Cours 3 : Morphology

Question 1

morphology

Answer 1

it’s the study of words

a word is a unit that associates a form to a given meaning (in a sound-meaning pair)

one phonological word can correspond to many orthographic words, and one orthographic word can correspond to different words

Question 2

definition of a word

Answer 2

a word is the smallest unit of language that can be surrounded by pauses and can take primary stress (stress helps defining what words are)

Question 3

lexicography

Answer 3

dictionaries contain some information that is stored in our mental lexicon

Question 4

distribution of allomorphs

Answer 4

the aim is to identify the pattern of distribution in terms of the phonological properties of the sounds preceding each allomorph.
to do so, we look for minimal pairs

we must look at the phonetic properties of each final sound

Question 5

the 2 types of words

Answer 5

content words : nouns, adjectives, verbs -> they denote concepts such as events, attributes, ideas

function words : conjunctions, prepositions, articles -> they don’t have clear grammatical meanings and they don’t refer to obvious concepts, but they do have a grammatical function

Question 6

word formation

Answer 6

words enter a language through many different processes. morphology and semantics are concerned with this idea.

1. some processes of word formation consider the word as the basic minimal unit
   > coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, back
   formation, conversion, acronyms
2. some other processes dig deeper into words to describe what happens at the level of morphemes
   > derivation, inflexion

Question 7

word coinage and borrowings

Answer 7

coinage : the invention of new words
> product names that become nouns (ex. google, granola)
> eponyms (ex. watt)

borrowing : a language borrows words from another language
> Greek roots (ex. thermometer)
> other languages (ex. croissant : French)
> loan-translation (ex. gratte-ciel)

Question 8

compounding

Answer 8

a word formed by conjoining to other full words. the 1st word is always stressed and the 2nd receives secondary stress.

compound words are seen as single units with special criteria :
> the 1st syllable is stressed and the 2nd receives secondary stress
> sometimes, unusual word order (ex. fundraiser)
> sometimes, morphophonemic changes (ex. roommate VS some mice)
> like single words in terms of derivational/inflexional affixes (ex. “to can open” doesn’t exist but can opener does)

Question 9

blending

Answer 9

ask

Question 10

clipping

Answer 10

process by which a polysyllabic word is shortened
> gas for gasoline

Question 11

hypocorism

Answer 11

a form of clipping

a longer word is reduced to a single syllable ending with -y or -ie
> Aussie, hankie

Question 12

backformation

Answer 12

a word is created by reducing it through the deletion of a supposed affix AND by changing its grammatical category
> donation becomes donate

Question 13

conversion

Answer 13

the word remains the same but its grammatical function is different
> to bottle, to butter

Question 14

acronyms

Answer 14

words that consist of the sequence of initials of a set of words
> CD = compact disk

Question 15

types of morphemes

Answer 15

root morpheme : it expresses the basic lexical meaning of a word and can’t be further divided into smaller pieces.

1. free morpheme : it can be used autonomously and make sense
   > ex. gentle, radio
2. bound morpheme : it can’t make sense on its own
   > ex. /un/ for unbelievable

Question 16

affixes

Answer 16

an affix is a morpheme that attaches to another morpheme

> prefixes : at the beginning (ex. un-likeable)
suffixes : at the end (ex. convert-ible)
suprafixes : change word pitch/stress (ex. PERmit and perMIT)
infixes : within the word (ex. congratu-fucking-lations)

Question 17

clitics

Answer 17

morphemes and grammatical functors that phonologically depend on another word
they hace the form of affixes but the distribution of function words
> /a/ and /the/ articles (attached to whatever word is next)

Question 18

root change

Answer 18

some morphemes undergo internal transformations
> goose becomes geese

Question 19

morphological creativity

Answer 19

when we know the meaning of the individual parts of a word, we can understand the word.

there are morphological rules :
> adjective + -ify = verb
> adjective + -cation = noun

Question 20

derivation

Answer 20

derivation consists in creating new lexemes by adding morphemes

derivational morphemes add to roots to create new stems (ex. paint -> paintable), so we can say that it also induces a change in meaning

there is a hierarchy in formation

other morphological rules :
> adjective + -al = adjective (ex. egotistical)
> adjective + -ly = adverb (ex. happily)

Question 21

derivation with ambiguous words

Answer 21

ambiguity in meaning is the result of two different morphological structures, like with the word “unlockable”
> “unlock-able” or “un-lockable”

Question 22

derivational morphemes

Answer 22

a productive morphological process applies to every stem of a certain class to create new morphemes.

> the morphemes -able/-ible form adjectives from transitive verbs
> they’re productive derivational affixes : the class they apply to is
well defined and, they contribute the same meaning component
across the board.
the morpheme -th/-t forms nouns from adjectives, but it doesn’t apply to all adjectives (ex. not “tallth”), and there is also an unpredictable change in the root vowel
> less productive derivational affix

Question 23

decomposing the word “dehumidifier”

Answer 23

1. root : “humid” (adjective)
2. “humidify” : derivation of a transitive verb by adding the suffix -ify
3. “dehumidify” : derivation of a transitive verb by adding the prefiy -de
4. “dehumidifier” : derivation of a noun by adding the suffix -er
5. “dehumidifiers” : the noun is made grammatically plural by adding the regular plural suffix -s in the allomorphic form /z/

Question 24

inflexion

Answer 24

inflexion means adjusting the shape/meaning of a stem to adapt it to a particular syntactic and discourse context

Question 25

grammatical morphemes

Answer 25

not autonomous : they need to be combined to other morphemes to express their meaning

> free grammatical morphemes : it, to…
> “I want to change my car”
bound grammatical morphemes : they mark tense/number/gender, and they never change the word category of the morphemes they attach to
> “he walks to work”, “he walked to work”

Question 26

inflectional morphemes

Answer 26

they typically follow derivational morphemes

-s : plural
-‘s possessive
-s : 3rd person singular
-ed : past tense
-en : past participle
-ing : progressive
-er : comparative
-est : superlative

Question 27

difference between derivational and inflexional morphemes

Answer 27

derivational morphemes change word category and/or the basic meaning of the word when affixed to roots, which may only then be inflected to express number/tense…

inflexional morphemes signal grammatical relations and are required by the rules of sentence formation (they play a syntactic role)

Question 28

definition of slang

Answer 28

a way of speaking which consists of new words and extended meanings, prompted by the need to find fresh, vigorous or humourous expressions

Question 29

perspectives on slang in the literature

Answer 29

sociological perspective

stylistic perspective

linguistic perspective

Question 30

grammatical formations in slang

Answer 30

derivation

inflexion

compounding

conversion

Question 31

extra-grammatical formations in slang

Answer 31

anomalous derivations

abbreviations

reduplication

reversed forms and variations on the base

all of the above, but with affixes with pragmatic meaning

fanciful coining

Question 32

word classe

Answer 32

group of lexemes that are morpho-syntactically (form), semantically (meaning) and pragmatically (use) similar

entries that have all the properties of the class are prototypes (ex. dog -> labrador)

word class information is syntactic, because the position of the item in a sentence seems to reveal what it is

Question 33

relative freedom in word classes

Answer 33

we can use it to force lexical words into non-natural classes for them. this partly happens because words are tools that may be used to fulfill specific expressive functions

> “for” : preposition AND synonym of because
conjunctions can be used as adverbs
some prepositions/conjunctions can be used as nouns

Question 34

nouns

Answer 34

words which are usually well-defined in terms of conceptual boundaries.

these concepts may not change, but they can get additional meanings (= polysemy)

they can also be referred to by pronominal anaphora

Question 35

verbs

Answer 35

verbs usually describe events that produce change in the world : processes

they function by selecting complements to which the predicate is associated

Question 36

adjectives

Answer 36

adjectives refer to properties or attributes (ex. color, shape, size)

they usually modify nouns and serve an attributive function

Question 37

adverbs

Answer 37

hard to define

types of adverbs
> manner
> time
> extent
> epistemic
> location
> hedging

Question 38

auxiliaries

Answer 38

sometimes, they are considered as a subtype of verbs, because some of them function as full verbs (ex. be)

however, when they are used as auxiliaries, we consider there is class shifting

Question 39

prepositions

Answer 39

grammatical functors that specify the semantic role of what follows them

Question 40

pronouns

Answer 40

anaphoric words used in reference phenomena

Question 41

conjunctions

Answer 41

they connect words/phrases/clauses together

> coordinating conjunctions : conjoin 2 units that have an equal syntactic status (ex. “and”)
subordinating conjunctions : conjoin 2 units that have a disting syntactic status (ex. “after”)