Morphology Flashcards
(43 cards)
Morphemes
Smallest units of language that carry information about meaning or function
Inflection
Modifies a word’s form to indicate grammatical subclass
Derivation
Building a new word by adding an affix
- changes the word class and/or basic meaning of the word;
Grammatical morphemes
Inflectional affixes & function words.
- Serve the same kind of role, but inflection is bound to its host, and function words are freestanding
Components of inflectional morphology
- number (singular vs. plural)
- tense (past, future)
- agreement (first, second, third person)
- gender (masculine, feminine).
To build a grammar of the structure of words, children must:
-Segment words into morphemes
- Assign meaning or function to each morpheme
- Learn the category types of morphemes (root vs. affix, prefix vs. suffix, derivation vs. inflection, lexical vs. functional, etc.);
Findings of Brown’s research on Adam, Eve and Sarah
Relatively uniform order of acquisition due to :
1. frequency (plural -s > possessive -s)
2. saliency (plural -s > past tense -ed) 3. semantic weight (plural -s > third person -s)
Morphemes allomorphs
Morphemes can vary in shape depending on the context (e.g. same underlying representation morpheme for -s in cats and dogs but one pronounced [s], the other [z])
Methodological issues for interpreting data
- Obligatory context : a sentence can be grammatical but incorrect given the context
2.Cut-off : determining when a child has acquired a construct (Brown’s criterion: 90% use in obligatory contexts) - Variation across sessions : Brown required that the rate of use remain above 90% for three consecutive sessions
- Variation across learners : children do not learn structures at same age; solution : MLU
True or false : there is a uniform order of grammatical morphemes acquistion across languages
False, morphology is more robust in certain languages
True or false : order of grammatical morphemes acquistion is relatively stable within a given language
True
Productivity challenge to Brown’s experiment
Do children memorize the right context for inflected forms use or do they acquire productive rules and representations that they apply to new words ?
90% inflection can be attained with memorization
- You can incorrectly store keys as irregular, but produce it correctly
Wugs test
Tests generalization of rules to novel forms
* If children can pluralize nouns they have never heard before, they must have a rule of plural formation (suffix -s to a noun to form its plural):
When do children struggle to add the [-s] or [-z] plural morpheme ?
When the word already ends with an [s]
Chunking
Employing memorized fixed forms
Children usually acquire the inflectional system before __ years old
4
2 most common inflectional morphemes
Prefixes and suffixes
Children find ______prefixes/suffixes easier
Suffixes
Operating principle of Slobin
Idea that a rule tells children to be attentive to the end of words
Children tend to omit obligatory ______prefixes/suffixes
Prefixes
Why are infixes easy to acquire in Tagalog ?
The infix is sometimes realized as a prefix to optimize the syllable structure (phonology places constraints). The infix being realized as a prefix makes it easier for the child to identify the inflectional morpheme.
Consonant-initial roots: Agent-focus <um> is infix
Vowel-initial roots: Agent-focus <um> is prefix</um></um>
Children acquiring more morphologically rich languages acquire inflection _____earlier/later than more empoverished languages like English
Earlier
In morphologically rich languages, morphology does some of the job of ______
Syntax
Languages with richer morphology have relatively free _____ _______
Word order
