What is Morphology?
LING 201
§Definition: the study of the construction of words out of morphemes

Morphology
Janice Fon
The Ohio State University

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Morphemes (I)

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Morphemes (II)

§Definition: smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function l l

free morpheme: morphemes that can stand alone as words (ex) clock, sick bound morpheme: morphemes that always attach to other morphemes, never existing as words themselves (ex) -ly, non-

Morpheme
(according to positions)
Free
(Stem)
(ex) tiger

Bound
(Affix)

Prefix
(ex) non-refundable

Infix
(ex) Cinder-fucking-rella

Suffix
(ex) friend-ly

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Morpheme (III)

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Morphemes (IV)

§Categorization according to functions: …show more content…

rÛed skÛin, blÛuebird vs. blÛue bÛird

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Major Word Formation Processes III
§ Reduplication: process of forming new words either by doubling an entire word (total reduplication) or part of a word (partial reduplication) l l

l

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Humpty-dumpty, higgledy-piggledy (partial reduplication) [T] ang ‘red’ vs. angang ‘reddish’ vs. angangang
‘very red’ (total reduplication)
[Tagalog] bili “buy” vs. bi-bili “will buy”, kain “to eat” vs.ka-kain “will eat”, pasok “to go” vs. pa-pasok
“will go” (partial reduplication)
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Major Word Formation Processes IV

Major Word Formation Processes V

§ Morpheme-internal changes: a type of word formation process wherein a word changes internally to indicate grammatical information; there is no regularity

§Suppletion: a relationship between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other; this process is rare

l

l

l

sleep vs. slept, fall vs. fell vs. fallen, know vs. knew vs. known, write vs. wrote, break vs. broke child vs. children, man vs. men, woman vs. women, mouse vs. mice, crisis vs. crises, goose vs. geese, tooth vs. teeth, foot vs. feet life vs. live (v) vs. live