DueRead: Understanding English Grammar, Chapters 10-13Post: Draft of Grammar Guide Meeting PlaceWe will meet in our usual classroom, Dial 153. Please bring Understanding English Grammar and a hardback college dictionary. |
January 29-February 9, 2001We turn now from English phonology to its lexicon--that is, from a study of the sounds in English to its stock of words. We will begin with a look a morphology. You need to read only Chapter 10 for the first week in this unit. For the second week, please read chapters 11, 12, and 13.Please note that you must post a draft of your grammar guide on your online portfolio this Friday. Feel free to use my draft as a model. I will have my office hours in the reference section of the main library from 8 to 9 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday both weeks and thus will be available to help you conduct your research. Also, I encourage you to visit my study guides on Finding Sources, Evaluating Sources, and Incorporating Sources for more information about research. |
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ResourcesAn Introduction to Language provides an excellent introduction to phonology, morphology, syntax, grammar, and other elements of linguistics.The Oxford English Dictionary is a voluminous source of information about English etymologies. Updated February
16, 2001
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LexiconThe term lexicon refers to the stock of words in a language. The English lexicon, for example, consists of hundreds of thousands of words. We can divide our study of this lexicon into two broad, but closely related categories: etymology or morphology.EtymologyBy Mark CanadaProfessor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Unlike chemical elements, words are not finite and stable. Like other things that are created and used by humans, they continually change. Indeed, a suitable analogy for the English lexicon might be that of a house. Some words, like the walls and roof of the house, stick around for a long time. Words such as "man" and "good," for example, have been part of the English language ever since there was anything we could call the English language--that is, since the Anglo-Saxons came to what we now know as the British Isles in A.D. 449. Even words such as these change over time, just as homeowners sometimes paint their walls and reshingle their roofs. Other words, like the furnishings within a house, have shorter lives. The word "groovy," for example, was around about as long as that shag carpet your or your parents may have installed in your living room back in the 1970s. As a result of this constant evolution of their individuals parts, both English and houses can look very different from age to age. For instance, the language in The Canterbury Tales, which Geoffrey Chaucer wrote back in the 14th century, is English, but it is somewhat difficult for modern readers to understand because many English words have disappeared or changed in the past 600 years, while new ones have appeared. Words enter English in a number of ways. One of the most common
is borrowing, which refers to the process
of taking words from other languages and making them part of English.
A voracious borrower, English has borrowed thousands of words from scores
of languages, particularly French, Latin, and Greek. In addition
to going out and shopping for new furnishings for their language, English
speakers frequently piece together new things from old things they have
on hand. Thus, we get compounds, blends, acronyms, clipped forms,
and other "recycled" words. A compound,
for example, simply consists of two words put together. Among the
hundreds of English compounds are words such as bedtime, baseball,
houseboat,
and taillight. In some cases, English speakers merely start
using old words in new ways, thus creating functional shifts, eponyms,
pejorations, and other not-so-new words. Lexicographers, or dictionary
makers, try to trace the histories of words and include information about
these histories in brief notes called etymologies. The most thorough
source of information about English etymology is the Oxford English Dictionary,
a 20-volume series that traces the histories of hundreds of thousands of
English words back to their original languages or forms.
MorphologyBy Kirsten MillsStudent, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, 1998 In addition to studying a word's background, we can examine its current
shape. When we do, are engaging in morphology,
or the study of morphemes. We can think of morphemes as the building
blocks for words. While some words have only one block, or morpheme,
others may have several. Although sometimes these morphemes coincide
with a word's syllables, the two terms are by no means synonymous.
A morpheme, then, is a combination of sounds that have a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word. For example, the word cats has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base--that is, a morpheme that gives a word its meaning--or an affix, something that is added, usually at the begining or end of English words. In this example, cat is the base morpheme, and s is an affix. Affixes that come at the beginnings of words are called prefixes, while those that come at the ends are called suffixes. Some examples of affixes are in-, -ful, -ly, -ity, and -ness. Morphemes that can stand alone as words without another morpheme are called free morphemes. Some free morphemes are cat and go. Morphemes that cannot stand alone as words are called bound morphemes. For example, the -s in cats is a bound morpheme; it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme cat. Morphemes play different roles in words. A morpheme that changes a word's function is called an inflectional morpheme. English has only eight inflectional morphemes: -s (plural) and -s (possessive) are noun inflections; -s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense), -en (past participle), and -ing ( present participle) are verb inflections; -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections. A derivational morpheme, on the other hand, changes a word's meaning, its part of speech, or both. Derivational morphemes often create new words. For example, the derivational morpheme un- added to invited changes the meaning of the word. ExercisesBy Mark Canada and Kirsten Mills
2. replay 3. carrot 4. inescapable 5. television 6. tenacity 7. captivate 8. unlikely |