Morphology

Ling 101 9/13

Brief Review

Productivity

Discreteness

Mode

Parrot Studies

Parrots social structure

Does language work in non-primate brains?

Very distantly related BUT can still share a Mode of communication

Alex

African Grey
1976-2007
~100 words

Understood categories
Numbers
Comparative

Alex in Action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yGOgs_UlEc

What animal studies show

Animals do not seem to have syntax!

Animals do not seem to naturally acquire language

~ the level of a two year old human child

Kanzi?

Animals do not pass their linguistics knowledge onto their children

Or use it with other non-human animals

Looking at language, Looking at patterns

Language is too big to look at holistically

Must look at meaningful units of analysis

What are they?

What are Words?

Cat Dog

Cat Cats

Cat Category

Category Categorically

Categorically Uncategorically

Further Consideration

I saw a man driving a custom-painted, very bright purple convertible Ferrari

The man that I saw driving the purple Ferrari in the parking lots car left quite
an impression.

Words and their components

There is a level of meaning below the word

Un + categor(y) + ical + ly

Like words in sentences, these units can be recombined to create new

meaning

Un + believe + abl(e) + ly

Morphology

The study of the smallest unit of meaning in language- the MORPHEME

Categorization of MORPHEMEs by function

Study of how MORPHEMES combine at the word level to give rise to

meaning

Study of how languages differ in their use of MORPHEMES

Free Morphemes

Morphemes that do not NEED to be attached to other morphemes

Cat, Fish, Run, Octopus, Green, Very

Morphemes that CANNOT be broken into smaller units of meaning

Bound Morphemes

Morphemes that MUST be attached to other morphemes

Prefixes and Suffixes

s, ly, ity, un, pre

Roots

Dent + (al)/(ist)/(ure)

Ruth + (less)

WARNING!!!

Spelling WILL trick you

Under

Catsup

Counter

Category

Kidney

It is only a morpheme when it adds it meaning!

WARNING!!!

Like all of linguistics, Morphology is takes into account both Expression and
Meaning.

If the meaning is not the same, the morpheme is not the same

Homophones

Plural S

Third Person Singular S

Derivational Morphemes

Bound Morphemes that change a words Part of Speech

Verb + -able = Adjective

Verb + -ion = Noun
Adjective + -ify = Verb
Noun + -ize = Verb

Bound Morphemes that change a words Meaning

In + Capable
De + Construct
Re + Produce

Inflectional Morphemes

Bound Morphemes that changes the grammatical properties of a word

English Inflectional Morphemes

ONLY EIGHT

FOR NOUNS

FOR VERBS

FOR ADJECTIVES and

ADVERBS

Plural -s

Third Person, Present

Singular -s

Comparative -er

Possessive s

Past Tense -ed

Superlative -est

Progressive -ing
Participle -en

Thursday

English Compounding Structure

Morphological Typology

Patterns in how languages use inflectional morphology

Morphological Analysis