Week 5, Morphology Part 2 Flashcards
(23 cards)
What symbol indicates an unmarked morpheme?
ø
e.g. Chickasaw example:
- past tense = -tok
-present tense = ø
-he = ø
How do we pluralize regular nouns in English?
-s or -es
What is unique about the way we pluralize regular nouns in English?
The way we pronounce -s or -es differs based on the word
e.g. cats vs cabs v rashes
Allomorph
variant phonetic form of a morpheme
Phonetic representation of plural -s/-es
[s] [z] [Iz]
These are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme -s and -es
If the plural -s is realized in 3 different ways, then how do we know which one to use
We don’t memorize it. We have clear intuitions about plural words
When does the [z] plural pronunciation occur?
after a voiced sound
When does the [s] plural pronunciation occur?
after a voiceless sound
When does the [Iz] plural pronunciation occur?
after silibants
Silibant
sounds that have a buzzing or hissing quality
Inflection morphemes
morphemes that are purely gramatical and mark tense, number, gender, case, etc
Are inflection morphemes productive?
Yes, they are often very productive (i.e. applied to a lot)
When do inflection morhpemes occur?
after derivational morphemes
How many inflectional morphemes does English have?
8
case marking
nouns or pronouns are modified to indicate their grammatical role (subject, object, possessor)
e.g. Viktor + a = Viktor’s, Victor + u = to Viktor
Reduplication
forming new words by duplicating part or all of an existing word
e.g. Tagaloh:
Bili = buy, bibili = will buy
e.g. Indonesian:
rumah = house
rumahrumah = houses
What type of reduplication does English have
Contrastive focus reduplication (CF reduplication)
CF reduplication
Puts focus on most prototypical or stereotypical example of something
E.g. I’ll make a salad and you make a salad-salad
What type of reduplication does Singlish allow?
reduplication of nouns, adjectives, and verbs
Singlish: nominal reduplication
Adds a closeness to it
E.g. boy-boy indicates boyfriend or son
Singlish reduplication constraints
When you reduplicate a proper name, there is a constraint. The proper name must have only one syllable. This rule does not apply to common nouns
E.g. Ry-Ry but not Henry-Henry
Singlish Adjectival Reduplication
Plain adjectives and comparatives can be reduplicated, but superlative adjectives cannot be reduplicated
E.g. can say make it smaller-smaller but not make it smallest-smallest
Singlish verb reduplication
Reduplicating once versus twice
Once = to do something a little bit
Twice = continuous action
E.g. she cry-cry (i.e. she cried a little bit)
E.g. why you cough cough cough whole day long (i.e. keep coughing)
