The word could be defined in:

o Orthography
o Phonologically
o Internal integrity
o Semantically
o Syntactically
orthographic Word: A word is an uninterrupted string of letters which is preceded by a
blank space and followed either by a blank space or a punctuation mark.
Examples:
 Linguistics is a fascinating subject. There are five uninterrupted strings of letters.
 Benjamin’s girlfriend lives in a high-rise apartment building.
If you consider apostrophies to be punctuation marks, Benjamin's constitutes two
(orthographic) words. If not, Benjamin's is one word. If you consider a hyphen a punctuation
mark, high-rise is two (orthographic) words, otherwise it's one (orthographic) word. The last
two strings, apartment building, are easy to classify, they are two (orthographic) words,
whereas girlfriend must be considered one (orthographic) word.
➢ There are two basic problems with our orthographic analysis:
1. The first one is that orthography is often variable.
2. The second problem with the orthographically defined word is that it may not
always coincide with our intuitions.
The first one is that orthography is often variable. Like girlfriend has variable spellings (girl-
friend/ girl friend/ girlfriend) and like wordformation has also variable spellings (word-
formation/ word formation / and wordformation).
The second problem is that it may not always coincide with our intuitions. Most of us
would probably agree that girlfriend is a word which consists of two words (girl and friend),
a so-called compound. If compounds are one word, they should be spelled without a blank
space separating the elements that together make up the compound. Unfortunately, this is
not the case. The compound apartment building, for example, has a blank space between
apartment and building.
The counterexamples are:
Benjamin’s/ girlfriend/ high-rise/ apartment building.
Phonologically Word: the word as a unit in speech is surrounded by pauses or has main
stress.
If you carefully listen to naturally occurring speech you will realize that speakers do not make
pauses before or after each word. Perhaps we could say that words can be surrounded by
potential pauses in speech. This criterion works much better, but it runs into problems
because speakers can and do make pauses not only between words but also between
syllables, for example for emphasis. (pauses)
Spoken in isolation, every word can have only one main stress, as indicated by the acute
accents (´) in the data presented in:
cárpenter / téxtbook/ wáter / análysis / féderal / sýllable / móther / understánd
The main stressed syllable is the syllable which is the most prominent one in a word.
These words show that the phonologically defined word is not always identical with the
orthographically defined word:
o Bénjamin's
o gírlfriend
o apártment building
While apártment building is two orthographic words, it is only one word in terms of stress
behavior. The same would hold for other compounds like trável agency, weather forecast,
spáce shuttle.
Take into consideration that not all words carry stress. For example, function words like
articles or auxiliaries are usually unstressed (a cár, the dóg, Máry has a dóg) or even
severely reduced (Jane’s in the garden, I’ll be there). The stress criterion is not readily
applicable to function words and to words that hang on to other words, so-called clitics (e.g.
‘ve, ‘s, ‘ll).
The counterexamples are:
emphasis / function words like articles or auxiliaries / clitics
Internal integrity: The word is an indivisible unit into which no intervening material (affix)
may be inserted.
If some modificational element is added to a word, it must be done at the edges, but never
inside the word.
Examples: Plural endings such as -s in girls, negative elements such as un- in uncommon or
endings that create verbs out of adjectives (such as -ize in colonialize) never occur inside the
word they modify, but are added either before or after the word.
Counterexamples: The plural of son-in-law is not *son-in-laws but sons-in-law. In creations
like abso-bloody-lutely, the element bloody is inserted inside the word, and not, as we
would expect, at one of the edges.
The semantic definition of word: A word expresses a unified semantic concept.
Example: son-in-law.
 It is not sufficient in order to differentiate between words and non-words.
The simple reason is that not every unified semantic concept corresponds to one word in a
given language.
Counterexample: “The smell of fresh rain in a forest in the fall.” Certainly, a unified
concept, but we would not consider it a word.
“The woman who lives next door.” This phrase refers to a particular person and
should therefore be considered as something expressing a unified concept. This concept is
however, expressed by more than one word.
An additional problem arises from the notion of ‘unified semantic concept’ itself, which
seems to be rather vague.

A word may always express a unified concept, not every unified concept is expressed by
one word.

The syntactic definition of words: Words belong to certain syntactic classes (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, prepositions etc.), which are called parts of speech, word classes or syntactic
categories.
Words are usually considered to be syntactic atoms, (i.e. the smallest elements in a sentence).
The position in which a given word may occur in a sentence is determined by the syntactic
rules of a language. These rules make reference to words and the class they belong to.
Example: the is said to belong to the class called articles, and there are rules which determine
where in a sentence such words may occur like in “the big house”.

We can test whether something is a word by checking whether it belongs to such a word
class. If the item in question follows the rules for nouns, it should be a noun, hence a word.

Or consider the fact that only words (and groups of words), can be moved to a different
position in the sentence. For example, in ‘yes/no’ questions, the auxiliary verb does not occur
in its usual position but is moved to the beginning of the sentence (You can read my textbook
vs. Can you read my textbook?).
Properties of words
o words are entities having a part of speech specification
o words are syntactic atoms
o words (usually) have one main stress
o words (usually) are indivisible units (no intervening material possible)
lexeme: The realizations of an abstract morphological entity.
word-formation: dealing with the formation of words.
morphologically complex words: putting together smaller elements to form larger words
with more complex meanings.
Morpheme: The smallest meaningful units.
Bound Morphemes: morphemes can occur only if attached to some other morpheme(s).
free morphemes: occur on their own.
Bound Roots: roots that only occur in combination with some other bound morpheme.
Ex: later- (the adjectival suffix -al). circul- (as in circulate, circulation, circulatory, circular).
approb- (as in approbate, approbation, approbatory, approbator). simul- (as in simulant,
simulate, simulation), but occasional native bound roots can also be found (e.g. hap-, as in
hapless).
Base: The part of a word which an affix is attached to.
Root: Refers to bases that cannot be analyzed further into morphemes.
Stem: bases of inflections and bases of derivational affixes.
The term root is used to refers to: The indivisible central part of a complex word.
Derivative: The derived word.
Ex: The base of the suffix (-al) in the derivative colonial is colony, the base of the suffix (-ize)
in the derivative colonialize is colonial, the base of (-ation) in the derivative colonialization is
colonialize.
Compounding: Combine two bases. (apartment building, greenhouse, team manager,
truck driver)
concatenation: linking together bases and affixes as in a chain.
There are non-concatenative ways to form morphologically complex words.
Ex:  conversion, zero-suffixation, or transposition: To turn nouns into verbs by adding
nothing at all to the base.
Ex: consider the noun water, which can also be used as a verb, meaning ‘provide water’, as
in John waters his flowers every day.
Conversion: is a rather wide-spread process.
Examples of verb to noun conversion:
to walk take a walk
to go have a go
to bite have a bite
to hug give a hug
zero-suffixation: There is a suffix present in such forms, only that this suffix cannot be heard
or seen.

 There are processes involving the deletion of material, yet another case of
non-concatenative morphology.

Truncation or Clipping: English Christian names can be shortened by deleting parts of the
base word, a process also occasionally encountered with words that are not personal
names.
EX:
Ron (←Aaron) condo (←condominium)

Liz (←Elizabeth) demo (←demonstration)

Mike (←Michael) disco (←discotheque)

Trish (←Patricia) lab (←laboratory)

Diminutives: Truncation and affixation can occur together, as with formations expressing
intimacy or smallness.
Examples:

Mandy (←Amanda)

Andy (←Andrew)

Charlie (←Charles)

Patty (←Patricia)

Robbie (←Roberta)

Blends: The amalgamations of parts of different words.

Examples:

smog (← smoke/fog) modem (← modulator/demodulator).

Acronyms: Are coined by combining the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a
pronounceable new word.
Ex: NATO, UNESCO, UK or USA
The study of word-formation: The study of the ways in which new complex words are built
on the basis of other words or morphemes.
Suffixes like participial -ing, plural -s, or third person singular -s create new word-forms, i.e.
grammatical words, but they do not create new lexemes.
Suffixes like -er and -ee, or prefixes like re- or un- do form new lexemes.
Inflection is part of the grammar.
Derivation and compounding are part of word-formation (or rather: lexeme formation).
Inflectional morphemes encode grammatical categories such as plural, person, tense, or case.
Derivational suffixes are not relevant for the syntax.
Derivational morphemes can occur at either end of the base words whereas regular inflection
is always expressed by suffixes. Only irregular inflection makes use of non-affixational means,
as for example in (mouse – mice) or (sing – sang). There is no inflectional prefix in English.
Inflectional morphemes always occur outside derivational morphemes, derivational suffixes
can and do occur inside other derivational suffixes.
derivational morphemes change the part of speech of the base word. For instance, the
suffixation of (-less) makes an adjective out of a noun, the suffix (-ity) makes a noun out of an
adjective, and the suffix (-ize) turns an adjective into a verb.
However, not all derivational affixes are category-changing, as is evidenced, for example, by
most prefixes (as e.g. in post war, decolonialize, non-issue), or by the nominal suffix (-ism),
which can attach to nouns to form nouns (e.g. Terrorism).
The inflectional suffixes don’t change the category of the base word. A plural marker on a
noun does not change the category, nor does the past tense marker on the verb.
There is a property that is often found in derivation, but hardly ever in inflection, and that is
called semantic opacity.
semantic opacity: a property that is often found in derivation, but hardly ever in inflection.

The meaning of the derived word cannot be inferred on the basis of its constituent
morphemes, it is to some extent opaque, or nontransparent.

Non-transparent or Opaque formations are quite common in derivational morphology, but

rare in inflection.

Inflectional categories tend to be fully productive.

Derivational categories often show strong restrictions as to the kinds of possible
combinations.
A productive morpheme is one that can be attached regularly to any word of the
appropriate class.

Derivation Inflection
– encodes lexical meaning – encodes grammatical categories
– is not syntactically relevant – is syntactically relevant
– can occur inside derivation – occurs outside all derivation
– often changes the part of speech – does not change part of speech
– is often semantically opaque – is rarely semantically opaque
– is often restricted in its productivity – is fully productive
– is not restricted to suffixation – always suffixational (in English)

Morphology derivation

non-
affixation
affixation
Inflection Word-formation

prefixation suffixation infixation conversion truncation blending

Compounding Derivation
Definitions of Morphology:
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.
Words have internal structure in two very different senses. On the one hand, they are made
up of sequences of sounds (i.e. they have internal phonological structure).
In general, phonological segments cannot be assigned a specific meaning, they have a purely
contrastive value.
But often formal variations in the shapes of words correlate systematically with semantic
changes.
Examples:
The words (nuts), (nights), (necks), (backs), (taps) share not only a phonological segment (the
final [s]), but also a semantic component: they all refer to a multiplicity of entities from the
same class.
And, if the final [s] is lacking (nut, night, neck, back, tap), reference is made consistently to
only one such entity.
By contrast, the words (blitz), (box), (lapse) do not refer to a multiplicity of entities, and there
are no semantically related words (*blit), (*bok), (*lap).
We would say that the final [s] of (nuts) expresses plural meaning when it occurs at the end
of a noun. But the final [s] in (lapse) does not have any meaning, and (lapse) does not have
morphological structure.
Morphological structure exists if there are groups of words that show identical partial
resemblances in both form and meaning.
Definition 1:
Morphology is the study of systematic covariation in the form and meaning of words.
It is important that this form–meaning covariation occurs systematically in groups of words.
It is often suggested that morphological analysis primarily consists in breaking up words into
their parts and establishing the rules that govern the co-occurrence of these parts.
Morphemes: The smallest meaningful constituents of words that can be identified.
Examples:
In (nut-s), both (-s) and (nut) are morphemes. Other examples of words consisting of two
morphemes would be (break- ing), (hope-less), (re-write), (cheese-board); words consisting
of three morphemes are (re-writ-ing), (hope-less-ness), (ear-plug-s).
Definition 2:
Morphology is the study of the combination of morphemes to yield words.
This definition looks simpler and more concrete than Definition 1.
It would make morphology quite similar to syntax, which is usually defined as ‘the study of
the combination of words to yield sentences.’

Different languages vary strikingly in the extent to which they make use of
morphology.
Linguists sometimes use the terms analytic and synthetic to describe the degree to which
morphology is made use of in a language.
Analytic: morphology plays a relatively modest role (Ex: English).
Isolating: When a language has almost no morphology.
Synthetic: When a language has amount of morphology (Ex: Arabic).
Polysynthetic: When a language has an extraordinary amount of morphology (Latin, Italian).

Chapter 3
1.1. The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign.
The most important characteristic of the traditional morpheme is that it is conceived of as a
unit of form and meaning.
Examples:
The morpheme un- (as in unhappy) is an entity that consists of the content or meaning on the
one hand, and the sounds or letters which express this meaning on the other hand.
It is a unit of form and meaning, a sign.
Examples:
A red traffic light is also a kind of sign in the above sense: it has a meaning (stop!), and it has
a form which consists of the well-known shape of the traffic light. Similarly, morphemes have
a meaning that is expressed in the physical form of sound waves (in speech) or by the black
marks on paper which we call letters.
The part of the morpheme we have referred to as its ‘form’ is also called morph, a term coined
on the basis of the Greek word for ‘form, figure’. (morph=form)
[ʌn] morhp
The pairing of certain sounds with certain meanings is essentially arbitrary.
[not] meaning
In complex words at least one morpheme is combined with another
morpheme. This creates a derived word, a new complex sign, which stands for the combined
meaning of the two morphemes involved.
The meaning of the new complex sign unhappy can be predicted from the meanings of its
parts.
Compositional: Linguistic expressions, (such as unhappy), whose meaning is a function of the
meaning of its parts. (completely transparent meanings)
Not all complex words and expressions, however, are compositional, as can be seen from
idiomatic expressions such as kick the bucket (die). And pairs such as view and interview, or
late and lately show that not even all complex words have compositional.
1.2. Problems with the morpheme: the mapping of form and meaning.
One of the central problems with the morpheme is that not all morphological phenomena
can be accounted for by a neat one-to-one mapping of form and meaning. 1form=1meaning
1. conversion: the process by which words are derived from other words without any visible
marking (to walk - a walk, to throw - a throw, water - to water, book - to book).
This would force us to recognize morphemes which have no morph, which is impossible
according to our basic definition of morpheme.
We have, however, already seen that this problem can be solved by assuming that zero-forms
are also possible elements in language.
In this view, the verb water is derived from the noun water by adding to the base noun water
a zero form with the meaning ‘apply X’. Thus, we could speak of the presence of a zero-morph
in the case of conversion. (1 meaning but no form)
2. More serious problems for the morpheme arise when we reconsider the non-affixational
processes.
While affixational processes usually make it easy to find the different morphemes and
determine their meaning and form, non-affixational processes do not lend themselves to a
straightforward analysis in terms of morphemes.
Recall that we found a set of words that are derived from other words by truncation (e.g. Ron,
Liz, lab, demo).
Such derivatives pose the question what exactly the morph is (and where it is) that – together
with the base word - forms the derived word in a compositional manner.
In order to save the idea of morphemes as ‘things’, one could also propose a different analysis
of truncation, assuming the existence of a truncation morpheme which has no phonetic
content but which crucially triggers the deletion of phonetic material in the base.
Alternatively, we could conceptualize the formal side of the truncation morpheme as an
empty morph which is filled with material from the base word. (1 form but no meaning)
3. The addition of meaning by means of vowel alternation. (man - men, take - took, goose -
geese).
4. Another problem of the morpheme is that in some expressions there is more than one form
signifying a certain meaning, (progressive and perfect tenses). (extended exponence)
5. The feature of empty form (form without meaning), child-ren, in-fer, pre-fer, con-fer.
Allomorphy
We have assumed that one meaning is expressed by a certain morph or a certain string of
morphs and not by variable morphs whose exact shape differs according to the context in
which they occur.
However, this is exactly the kind of situation we find with many morphemes, be they bound
or free.
Examples:
The definite and indefinite articles in English take on different shapes, depending on the kind
of word which they precede:
The shape of articles in English
a. the indefinite article a
[ə] question [ə] book [ən] answer [ən] idea
in isolation: [ˈeɪ]
b. the definite article the
[ðə] question [ðə] book [ði] answer [ði] idea
in isolation: [ˈði]
There are three distinct realizations of the indefinite article and three distinct realizations of
the definite article. When not spoken in isolation, the indefinite article a has two different
morphs [ə] and [ən], and the definite article the equally has two morphs, [ðə] and [ði]. When
spoken in isolation each article has a third, stressed, variant, [ˈeɪ] and [ˈði] respectively.
Allomorphs: different morphs representing the same morpheme.
Allomorphy: The phenomenon that different morphs realize one and the same morpheme.
How do speakers know when to use which allomorph?
One of the two allomorphs occurs when a consonant follows, the other when a vowel follows.
The third allomorph occurs if nothing follows.
On a more abstract level, we can say that it is the sound structure that conditions the
distribution of the allomorphs, i.e. determines which allomorph has to be used in a given
linguistic context.
This is called phonological conditioning.
Allomorphy is also rather frequent in English derivation, and both bases and affixes can be
affected by it.
Examples:
Consider first a few cases of base allomorphy and try to determine how many allomorphs the
lexemes explain, maintain, courage have:
Explain  [ɪkˈspleɪn] Maintain  [ˌmeɪnˈteɪn, mənˈteɪn]
Explanation  [ˌekspləˈneɪʃn] Maintenance  [ˈmeɪntənəns]
Explanatory  [ɪkˈsplænəˌtərɪ] Courage  [ˈkʌrɪdʒ]
Courageous  [kəˈreɪdʒəs]
The pronunciation of the base EXPLAIN varies according to the kind of suffix attached to it.
Let us start with the attachment of (-ation), which causes three different effects:
1. Stress is shifted from the second syllable of the base (plain) to the first syllable of the suffix.
2. Second, the first syllable of the base is pronounced [ek] instead of [ɪk].
3. Third, the first syllable of the base receives secondary stress.
The attachment of (-atory) to explain leads to a different pronunciation of the second syllable
of the base ([æ] instead of [eɪ]).
Similar observations can be made with regard to maintain and courage, which undergo vowel
changes under attachment of (-ance) and (-ous), respectively.
 In all cases involving affixes, there is more than one base allomorph, and the appropriate
allomorph is dependent on the kind of suffix attached to it.
 We can thus state that the allomorphy in these cases is morphologically conditioned,
because it is the following morpheme that is responsible for the realization of the base.
Obligatorily bound morphemes: affixes
obligatorily bound morphs: specific realizations of a morpheme that only occur in contexts
where the morpheme is combined with another morpheme.
Explain has thus a free allomorph, the morph [ɪkˈspleɪn], and several bound allomorphs,
[ˌeksplən] and [ɪkˈsplæn].

Suffix Allomorphy
some adjectives derived from nouns by the suffixation of (-al/-ar). Both suffixes mean the
same thing and their phonetic resemblance strongly suggests that they are allomorphs of one
morpheme.
Examples:
The allomorphy of adjectival (-al/-ar):

Cause + al → causal Nodule + ar → nodular

Obviously, all derivatives ending in (-ar) are based on words ending in [l], whereas the
derivatives ending in (-al) are based on words ending in sounds other than [l]. We could thus
say that our suffix surfaces as (-ar) after [l], and as (-al) in all other cases.
This is a case of the phonological conditioning of a suffix, with the final segment of the base
triggering a dissimilation of the final sound of the suffix.
The opposite process, assimilation can also be observed, for example with the regular English
past tense ending, which is realized as [d] after voiced sounds (vowed, pinned) and [t] after
unvoiced sounds (kissed, kicked).
Conversely, the insertion of [ə] with words ending in [t] and [d] (mended, attempted) can be
analyzed as a case of dissimilation. (to make pronunciation smoother and avoid repeating the
same sound.)
{This happens to avoid repeating the [l] sound, which can make pronunciation harder. This
process is called dissimilation, meaning sounds are changed to become less similar to each
other.}
{This is called assimilation, where sounds are made more similar for easier pronunciation.}
Such a state of affairs, where one variant (-ar) is exclusively found in one environment,
whereas the other variant (-al) is exclusively found in a different environment, is called
complementary distribution.
Complementary distribution is always an argument for the postulation of a two-level analysis
with an underlying and a surface level.
On the underlying level, there is one element from which the elements on the second level,
the surface level, can be systematically derived (e.g. by phonological rules).

Establishing word-formation rules

If a speaker knows the words (unhappy, unkind, unfaithful, untrue, uncommon), and
(analyzable), she can easily identify the meaning of unanalyzable, even if she has never seen
that word before. There must be some kind of system in the speakers’ minds that is
responsible for that.
As a first step, let us try to find the rule (the so-called word-formation rule) according to which
(un-) can be attached to another morpheme in order to form a new word.
Examples:
a. table ∗untable car ∗uncar
b. available unavailable broken unbroken
c. (to) sing (to) ∗unsing (to) walk (to) ∗unwalk
d. post- ∗unpost mega- ∗unmega-
The most obvious observation is that un- cannot attach to just any other morpheme, but only
to certain ones.
In those cases where it can attach, it adds a negative meaning to the base.
However, only the morphemes in (b) can take (un-), while those in (a), (c) and (d) cannot.
The straightforward generalization to account for this pattern is that (un-) attaches to
adjectives (available, broken, and aware are all adjectives), but not to nouns or verbs.
Furthermore, (un-) can only attach to words, not to bound morphemes.
In order to be applied correctly, the rule must at least contain:
1. information about the phonology of the affix.
2. what kind of affix it is (prefix or suffix),
3. its semantics, and possible base morphemes.
Examples:
Word-formation rule for the prefix (un-) (un-happy): (‘X’ stands for the base)
phonology: /ʌn/X semantics: ‘not X’ base: X = adjective
The rule makes the interesting prediction that all adjectives can be prefixed with (un-), and
that no verb and no noun can take (un-). If there are words that do not behave according to
the hypothesized rule, the hypothesis is falsified and we must either abandon our rule or
refine it in such a way that it makes more accurate predictions.
word-formation rule for (-th) (tentative):

phonology: X-/θ/, with various base alternations

base: X = adjective
semantics: ‘state or property of being X’

phonology: X-/θ/, X = allomorph of base

base: {broad, deep, long, strong, true, warm}

semantics: ‘state or property ofbeing X’