课件3._morphology.pptVIP

Word Structure: morphology The Structure of Words: Morphology Fundamental concepts in how words are composed out of smaller parts The nature of these parts The nature of the rules that combine these parts into larger units What it might mean to be a word Basic Units Remember that in phonology the basic distinctive units of sound are phonemes In morphology, the basic unit is the morpheme Basic definition: A morpheme is a minimal unit of sound and meaning The smallest unit of language that carries meaning (maybe a word or not a word) A sound-meaning unit A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function The level of language at which sound and meaning combine Some Examples Many words can be divided into smaller parts, where the parts also occur in other words: dogs walking blackens player-hater dog-s walk-ing black-en-s play-er hat-er Compare: cat-s; runn-ing; dark-en-s; eat-er (note: in some cases there are spelling changes when we add morphemes; ignore this) The smaller parts occur consistently with many words: -s: forms the plural consistently -ing: forms a noun from a verb -en: forms a verb meaning ‘become ADJ’ from an adjective ADJ -er: forms an agentive nominal from a verb, a person or thing who does that activity Connections between Sound and Meaning Remember that a phoneme sometimes has more than one sound form, while being the same abstract unit: /p/ with [p] and [ph]. A related thing happens with morphemes as well. In order to see this, we have to look at slightly more complex cases. Morphemes and Allomorphs Sometimes it is said that a morpheme has more than one allomorph This happens when the same meaning unit like [past] for past tense or [pl] for plural has more than one sound form Past: one feature [past] kick / kick-ed leave / lef-t hit / hit-? The last example shows a case in which the phonological form of the morpheme past is zero, i.e. it is not pronounced In the case of phonology, we said that the different allophones of a phoneme ar