|
ENG 346: Aspects of the English Language
By the
end of this lesson, you should be able to do each of the following:
- Explain the various processes
by which English speakers borrow, form, use, and change words.
- Identify the morphemes in an
English word and label the various parts with terms such as “base,”
“inflectional affix,” and “derivational affix.”
- Decipher an entry in a
standard dictionary, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary.
- Define relevant terms.
Read Chapter
4 of Contemporary Linguistics before you come to class on Monday.
Revise one of
your “Think Again” essays and bring it to class on Friday.
Think Fast:
Identify and label the morphemes in the word I assign you in class.
Presentation:
Morphology (Professor Canada)
Cooperative Learning: Respond to questions 1, 4, 5, 6, 11,
12, 15, 16, 18, and 19 at the end of Chapter 4 of Contemporary Linguistics.
Discussion: During
this time, we will discuss the insights and questions that have emerged
during our “Think Fast” exercise, my presentation, and cooperative learning.
Workshop: Exchange revised “Think Again” drafts
with a partner. Write comments
on your partner’s draft, focusing on the draft’s content, clarity, style, and
integrity.
Think Again: Using
what you have learned or reviewed in this lesson, interpret a personal
encounter with morphology.
Conferences: During
these one-on-one conferences, I will review some of your writing, orally quiz
you on lesson objectives, and field your questions.
Announcements: We
will wrap up this lesson with announcements regarding upcoming lessons, as
well as other relevant subjects.
Make sure
you know the meaning and significance of each of the following terms:
- ablaut
- acronyms
- affixes
- allomorphs
- backformation
- base
- blends
- borrowing
- bound morpheme
- case
- category change
- clipping
- coinage
- compounding
- conjugation
- conversion
- derivational affix
- free morpheme
- gender
- inflectional affix
- lexicon
- morpheme
- morphology
- number
- onomatopoeia
- person
- plural
- prefix
- suffix
- tree structures
- word
The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the English Language contains extensive information
on morphology.
An Introduction to
Language contains extensive information on morphology.
Updated January 7, 2003
© Mark Canada, 2003
mark.canada@uncp.edu
|
Introduction
In our last lesson, we studied phonology. In this lesson, we turn from the English
sound system to the formation of its words. Please bring your hardback college dictionary to class all
week. We also will spend some
class time working on one of your “Think Again” essays. Please revise one of these essays and
bring a hard copy to class on Friday.
Discussion
Morphology
The next step up from phonology is morphology. That is, a morpheme
is generally made up of two or more phonemes, just as some building materials
actually comprise individual parts. Take a hinge, for example. A
typical hinge actually has at least two parts: a pin and two leaves.
Similarly, a typical morpheme has at least two phonemes. A few
morphemes, however, consist of individual phonemes. We might think of
these single-phoneme morphemes in the same way we think of nails and
screws--that is, individual items not made up of separate parts. Here
are some examples:
Phonemes
|
Morphemes
|
|
/b/ + /e/ (2 phonemes)
|
/be/ = bay (1 morpheme)
|
|
/p/ + /a/ + /t/ + /s/ (4 phonemes)
|
/pat/ + /s/ = pots (2 morphemes)
|
|
/e/ (1 phoneme)
|
/e/ = a (1 morpheme)
|
|
/t/ + /i/ + /ch/ + /U/ + /r/ (5 phonemes)
|
/tich/ + /Ur/ = teacher (2 morphemes)
|
Morphemes can be classified in three ways. First, we can say whether
a morpheme is free or bound. If it is free,
it can stand alone as a word. Both a and teach, then, are
free morphemes. If a morpheme is bound,
it cannot stand alone as a word; er is a bound morpheme. Second,
we can label morphemes as bases or affixes. A morpheme that constitutes
the core meaning of a word is called a base
morpheme, while one that we add to a base is called an affix.
In the word teacher, teach is the base, and er is an
affix. Finally, we can further classify affixes as inflectional or
derivational. English has only eight inflectional
affixes--that is, affixes that depend on the function of a word in a
sentence. For example, the inflectional affix s on the end of pot
makes the word plural. The remaining affixes in English are
derivational affixes, which change the form or meaning of words. The
chart below lists all eight of the inflectional affixes in English, as well
as some examples of derivational affixes.
Inflectional Affixes
|
Derivational Affixes
|
|
-s: creates plural nouns, as in
"She owns two dogs."
-s: creates possessive nouns, as
in "I found my dog's
leash."
-s: creates third-person singular
form of verbs, as in "He walks."
-ed: creates past tense of verbs,
as in "He walked."
-en: creates past-participle verbs,
as in "I've given her a
chance."
-ing: creates present-participle
verbs, as in "I am running."
-er: creates comparative adjectives
and adverbs, as in "She's smarter than I."
-est: creates superlative adjectives
and adverbs, as in "She's the smartest of the bunch."
|
|
Noun Affixes
|
Verb
Affixes
|
Adjective
Affixes
|
Adverb
Affixes
|
|
-ant
-er
-hood
-ment
-ness
-tion
(and others)
|
-ate
-en
-ize
(and others)
|
-able
-al
-ful
-y
-ous
(and others)
|
-ly
-ward
-wise
|
|
The chart below labels the various morphemes in a typical English
sentence:
"The students have a wonderful teacher."
|
The
|
student
|
s
|
have
|
a
|
wonder
|
ful
|
teach
|
er
|
|
free
|
free
|
bound
|
free
|
free
|
free
|
bound
|
free
|
bound
|
|
base
|
base
|
inflectional
affix
|
base
|
base
|
base
|
derivational
affix
|
base
|
derivational
affix
|
Practice
Below are some activities designed to help you master the
knowledge and skills covered in this unit.
- Word of the Day:
Visit the Merriam-Webster
World Wide Web site and subscribe to "Word of the
Day." Practice analyzing the lexical features of each
word. For example, try to determine whether it is a native word, a
borrowing, a compound, a blend, or some other type of lexeme.
- Using a Dictionary:
Look up one of the words in the list below in The Oxford English
Dictionary and at least one other hardback dictionary, such as The
American Heritage College Dictionary. In addition to summarizing the
information you find about the word's pronunciation, part of speech,
meaning, and history, comment on any striking morphological, lexical, or
semantic phenomena that it demonstrates. Use terms such as
"lexical-content word," "free," "bound,"
"affix," and "derivational" to label each morpheme.
Finally, note any important differences between the treatments of the
words in the different dictionaries.
- gender
- jubilee
- jumbo
- yellow
journalism
- brunch
- macho
- chaise longue
- snafu
- SAT
- bus
- Broadway
- pea
- itsy-bitsy
- enormity
- literal
- tortuous
- unique
- Size of the
Lexicon: How many words does the English language have? What factors
make this question difficult to answer?
- Word Coinage: Identify a lexical gap in English and coin a word
to fill this gap. You may create a portmanteau, compound, initialism,
clipped form, or another type of word. Write a dictionary entry for your
word, making sure to include information about its orthography,
pronunciation, part of speech, inflections, meanings, and etymology.
When writing the meaning, or sense, of the word, try to apply what you
have learned about hypernyms.
- Lexicon and
Literary Style: Choose two writers who lived at roughly the same
time but who have different styles. For example, you might choose Henry
James and Mark Twain. Select 20 lexical-content words at random from a
book by each writer and look them up in a dictionary. What percentage of
each writer's lexicon is native vocabulary, and what percentage comes
from loanwords? Speculate on how the choice of native or borrowed
vocabulary affects a writer's style.
- Affixation: Choose
a common free morpheme, such as "love," and see how many
different words you can create by adding various morphemes. Label
at least five of these morphemes as bound or free, base or affix,
and--in the case of affixes--inflectional or derivational. Comment
on how English speakers use morphemes to add words to the language.
- Fun with Morphemes:
Like other writers, the cartoonist Charles Schulz had some fun with
morphemes. In his television show A Charlie Brown Christmas,
Linus tells Charlie Brown: "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world,
you're the Charlie Browniest." Which words in this sentence
demonstrate unusual and interesting uses of morphemes? Explain the
rules that Schulz had in mind, perhaps unconsciously, when he formed these
words. Identify each morpheme in each word and label it as bound
or free, base or affix, and--in the case of affixes--inflectional or
derivational.
Conclusion
In this lesson, we have examined morphology, the study of word
formation. In our next lesson,
we will turn to syntax.
|