英语语言学2 Morphology形态学word讲义

Chapter 3 Morphology形态学

Nothing is more important to language than words.

Words can carry meaning.

Words are the fundamental building blocks of a language.

So, is word the most basic or the minimal unit of meaning?

If not, then what is?

How words are formed?---morphology

3.1 what is morphology?

Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.

3.2 Open class and closed class (开放词类和封闭词类)

Open class words----content words of a language to which we can regularly add new words, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Closed class words----grammatical or functional words, such as conjunction, articles, preposition and pronouns.

New words can be added to open class words regularly with the development of human civilization.

However, the number of closed class words is small and stable since few new words are added.

3.3Morphemes--the minimal units of meaning（词素，最小的意义单位）

Word is the smallest free from found in language.

Word can be further divided into smaller meaningful units---morphemes.

So, morpheme is---

the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function.

Words are composed of morphemes. Words may consist of one morpheme or more morphemes, e.g.

1-morpheme boy, desire

2-morpheme boyish, desirable

3-morpheme boyishness, desirability

4-morpheme gentlemanliness,

undesir(e)abl(e)ity

5-morpheme ungentlemanliness

6-morpheme anti+dis+establish+ment+ari+an+ism

Free morpheme & bound morpheme

Free morpheme----is one that may constitute a word (free form) by itself, such as bed, tree, sing, dance, etc.

Bound morpheme----is one that may appear with at least one other morpheme. They can not stand by themselves, such as ―-s‖ in ―dogs‖, ―al‖ in ―national‖, ―dis-‖ in ―disclose‖, ―ed‖ in ―recorded‖, Allomorph

Some morphemes have a single form in all contexts, such as ―dog, bark, cat‖,etc.

In other instances, there may be some variation, that is, a morpheme may have alternate shapes or phonetic forms. They are said to be the allomorphs of the morpheme.

the plural morpheme may be represented by:

map----maps [s]

dog----dogs [z]

watch----watches [iz]

mouse----mice [ai]

ox----oxen [n]

tooth----teeth

sheep----sheep

Each of the underlined part is called an allomorph of plural morpheme.

3.4 Analyzing word structures

Identify each of the major component morphemes.

Classify these morphemes in terms of their contribution to the meaning and function of the larger word.

Generally speaking, a complex word often consists of a root and one or more affixes.

Root: constitutes the core of the word and carries the major component of its meaning.

Roots typically belong to lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions. Affix: is always a bound morpheme, and does not belong to a lexical category.

Tree diagram (teach-er)

N

V Af

teach er

3.5 Derivational morpheme & inflectional morpheme 派生词素和屈折词素

Derivational morphemes---- the morphemes which change the category, or grammatical class of words, e.g. modern---modernize, length---lengthen, fool---foolish, etc.

when derivational morphemes are conjoined to other morphemes, a new word is derived or formed

--- may change grammatical class

eg. light –lighten; nasal –nasalize;

eat—edible; grave--engrave

--- may not change grammatical class

eg. net---internet; happy—unhappy;

national—multinational; terror-terrorist

Many prefixes and suffixes belong to derivational morphemes

eg. tele-phone; music-ian