Introduction to
Morphology
How do we form words-
What is Language?
Language is a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written
symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and
participants in its culture, express themselves.
It is an all-pervasive and ubiquitous presence in human existence.
Language has a cognitive, biological, and social basis in humans. The first
language is acquired naturally by infants unconsciously.
It is a tool for communication and interaction, a marker of identity, and a
repository of human experiences and knowledge.
Design Features of Human Language
Hockett's design features describe the basic properties of the rule system shared by all human
languages. In particular, the ability to combine discrete units into larger units, forms the foundation
of what linguists call grammar. A grammar is a complex system of rules that governs how speakers
organize sounds into words and words into sentences. (Sign languages also have grammar and differ
from spoken language only in terms of modality).
(From Charles Hockett 1960, 1966)
Semanticity- Specific signals can be matched with specific meanings. In short, words have
meanings. The Linguistic sign comprises of ‘Signifier’ (the word for a concept) and ‘Signified’ (the
concept denoted by the word)- Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Arbitrariness- There is no logical connection between the form of the signal and the thing it refers
to. For example, dog in English is Hund in German and perro in Spanish.
Discreteness- Messages in the system are made up of smaller, repeatable parts rather than
indivisible units. a word, for example, can be broken down into units of sound.
Displacement- The language user can talk about things that are not present—the messages can refer
to things in remote time (past and future) or space (here or elsewhere).
Productivity- Language users can understand and create never-before-heard utterances.
Duality of patterning- A large number of meaningful utterances can be recombined in a systematic
way from a small number of discrete parts of language. For example, suffixes can be attached to
many roots, and words can be combined to create novel sentences.
How we acquire language? Language
centers in human Brain
For most of the human beings, language centres are located in the left hemisphere of
the brain.
Anatomy of Language
There are several areas of the brain that play a critical role in speech and language.
Broca’s area, located in the inferior frontal gyrus of dominant hemisphere, which is left
hemisphere for most humans. It is associated with speech production and articulation.
Our ability to articulate ideas, as well as use words accurately in spoken and written
language, has been attributed to this crucial area.
Wernicke’s area is a critical language area in the posterior superior temporal lobe that
connects to Broca’s area via a neural pathway. Wernicke’s area is primarily involved in
comprehension. Historically, this area has been associated with language processing,
whether it is written or spoken.
Arcuate Fasciculus- Connects Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.
The angular gyrus allows us to associate multiple types of language-related information,
whether auditory, visual or sensory. It is located in close proximity to other critical brain
regions such as the parietal lobe, which processes tactile sensation, the occipital lobe,
which is involved in visual analyses and the temporal lobe, which processes sounds. The
angular gyrus allows us to associate a perceived word with different images, sensations
and ideas.
Language centres-
What is Grammar that we
acquire as a Result of
Language Acquisition?
Grammar is the set of rules that enables a speaker to comprehend,
construct and express grammatically correct sentences in a language.
Grammar is a complex system of rules that governs how speakers
organize sounds into words and words into sentences. (Sign languages
also have grammar and differ from spoken language only in terms of the
modality). Basic components of grammar are Phonetics, Phonology,
Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics.
What is Linguistics
Linguistics is scientific study of language. Scientific here means examining
data, forming hypothesis that explains the data, then testing the hypothesis
against more data, and drawing inferences.
Core areas of Linguistic studies:-
Phonetics: Study of speech sounds, their physical properties, acoustics, and
reception by human auditory system.
Phonology: Study of sound system and constraints on sounds and combination
of sounds in any language
Morphology: Study of word formation process and word structures.
Syntax: study of grammatical sentence structure in a language
Semantics: Study of meaning
Pragmatics: Study of intended meaning of a speaker in a given context.
Linguistics has various overlaps with different disciplines that gives rise to
various inter-disciplinary areas of study like Semiotics and Philosophy of
Language, Historical Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics,
Computational linguistics, Neurolinguistics, Forensic Linguistics etc.
Key phases in linguistic study-
c.500 BC: Panini and his followers in India produce oral treatises on
phonetics and language structure. Later, independent traditions of
language study develop in Europe.
1786: founding of modern linguistics, based on a seminal speech by
Sir William Jones concerning the relations between Sanskrit, Latin,
Greek and other ancient languages. Linguistics enters a historical
phase in which principles of language comparison and classification
emerge.
Early twentieth century: structuralism predominates in linguistics.
‘Structuralists’ like Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe and Leonard
Bloomfield and others in the USA were concerned with internal
systems of languages rather than with historical comparisons.
1957: Generative linguistics is founded with the publication of Noam
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. Linguistics shifts to a psycho-
biological stage, with interest in the way in which children acquire
languages based on an abstract ‘universal grammar’ common to all
languages.
What is Speech?
Speech is the verbal means of communicating. Speech consists of the
following:
Articulation: How speech sounds are made
Voice: The use of the vocal folds and breathing to produce sound (e.g.,
hoarseness, breathiness, projection)
Fluency and prosody: The rhythm, intonation, stress, and related attributes
of speech
When someone has trouble understanding other people (receptive language)
or explaining thoughts, ideas and feelings (expressive language), that is a
language disorder.
When someone cannot produce speech sounds correctly or fluently or has
voice problems, that is a speech disorder.
How we produce speech-
There are three parts involved in the production of speech-
Conceptualization or formation of the idea
Formulation of the idea into speech sounds. So, we need grammatical
encoding, morphology, syntax, and semantics. And then, the production of the
speech sounds-phonation process with the help of the egressive pulmonic air
stream mechanism (for most of the sounds in most languages) and oral-nasal
apparatus.
Articulation-actual production of the sounds for the purpose of
expression/communication
The respiratory (Subglottal) system, phonatory system, and articulatory
(Supraglottal) system work together to produce speech.
Organs involved in speech production-
Speech Sounds-
Vowels and Consonants
Voice and voiceless sounds- sounds that are produced with the accompanying
vibration of vocal folds are known as voiced sounds. Voiceless sounds are
produced with a freer passage of air through the vocal folds.
Vowels- Voiced sounds, described using four dimensions- Backness, height,
tenseness, and lip-rounding.
Consonants-May be voiced or voiceless, described using three dimensions-
Place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.
Morphology-
The term Morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist,
playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
He coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context. Its
etymology is Greek. Morph means shape, form, and morphology is the study
of form or forms.
In Biology, morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of
organisms, and in Geology, it refers to the study of the configuration and
evolution of landforms.
In Linguistics, morphology refers to the mental system involved in word
formation or the branch of Linguistics that deals with words, their internal
structures, and how they are formed.
Morpheme-
Smallest, indivisible unit of language with meaning or a grammatical function.
Examples- hand, house, boy, -ed (as in looked), -s (as in cats).
Free Morphemes- The morphemes that may constitute a word on their own
and can stand alone e.g. man, house, car, boy, tree, etc.
Bound Morphemes- Morphemes that are always part of a word and do not
stand alone e.g. –ly, un-, -ish, -ness, trans-, etc.
Affixes are Bonded Morphemes; they may come at the beginning, end, in the
middle, or at both ends of a word they are attaching to.
Prefixes- Affixes that come only at the begging of the word e.g. un-, pre-, re-,
etc., occur before other morphemes.
Suffixes- Affixes that occur at the end of the word e.g. –ly, -ish, -er, -ness,
etc., occur after other morphemes.
Affixes continued---
Infixes- Some languages also have infixes, the morphemes that are inserted into other
morphemes. Bontoc, spoken in the Philippines, is such a language, as illustrated by the
following:
Nouns/Adjectives Verbs
fikas ‘strong’ fumikas ‘to be strong’
kilad ‘red’ kumilad ‘to be red’
fusul ‘enemy’ fumusul ‘to be an enemy’
In this language, the infix -um- is inserted after the first consonant of the noun or adjective.
Thus, a speaker of Bontoc who knows that pusi means ‘poor’ would understand the meaning
of pumusi, ‘to be poor,’ on hearing the word for the first time.
Just as an English speaker who learns the verb sneet would know that sneeter is ‘one who
sneets.’ A Bontoc speaker who knows that ngumitad means ‘to be dark’ would know that the
adjective ‘dark’ must be ngitad.
Affixes continued---
Circumfixes-Some languages have circumfixes, morphemes that are attached to a
base morpheme both initially and finally. These are sometimes called discontinuous
morphemes. In Chickasaw, a Muskogean language spoken in Oklahoma, the negative
is formed by surrounding the affirmative form with both a preceding ik- and a
following -o working together as a single negative morpheme. The final vowel of
the affirmative is dropped before the negative part -o is added.
Examples of this circumfixing are:
Affirmative Negative
chokma ‘he is good’ ik + chokm + o ‘he isn’t good’
lakna ‘it is yellow’ ik + lakn + o ‘it isn’t yellow’
palli ‘it is hot’ ik + pall + o ‘it isn’t hot’
tiwwi ‘he opens (it)’ ik + tiww + o ‘he doesn’t open (it)’
Roots and Stems-
Roots- Roots are the morphemes to which other morphemes attach in a
complex word e.g. Paint in Painter, read in reread, -ceive in conceive, etc.
they may or may not stand alone.
Stem- When a root morpheme combines with an affix, it forms a stem. Other
affixes may be added to the stem e.g. unsystematically (un-system-atic-al-ly)
Base-With the addition of each new affix, a new stem and a new word are
formed. Linguists sometimes use the word base to mean any root or stem to
which an affix is attached. In the preceding example, system, systematic,
unsystematic, and unsystematical are bases.
Bound Roots- Roots that can only occur and acquire meaning in combination
with other morphemes. They do not occur in isolation.
Morphs and Allomorphs-
Morph: The term ‘Morph’ is used to refer to the phonological realization of a
morpheme. For example, the English plural marker morpheme ‘-s’ that we have
referred to before has various morphs. It is realised as [s] after the voiceless sound [t]
in cats, as [z] after the voiced [g] in dogs, and as [əz] after the sibilant [s] in buses. All
three of these morphs are the different phonological realization of the plural
morpheme ‘-s’ in English.
Allomorph: Various realizations of the same morpheme due to phonological
environment are known as allomorphs. As we can see in the example above with the
plural morpheme of English. Allomorphs are variant forms of a single morpheme. The
occurrence of one allomorph over other in the case of plurals in English depends on
the voicing and manner of articulation of the last sound.
Conditioning of Allomorphs:
Allomorphs can be conditioned phonologically, morphologically and Lexically.
Phonological allomorphs are conditioned only phonologically, while suppletive
allomorphs can be conditioned phonologically, morphologically or lexically.
Phonological Conditioning: when the distribution of the various allomorphs can be
stated in terms of their phonemic environments, the allomorphs are said to be
phonologically conditioned. We can economically explain the distribution of the
plural marking allomorphs in English. Similarly, we can explain the past tense
marking allomorphs as well. Phonological conditioning appears to be the most
general and productive kind of conditioning of morphemic variants in languages.
The forms which are yielded by phonological conditioning are known as regular
forms.
Grammatical conditioning: Grammatically conditioned allomorphs depend on the
presence of grammatical elements E.g. in English, the presence of past tense
morpheme in most cases has no effect on the selection of the allomorph that
represents the verb itself. But, in certain verbs, the presence of the past tense
morpheme requires the selection of a special allomorph of the verb:
Cont…
Present Tense Past Tense
a) Walk /wɔ:k/ walked /wɔ:kt/
Kiss /kɪs/ kissed /kɪst/
Grasped /grɑ:sp/ grasped /grɑ:spt/
b) weep /wi:p/ wep-t /wept/
sweep /swi:p/ swep-t /swept/
c) shake /ʃeik/ shook /ʃuk/
take /teik/ took /tuk/
Explanation for the difference that we
see-
We can see that in the bit ‘b and c’ the choice of allomorph of the verb is
conditioned by the past tense morpheme.
In ‘b’, the choice of allomorphs /wep/ and /swep/ of verbs weep and
sweep, respectively, and in ‘c’, the allomorphs /ʃuk/ and /tuk/ of verbs
shake and take, respectively, are dictated by the past tense.
Some scholars refer to grammatical conditioning as morphological
conditioning as well.
Lexical Conditioning-
Lexical Conditioning: lexically conditioned allomorphs depend on individual lexical items or
some semantic properties of lexical items for realization- e.g. in English-
Singular plural
Fox /fɒks/ foxes /fɒksɪz/
Box /bɒks/ boxes /bɒksiz/
Ox /ɒks/ oxen /ɒksen/
We can see that the regular plural formation rule inexplicably fails to apply in ‘c’. The choice
of the allomorph -en is lexically conditioned. It is dependent on the presence of the specific
noun ox.
In Persian, we can see conditioning of the plural allomorph on the basis of [+human] and [-
human]
/mærd/ man /mærd-an/ men -for human
/gorbe/ cat / gorbe-ha/ cats – for non-humans
Suppletion-
There are a few morphemes whose allomorphs show no phonetic similarity.
For example, good/better or bad/worse. Here both the morphemes represent
the lexeme GOOD and BAD, respectively, despite the fact that they do not
have a single sound in common. The instances where allomorphs of a
morpheme are unrelated phonetically are called instances of suppletion.
There are two types of suppletions-Stem suppletion and Affix suppletion.
Stem suppletion- where the entire stem is replaced by another resulting in an
allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity. E.g. Go-Went,
Good-better
Affix Suppletion- Replacement of an affix with a suppletive affix. E.g. Cherub-
Cherubim, Ox-Oxen (some lexically conditioned plural forms are examples of
affix suppletion also).
Tools for Morphological Analysis-
Analysis and Synthesis
Analysis-This approach has to do with breaking words down. We pull apart a word
into as many meaningful parts as possible, taking care to note where each piece
originates.
Synthesis- This approach has to do with how to put the pieces together in a
meaningful way. So, analysis precedes synthesis. You first need to know what each
piece is, and only then can you go ahead with putting it into a meaningful
sentence and construct a theory about morphology in that language.
All speakers use both analysis and synthesis. Analysis is when they hear a new
word, and synthesis is when they construct a new word from the existing pieces.
Look at the following words- Unbreak, uncry, hobbitish, smorgasphobia,
quirkologist
How to Identify the Morphemes based on
our knowledge so far-
Suppose we find two similar words, one with a particular sequence of sounds
and one without it. In that case, we can compare the meanings of the words
and hypothesize that the additional sequence of sounds adds the additional
meaning- E.g. Happy cool
Unhappy Uncool
Here the meaning of the words with un- is the opposite of the words without un-.
So, we can say that English has a prefix un- meaning ‘not’.
Another important rule-
When a recurring form matches up with a recurring meaning, we can
hypothesise that we have a morpheme with that form and that meaning-
Karo verbs (Gabas 1999)
oyaʔwan ‘I left’
oma ̃mnoy ‘I saw myself’
owaka ́n ‘I am angry’
okət ‘I walked’
What is common in the words above? What can we deduce from this data about
first-person singular pronouns in the ‘Karo language’?
Ilocano prefix (Rubino 1997)
The prefix taga- forms words for origin or nationality from
words for places. Compare the data on right and left sides.
amianan ‘north’ taga-amianan ‘Northerner’
abagatan ‘south’ taga-abagatan ‘Southerner’
bantay ‘mountain’ taga-bantay ‘from the mountains’
ili ‘town’ taga-ili ‘from town’
Amerika ‘America’ taga-amerika ‘American’
A suffix is a type of affix that occurs after the root, like the English -able
of unbeliev-able. Compare the Ilocano words in the left column below
with those on the right.
giling ‘grind’ giling-an ‘grinder’
sagat ‘strain’ sagat-an ‘strainer’
balkot ‘wrap’ balkot-an ‘wrapper’
timbeng ‘weigh’ timbeng-an ‘balance, scale’
What is –an here?
Infix-
kuton ‘ant’ k-in-uton ‘ant-infested’
gayaman ‘centipede’ g-in-ayaman ‘infested with centipedes’
ngilaw ‘fly’ ng-in-ilaw ‘fly-infested’
kuto ‘lice’ k-in-uto ‘lice-infested’
Which is the infix (affix occurring as an infix) here? How is placed?
What is it contributing to the meaning of the root?
Circumfix-
ragsak ‘happy’ pag-ragsak-en ‘make someone happy’
leddaang ‘sad’ pag-leddaang-en ‘make someone sad’
uray ‘wait’ pag-uray-en ‘make someone wait’
awid ‘go home’ pag-awid-en ‘make someone go home’
What is the circumfix (affix which is occurring as a circumfix) here?
What meaning is it adding?
Words with more than one affix-
Words may contain more than one prefix, more than one suffix, or
combinations of both-
English words like- Unsystematically
When words have more than one root, they form a compound word e.g. hot-
dog, break-through, etc. (more on this when we do word formation)
Exercise-1
(21) Aztec
a. ikalwewe ‘his big house’ i. petatci·n ‘little mat’
b. ikalsosol ‘his old house’ j. ikalmeh ‘his houses’
c. ikalci·n ‘his little house’ k. komitmeh ‘cooking-pots’
d. komitwewe ‘big cooking-pot’ l. petatmeh ‘mats’
e. komitsosol ‘old cooking-pot’ m. ko·yameci·n ‘little pig’
f. komitci·n ‘little cooking-pot’ n. ko·yamewewe ‘big male pig’
g. petatwewe ‘big mat’ o. ko·yameilama ‘big female pig’
h. petatsosol ‘old mat’ p. ko·yamemeh ‘pigs’
What we have to do?
List all the morphemes and meanings of the morphemes- 10 minutes
Exercise-2
Rewrite the following forms and then separate them into morphemes using a
slash or a hyphen. If a form consists of only one Morpheme, call it
monomorphemic.
a. Danny e. monkey
b. theorists f. partnerships
c. multitalented g. unbreakable
d. weather h. children
How do we represent the occurrences of
different allomorphs?
There are two ways of showing occurrences of allomorphs-
Item and Arrangement- We specify how the items are arranged, that is, where
each allomorph occurs. E.g. English Plurals
-s plural
/s/ used after voiceless sounds
/z/ used after voiced sounds
/Iz/ used after sibilants or stridents
Item and Process-
Item and Process- Writing morphological rules to show the process through
which a particular allomorph occurs.
E.g. English Plurals:
-s->[+voiced]/[+voiced]_
-s->[-voiced]/[-voiced]_
-s->[Iz]/[+sibilants]_
Now let us make the rule writing for English Past tenses!
Look at the data given below and answer
the questions following the data-
[inɔ:dɪbl]- inaudible [inɛvitəbl]- inevitable
[impɒsɪbl]- impossible [impeɪʃnt]- impatient
[intɒlərəbl]- intolerable [indi:sənt]- indecent
[iŋkəmpli:t] – incomplete [iŋgætɪtjud] – ingratitude
The data above shows the formation of negative words by affixing the
morpheme /in-/ to the words in English. Please derive the rule for the
change you can see in the realization of the alveolar nasal /n/ in the data.
Also, give reason/s for the difference in realization of the sound /n/. [Hint:
Remember the rules for the formation of regular plurals and past tenses in
English] Write the rule using Item and Process method.
