Classifying Morphemes
- 2. Classes of morphemes Potentially free morphemes Can stand alone but need not Have a lot of lexical content – i.e. meaning Not all that have lexical meaning though can be free When they appear with morphemes attach they are the base/stem Bound morphemes Must be attached to another morpheme Cannot stand alone Many have purely grammatical meaning like –s, plural
- 3. IMPORTANT! Another way of classifying bound morphemes is by the terms Inflectional morphemes versus Derivational morphemes This is a crucial distinction
- 4. Inflectional morphemes Lexemes head of a family of words LOVE (V) Love, loves, loved, loving 3 of these have morphemes attached The function of these morphemes is to fit the word …in this case a verb into a particular grammatical context – these are the inflectional morphemes of English verbs
- 5. Other inflectional morphemes English Nouns -s plural marker -‘s possessive marker/genitive case marker ( i don’t entirely agree that this is simple morpheme) English Adjectives -er comparative -est superlative
- 6. Features of inflectional morphology Productive can attach to almost every member of the word class it is associated with Can you think of a verb you cannot add –s to? New word creations take them Note productivity is a scale
- 7. Regular (about meaning) The meaning is entirely regular and predictable When you add –s to a verb you always make the verb he/she/it + present Inflection never changes word class Adding –s to a verb it stays a verb
- 8. Derivational morphology When derivational affixes are attached to a base they create a new LEXEME NICE NICE Nice+ er but nice + ness Same lex new lexeme NICENESS Because lexemes have wordclass labels Nice (adj) Niceness(n) cannot belong to the same wordclass Derivational morphemes need not change wordclass but always creates new lexemes
- 9. Derivational morphology Is not productive (about attaching) *unprobable Derivational morphology is not regular- (about meaning) -ful –adj having the quality of X Beautiful – having the quality of beauty Wonderful – having the quality of wonder? Awful - *having the quality of awe
- 10. ordering Strong cross-linguistic evidence that DERIVATIONAL affixes are attached before INFLECTION ACT (N) -> act act act +INFL acts acts +DERIV *act-s-ivity active +DERIV activity +INFL activities Can you think of compounds where th first noun is plural?
- 11. Cross-linguistic patterns Because regularity and productivity of morphemes are language specific issues there is no real way of knowing what acts as an inflectional morpheme and what acts as derivation. There can be surprising differences Un-/im- etc neg prefixes are derivational in English, In Aulua this is completely regular prefoix se- therefore inflectional For languages other than English you will be told the status of morphemes.
- 12. Diyari is a language of S.E. Australia Kintala dog tari youth Kintalawulu two dogs tariwulu two youths Kintalawara dogs tariwarangu near the youths Kintalawulingu tariwulujita someone Near two dogs associated with two youths ONLY THE AFFIX MEANING ‘near’ is INFLECTIONAL Are KINTALAWULU and KINTALAWARA separate lexemes in this language? Can you expect there to be a word kintalangu in Diyari?
- 13. INFL vs DERIV INFL Does not change word class Does not create new lexemes Is highly productive Is highly regular DERIV Can change word class Always creates new lexemes Is not as productive Is not as regular
- 14. Clitics Not quite a word not quite a morpheme Some elements appear to have some features of a word and some features of a bound morpheme English contractions seem somewhere in the middle Means to lean on … rather than attach ‘ m for am ‘s for is and ‘ll for will Can attach to both nouns and pronouns John’ll go and get the milk He’ll probably drink it on the way home May not attach to the ‘actual’possessor