Morphology
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As for their roles, there are two main different types of affixes: | As for their roles, there are two main different types of affixes: | ||
− | *'''inflectional affix''' - assign grammatical properties (such as number, gender, tense, person) to the root in order to form the different word forms of the same lexeme ("s" in "tables", "ed" in "loved" | + | *'''inflectional affix''' - assign grammatical properties (such as number, gender, tense, person) to the root in order to form the different word forms of the same lexeme ("-s" in "tables", "-ed" in "loved") |
− | *'''derivational affix''' - form a new lexeme by modifying the meaning (and sometimes the category) of the root ("un" in "unhappy", "ness" in "happiness"). | + | *'''derivational affix''' - form a new lexeme by modifying the meaning (and sometimes the category) of the root ("un-" in "unhappy", "-ness" in "happiness"). |
== Morphological structure == | == Morphological structure == |
Revision as of 17:18, 12 January 2010
Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
Contents |
Words, word forms and lexemes
There are several difficulties in arriving at a consistent use of the term "word" in relation to other categories of linguistic description, and several criteria (prosodical, morphological, syntactical) have been suggested for the identification of words in a language. One of the main difficulties concerns the use of the term "word" both as a class and as any of its elements. The forms "love", "loves", "loving" and "loved", for instance, may be considered to be different "words" of English or different forms (variants) of the same "word", depending on the case.
In order to avoid ambiguities, linguists differentiate between these two senses of "word". The first sense, the one in which "love", "loves", "loving" and "loved" are different "words", is usually called a word form. Word forms are therefore "the physically definable units which one encounters in a stretch of writing (bounded by spaces) or speech (where identification is more difficult, but where there may be phonological clues to identify boundaries, such as a pause, or juncture features)" (Crystal, 2008, p. 522).
The second sense, the one in which "love", "loves", "loving" and "loved" are "the same word", is normally called a lexeme. The lexeme is an abstract underlying unit that corresponds to a set of different word forms reputed to be part of the same word class.
Morphemes
Different word forms are said to be part of the same lexeme if they share the same fundamental morphological identity. This means that word forms are analysed into smaller units, called morphemes, which are the smallest linguistic units that have semantic meaning.
There are two main different types of morphemes:
- root - the primary unit of a word unit, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content. Words may have one (“fire”, “man”, “dish”, “washer”) or several roots (“fireman”, "dishwasher");
- affix - a morpheme attached to the root to modify its meaning (such as "-s" in "tables", or "un-" in "undo").
Affixes
Affixes are divided into several categories, depending on their position and their role with reference to the root. The most important positional categories are:
- prefix (PFX) - Appears at the front of the root (such as "un-" in "undo", or "re-" in "rewrite")
- suffix (SFX) - Appears at the back of the root (such "-s" in "tables", or "-er" in "writer")
- infix (IFX) - Appears within the root (very rare in English, such as "-ma-" in "sophistimacated")
- circumfix (CCX) - Appears at the front and at the back of the root (very rare in English, such as "a-" + "-ed" in "ascattered")
As for their roles, there are two main different types of affixes:
- inflectional affix - assign grammatical properties (such as number, gender, tense, person) to the root in order to form the different word forms of the same lexeme ("-s" in "tables", "-ed" in "loved")
- derivational affix - form a new lexeme by modifying the meaning (and sometimes the category) of the root ("un-" in "unhappy", "-ness" in "happiness").
Morphological structure
In the UNLarium, we recognize five main morphological categories:
Examples
lexeme | word forms | root | derivational affixes | inflectional affixes | stem |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | here | here | here | ||
2 | happy | happy | happy | ||
3 | unhappy | happy | un- | unhappy | |
4 | table, tables | table | -s | table | |
5 | happiness | happy | -ness | happiness | |
6 | love, loves, loving, loved | love | -s, -ing, -ed | love | |
7 | hermoso, hermosa, hermosos, hermosas (es = beautiful) | hermos- | -o, -a, -s | hermos- | |
8 | unbreakableness | break | un-, -able, -ness | unbreakableness | |
9 | fireman, firemen | fire, man | fireman | ||
10 | part of speech, parts of speech | part, of, speech | -s | part of speech |