The Morphology Study - Assignment Example

?Question a) prefixation: a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme is added to the front of a stem or root word. A prefix is an affix thatprecedes the root word and forms a new word with a different meaning. The word ‘prefix’ itself is composed of two morphemes ‘pre’ meaning before and ‘fix’ meaning attach. In Arabic the future tense is formed by adding the prefix ‘sa’ to the imperfect verb, ie. sa + ya’kulu “He will eat”. b) infixation: a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme is added within a stem or root word. An affix is added within a root word and forms a new word with a different meaning. Although English utilizes many prefixes and suffixes it does not evidence infixes except in slang wherein a curse word may be inserted, ie. ‘abso +bloomin + lutely’ . Evidence of infixes: Siouan cheti ‘to build a fire’ – che + wa – ti ‘I build a fire and shuta ‘to miss’ – shu + un + ta ‘we miss’ (Sapir, 2004, p. 57) c) compounding: a morphological process whereby two or more free lexemes are combined to form a new word. Each lexeme can function in its own right and can be attributed to any lexical category. English uses lexemes from many different lexical categories to form numerous different English compounds, ie. ‘cross + roads’ (N + N), ‘over + dose’ (Prep + N), ‘stir + fry’ (V + V). The most productive however, are those compounds made up of two nouns. Further examples: Dutch – ‘spremi + limoni’ (V + N) ‘lemon squeezer’ (Lit. squeeze lemon) (Desmets and Villiong, 2009, p.5), French - un ‘grille + pain’ (V +N ) ‘toaster’ (Lit. grill-bread) (Desmets and Villiong, 2009, p.3). d) suppletion: a morphological process whereby an unrelated word is used to fulfill a paradigm - one stem is replaced by another to form an allomorph of a morpheme which is phonologically dissimilar to the other morphemes, ie. go, goes, going, gone + went’ = stem suppletion; ‘ox + en’ and ‘cherub + im’ = affix suppletion. e) conversion: a morphological process whereby a linguistic item becomes another word class without having to add any affix (zero derivation) as in ‘smell’, ‘prize’ and ‘hammer’ which can all be used as a verb or a noun; sometimes involves stress changes, ie. ‘present’, ‘conflict’, ‘insult’; a very productive process in English (McIntyre, 2000) Question 2: a) total reduplication: any linguistic unit, ie. phoneme, word, phrase, clause, utterance or morpheme that is repeated in total, ie. ‘bye-bye’ (childish way of saying goodbye) – both grammatically and semantically important; generally categorized as either at the semantic/content level or the expression level, ie. Kashmiri: ‘shur’ shur’ ‘children children’ (expression level for emphasis (optional)), ‘jaan jaan’ ‘good good’ (expression level for plurality (obligatory)), ‘vuzIvuzI’ ‘desire’ (semantic level), ‘tharItharI’ ‘trembling’ (semantic level) (Koul, 1977). b) partial duplication: a form that is repeated in part as in ‘helter-skelter’, or ‘teenie- weenie’; Malay: reduplication indicates a ‘continuous process and the progressive form” (Nadarajan, p.42) by reduplicating the base after adding a prefix ‘ber’, ie. (ber) + base + root as in ‘ketuk’ ‘peck, ‘ber +ketuk’ ‘to peck’, ‘ber + ketuk + ketuk’ ‘keeps pecking / is pecking / pecks’ (Nadarajan, p.42). c) coordinative compound: when words have more than one (usually two) lexemes that have equal standing as in ‘bitter-sweet’; a compound is coordinate when it comprises two elements from the same lexical category and are co-hyponyms (Renner, 2008); English coordinate compounds include N + N ‘hunter + gatherer’, Adj + Adj ‘manic + depressive’ and V + V ‘sleep + walk’ (Renner, 2008) d) derivation: a morphological process whereby a derivational suffix is added that changes the meaning of the word and the word class as in ‘act + ion’, ‘cheer + ful + ness’, or when a prefix is added and only the meaning is changed and is usually significantly different to the root word – reversal or opposite, ie. ‘re + trial’, ‘im + probable’, ‘in + visible’; both a prefix and suffixes can be added as in ‘happy – happi + ness – un + happi + ness’, ‘examine – examin +ation – re + examin + ation’; important to remember that derivation always derives or creates new words from those already existing. e) coinage: a morphological process whereby a new word is made using existing elements such as brand names that are used as general words ie. ‘kleenex’, ‘xerox’, ‘coke’ and ‘asprin’; usually created to account or cater for new products, services or inventions, i.e ‘internet’ ‘dot- com’. Question 3: Morphological generalisations often involve issues pertaining to sound patterns, while many phonological generalisations pertain to morphology, wherein morphology is conditioned by phonology; thus distorting the division between phonology and morphology. This interaction of morphology with phonology involves both morphophonology and morphophonemics as well as lexical rules, all of which entail grammar and lexicon intermingled with phonology. Morphophonological rules are those pertaining to grammatical or lexical conditions. The English plural of words such as ‘wife’ - ‘wives’ are an example of lexical conditioning but the plural morpheme causes the phonological alteration of /f/ to [v[ and is thus an example of grammatical conditioning. Morphophonemic conditioning involves a more abstract level than phonemic conditioning and is illustrated by Darden (2002) in reference to Russian. The Russian verb meaning ‘to beat back’ is ‘otbivat’ but is pronounced as ‘adb’ivat’, wherein the /t/ changes to [d] when preceding /b/, and the vowel changes from /o/ to [a]; although such change can and has been considered by many as purely phonological conditioning, it can also be considered as evidence of morphophonemics because the word needs to be parsed first in order to recognize that a prefix –‘ot’ is added to the verb ‘b’ivat’. Evidence and examples of the interaction between morphology and phonology are easy to find; for example the prosodic structure of English comparatives ‘er’ and ‘more’, such as ‘hot-hotter’ and humid-more humid’ illustrate how morphology is involved with foot structure as well as phonology. Phonological patterns can be found on different morphological constructions, such as compounding and affixation, but is not common across the lexical phonology of a language; for example, the English word ‘parent’, has stress on the first syllable but a stress shifting suffix can be added such as ‘-al’ – ‘parental’, wherein the stress moves to the second syllable; if however the suffix ‘-ng’ is added - ‘parenting’ the stress remains on the first syllable, so the suffix is a non stress shifting suffix. A further example is evident with the word ‘ minister’ that has stress on the first syllable; add the suffix ‘-ial’ and the stress moves to the third syllable; add the prefix ‘ad-‘ to ‘minister and the stress does not move, but add a further prefix ‘re-‘ to ‘administer’ and the stress moves to the first syllable. Some morphological formations in English therefore correlate with a pattern that other formations do not. Evidence of phonological processes effecting morphological categories without the addition of morphemes is also evident in English; words such as ‘produce’ (N) and ‘produce’ (V) are marked by stress that converts them from verbs to nouns – stress is placed on the first syllable of the noun and on the second syllable of the verb, as too with ‘record’ (N) and ‘record’ (V). A phonological process that does not add anything to a word is therefore the only organized and distinguishing marker of a morphological process. In summary, this essay has only briefly touched on the issues involved with the interaction of morphology and phonology and has not discussed the number of theories evident in their connection. Question 4: Each of the following phrases are ambiguous and thus have more than one possible meaning. The first phrase ‘telescopic goat hair brush’ is an example of syntactic ambiguity because the meaning can be understood as i) a telescopic brush made of goat’s hair, or ii) a hair brush for a telescopic goat. This ambiguity can therefore be exemplified in the following morphological tree structures: i) telescopic goat hair brush ii) telescopic goat hair brush The second phrase ‘modern Russian history teacher’ is also an example of syntactic ambiguity. The phrase may be understood as i) a history teacher that is both modern and Russian, or ii) a teacher of modern Russian history; both of which can be exemplified in the following morphological tree structures: i) modern Russian history teacher ii) modern Russian history teacher The third phrase ‘three old bats’ is an example of lexical ambiguity because the noun ‘bats’ corresponds to more than one meaning, for example, it can mean i) clubs that are used in sports, or ii) a flying mammal. It could also be construed as the colloquial use in reference to iii) difficult and bad tempered women. This type of ambiguity cannot be exemplified with a morphological tree structure because it pertains only to word meaning (semantics) and is not related to positioning. References Darden, B. 2002. Morphology and Phonology. Viewed 16 January, 2011. http://www.oup.com/us/pdf/linguistics/morpholog.pdf Desmets, M. and Villiong, F. 2009. French VN lexemes: Morphological Compounding in HPSG. CSLI Publications. Viewed 16 January, 2011 http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/53/01/38/PDF/Desmets-villoing_HPSG09_2009.pdf Koul. O. 1977. Reduplication of Kashmir. Viewed 18 January, 2011 http://iils.org/pdf/Reduplication.pdf McIntyre, A. 2000. English Morphology. Viewed 16 January, 2011. http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/courses/UCY08F/MASOE/materials/McIntyre_Morphology.pdf Nadarajan, S. A Crosslinguistic Study of Reduplication. Arizona Working Papers in SLAT, vol.13, pp.39-53. Renner, V. 2008. On the semantics of English Coordinate Compounds. English Studies, vol 89: 5, pp. 606-613. Sapir, E. 2004. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harcourt Brace: New York. Read More