Phonology & Morphology Mla Research Paper

People's Democratic Republic Of Algeria Ministry Of Higher Education And Scientific Research Mentouri University (Constantine)

Phonology & Morphology By : Aries Riad G16 Academic Year: 2008/2009 The Outline : 1-Introduction 2-Phonology: -What is phonology? -Basic Concepts. -Complementary Distribution. -Phonemes And Allophones. -Syllables. 3-Morphology: -What is morphology? -closed & open class -compounding. -Phrasal verbs.

Items.

4-The Difference between morphology & phonology. 5-Conclusion.

The aim of phonology is to determine the principles that govern sound structure in language while Phonology deals with the abstract mental representation of sound, rather than the properties of the physical speech signal. so what is phonology?and what is morphology and what is the difference between them? What is phonology? Phonology is the component of a grammar made up of the elements and principles that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language. The study of phonology attempts to discover general principles that underlie the patterning of sounds in human language.

BASIC CONCEPTS: Features: The smallest unit of analysis of phonological structure, combinations of which make up segments. Segments: Individual speech sounds. Syllables: A unit of linguistic structure that consists of a syllabic element and any segments that are associated with it.

Allophones: Variants of a phoneme, usually in complementary distribution and phonetically similar. Environment: The phonetic environment in which a sound occurs. Phoneme: A contrastive segmental unit with predictable phonetic variants. Glides: Sounds that are produced with an articulation like that of a vowel, but move quickly to another articulation. Phonemes are enclosed in slanted brackets / /, phonetic notation is indicated by square brackets [ ] found in the same position in each form. It is on the basis of sound and not spelling that minimal pairs are established. COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION: It is the distribution of allophones in their respective phonetic environments such that one never appears in the same phonetic context as the other. Example: Not all ls in English are pronounced the same way. Some are voiced and some are voiceless. Voiced: blue; gleam; slip. Voiceless: plow; clap; clear. The voicelessness the ls is a consequence of their phonetic environment. Since no voiceless l occurs in the same phonetic environment as a voicelessness one (and vice versa), it is said that the two variants are in complementary distribution. PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES: Predictable variants of certain segments are grouped together into a contrastive phonological unit called a phoneme. These variants, which are referred to as allophones, are usually phonetically similar and are frequently found in complementary distribution. Allophonic variation: is found throughout language. In fact, every speech sound we utter is an allophone of some phoneme and can be grouped together with other phonetically similar sounds into a class that is represented by a phoneme on a phonological level of representation. Although the phenomenon of allophonic variation is universal, the patterning of phonemes and allophones is language-specific. What is discovered for one language, may not hold true for another. SYLLABLES: The syllable is usually composed of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and its associated nonsyllabic segments. Internal structure of a syllable Nucleus (N): is the syllable’s only obligatory member. It is a syllabic element that forms the core of a syllable. Coda (C):consists of those elements that follow the nucleus in the same syllable. Rhyme (R):is made up of the nucleus and coda. Onset (O): is made up of those elements that precede the rhyme in the same syllable .

People don’t syllabify words randomly. That is because syllables comply with certain constraints that prohibit them (in English) from beginning with an unnatural sequence. Constraints can be stated for each of the terminal subsyllabic units O, N, and C. Phonotactics, the set of constraints on how sequences of segments pattern, forms part of a speaker’s knowledge of the phonology of his or her language. Example: when we try to adjust syllables of a foreign language, to conform with the pronunciation requirements of our own language. What is Morphology? Morphology is the field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. (Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology.) While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the rules of word formation in English. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages. A Morpheme: is the smallest meaningful unit. In a word, the morpheme that carries the core meaning of the word itself is called lexical morpheme or lexeme. CLOSED CLASS ITEMS & OPEN CLASS ITEMS: Words come in two varieties: functional words, and lexical words. The difference has to do with their meaning (purely grammatical , lexical and referential), and with what you cam do out of them: you can invent a new lexical word, but you have no power on functional words. Functional words usually evolve from lexical words through a process called grammaticalization. Ex: Will. COMPOUNDING: The simplest way to form new words out of old elements is by compounding. Compounding in English normally has the following properties: 1- Compounds have a head, which gives them their main semantic and syntactic properties. Example: -syntactically, the expression blackboard is a noun, as is its head board -semantically, the expression blackboard refers to things that are kinds of boards, as the noun board. 2- The head comes last 3- The stress comes first 4- The meaning of the whole is not entirely predictable on the basis of the meaning of the parts. In the following examples, the syllable with the main stress is indicated in bold. In each pair, a. is not a compound because (a) it has its main stress on the final element, and (b) the meaning of the whole is entirely predictable from the meaning of the parts (e.g. a black board is simply a board that is black). By contrast, b. is a compound: the main stress is on the first element, and the meaning of the whole is not entirely predictable from the meaning of the parts (a

blackboard may not be black, but for instance green, as is the case in many classrooms). a. a black board: a board that is black b. a blackboard: a board for writing on with chalk in front of a class. It may or may not be black. a. a dark room: a room that is dark b. a darkroom: a room from which daylight is excluded so that photographs can be processed. There are sometimes instances of structural ambiguity in morphology. Thus a California history teacher may be someone that teaches California history, or it may be a history teacher from California. The first meaning is obtained by making California history a morphological constituent. The second meaning is obtained by the morphological tree found on the right. Phrasal verbs: English syntax distinguishes between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. Consider the following: I held up my hand. I held up a bank. I held my hand up. *I held a bank up. The first three sentences are possible in English; the last one is unlikely. When to hold up means to raise, it is a prepositional verb; the preposition up can be detached from the verb and has its own individual meaning "from lower to a higher position". As a prepositional verb, it has a literal meaning. However, when to hold up means to rob, it is a phrasal verb. A phrasal verb is used in an idiomatic, figurative or even metaphorical context. The preposition is inextricably linked to the verb; the meaning of each word cannot be determined independently but is in fact part of the idiom. The Oxford English Grammar distinguishes seven types of prepositional or phrasal verbs in English: 1. intransitive phrasal verbs (e.g. give in) 2. transitive phrasal verbs (e.g. find out [discover]) 3. monotransitive prepositional verbs (e.g. look after [care for]) 4. doubly transitive prepositional verbs (e.g. blame [something] on [someone]) 5. copular prepositional verbs. (e.g. serve as) 6. monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to [respect]) 7. doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put [something] down to [someone] [attribute to]) The difference between Morphology and Phonology: The interface between phonology and morphology lies in the area covered by the terms morphophonemics, morphophonology or morphonology, and lexical rules. These terms have been used in a variety of ways. The uses all recognize a level of language or analysis of language that differs from pure phonology in that it involves lexical and grammatical information mixed with phonological information. Of modern schools of phonology, only two reject or ignore the significance of the distinction between pure phonology and morphophonology. The generative pho- nology represented by Chomsky and Halle rejected the distinction. Most practitioners of Optimality Theory ignore the distinction, but there is nothing inherent in the theory that makes it impossible. In fact, Kiparsky suggests the use in that theory of levels similar to those of Lexical Phonology. Different schools that make the distinction draw the boundary in different places.

We can illustrate this with concrete examples, (It is helpful to remember that the term “morphophonemic” has been used differently to describe levels of representation and rules.) Morpho Phonological rules can be defined as rules with lexical or grammatical conditioning. For those who recognize the distinction between MPRs and P[honological] R[ule]s, the only grammatical condition- ing allowable for PRs is boundaries. The adherents of Natural Generative Phonology (e.g. Hooper 1976) did not allow even boundaries as positive conditioning factors. An example of extreme lexical conditioning is found in English plurals of the type wife, wives. This also involves grammatical conditioning, since it it specifically the plural morpheme that conditions the change of f to v. A common example of grammatical conditioning is the umlaut (vowel fronting) in the plural of German nouns. e.g. Vogel ‘bird’ pl. Vo¨gel. It is this mixture of lexical and grammatical condition- ing that justifies the “morpho-” in “morphophonology.” The “-phonology’ is also justified, even for the rules mentioned above: the velar palatalization - ically to velars, and umlaut applies specifically to back applies specif vowels. Kiparsky showed that in German dialects, when new back vowels are created, there is a tendency to umlaut them, and to adjust the output of umlaut so that there is a simple back/front relationship between the vowels.(Kiparsky171). Anttila claims that all rules subject to morphological conditioning are Morphological.(Antilla). A more nuanced version of this approach is advanced by Anderson, who asserts that genuine phonological rules (as opposed to ‘word-formation’, i.e. morphological, rules) can be circumscribed to a morphologically defined domain, but cannot refer to specific morphemes or morphological/syntactic features.(Anderson 22). Conclusion: Close analysis of the relationship between phonology, morphology, and the lexicon in present-day English continues to yield new insights into the nature and organization of grammars. Theories based on stratification and cyclicity dominated the field during the 1980s. Today, the stratal approach faces tough competition, but is still fostering new advances in our understanding of the morphologyphonology interface.

List of Bibliography

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Anttila, A.'' Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations''. Mar 2009 .http://www.oup.com/us/pdf/linguistics/morpholog.pd

Kiparsky, Paul. Linguistic universals and linguistic Change.''In Universals in linguistic theory'', ed.Emmon

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O’Grady, William, Michael Dobrovolsky. ''Contemporary Linguistics''. 28 Mar 2009 http://www.comunicazione.uniroma1.it/materiali/10.19.02 New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.