possession object ending indefinite quantity

Inessive Elative Illative Adessive Ablative Allative Essive Translative Comitative

inside out of into on off onto state change of state accompanying

Example Translation auto car auto-n of the car häne-t him, her maito-a some milk vet-tä some water perhe-ttä some family auto-ssa in the car auto-sta out of the car auto-on into the car pöydä-llä on the table pöydä-ltä off the table pöydä-lle onto the table opettaja-na as a teacher opettaja-ksi become a teacher vaimo-ine-ni with my wife (-ine = comitative, -ni = 1st sg. possessive) 5

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Swahili (Bantu, East Africa): hatutawapikishia cakula

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‘we will not have food cooked for them’

ha-

tu-

ta-

wa-

pik-

ish-

NEG

we

FUT

them

cook

CAUS APPL

i-

a-

c-

akula

INDIC

CL7

food

Grammatical functions of inflections: (a) Consider English: The lizard caught the fly. The fly caught the lizard. (b) Consider Latin: ‘lizard’ ‘fly’

Nominative lacertus mosca

Lacertus moscam cepit. Moscam lacertus cepit. Lacertus cepit moscam. Moscam lacertus cepit. Cepit lacertus moscam. Cepit moscam lacertus.

Accusative lacertum moscam

Genitive lacerti moscae

‘The lizard caught the fly’

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