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Slide 2 IA901 2012 Session Three Neologisms and word class Morphology : the study of word structure Morphology and phonology Slide 3 A word about your assignment Slide 4 Slide 5 Slide 6 TUTORIALS Please email me to book a tutorial when you have chosen an essay question (but dont rush your essay choice). Feel free to book a tutorial if you are having difficulty choosing a question. I will happy to continue to respond to questions by email and see you for tutorials, but the support that I can offer will be constrained by time. I cant be particularly helpful if you send me questions on the 2 nd of December! Slide 7 A word about reading When reading texts on this module, ask yourself: -is it useful to me as a teacher? -is it useful to me as a postgraduate student? Slide 8 A word about reading Discuss what you read! Slide 9 A word about reading Which parts of the chapter on Morphology are most relevant to you as a teacher? Slide 10 Neologisms Morphology and word class Slide 11 NeologismWord classMeaning Clues that helped you decide agflation avoision babycino birther bromance celanthropy clickjacking fantabulous Slide 12 NeologismWord classMeaning Clues that helped you decide agflation avoision babycino birther bromance celanthropy clickjacking fantabulous fabless lashed metrosexual scareware textspeak wags Slide 13 NeologismWord classComments agflationnoun avoisionnoun babycinonoun birthernoun bromancenoun celanthropynoun clickjackingnoun fantabulousadjective fabless adjective lashed adjective metrosexualadjective / noun scarewarenoun textspeaknoun (not verbyet) wagsplural noun Slide 14 NeologismWord classComments agflationnoun-ion? inflation? agriculture? avoisionnoun-ion? avoid? evasion? babycinonounis ino an English affix? baby + capucchino? birthernoun-er? very difficult to guess from just birth bromancenoun-ance? brother + romance celanthropynoun-opy? celebrity + philanthropy clickjackingnoun-ing? click + hijack? fantabulousadjective-ous? fantastic + fabulous fabless adjective-less? fab from fabrication lashed adjective-ed? on the lash metrosexualadjective / noun-ual? metro + sexual scarewarenoun-ware? software? scare? textspeaknoun (not verbyet)derivation in literature (thinkspeak 1984) wagsplural nounwives and girlfriends could it be singular? Slide 15 Introduction to Morphology What is a word? What is a morpheme? What is morphology? Slide 16 Slide 17 cat /kt/ Slide 18 In 90 seconds, list as many words as you can think of which contain the three letters C-A-T together. Now tick the words on your list that are related in meaning to Slide 19 From Collins Cobuild Essential English Dictionary (1998): cat cats catcall catty cattier cattiest And what about: catlike, catfish, catnap, catnip, catwalk Or: cats eyes, cat food, catkin, cat-o-nine-tails Or even: a game of cat and mouse Slide 20 How can we define a word? 1.Do the hyphens in cat-o-nine-tails make it just one word? 2.Some people might write cat food as two words, some as one? Whos right? 3.In spoken English, in the statement weve run out of cat food, will we hear a boundary between cat and food? What about when cat food appears in an exchange like No, not dog food. I need cat food!? Should this affect its status? 4.Would it help a learner to think of a game of cat and mouse as one word? Slide 21 Are the following terms helpful in our quest to define a word? -orthographic -phonological -lexeme / lexical item -listeme -grammatical word What do you understand by each of these terms? Did anyone use the term morpheme to help explain any of the above? Slide 22 What do you think of Katambas definition of a word as the smallest unit that syntax manipulates? It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. That a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife is a universally acknowledged truth. It is a truth lysaluniverse acdknowledge, that a single man in possioness of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. It is a truth d universe acknowledge al, that a single man in ion possess of a good fortune must be in ly want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice Slide 23 Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules : The Ingredients of Language. Phoenix, pp.24-51 Slide 24 MORPHOLOGY : THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE cat cats cat catlike uncatlike cat catty cattily uncattily cat cat + s cat cat + like un + cat + like cat catt + y catt + i+ ly un + catt + I + ly a) Morphemes are smaller units than words. b) Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in written English. Which definition seems more useful to you? Slide 25 MORPHOLOGY : THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE cat cats cat catlike uncatlike cat catty cattily uncattily cat cat + s cat cat + like un + cat + like cat catt + y catt + i+ ly un + catt + I + ly A MORPHEME is that part of a word which is endowed with psychological autonomy and is for the very same reason not further divisible (in Aronoff, M. 1994. Morphology by itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. MIT Press) Slide 26 TYPES OF MORPHEME Morphemes can be FREE or BOUND CATS 2 morphemes (morphs) cat = FREE s = BOUND Slide 27 MORPHEMES and WORD FORMATION Heres something interesting (maybe): fox, dog, sheep 3 FREE MORPHEMES But consider the plural forms: 2 foxes, 2 dogs, 2 sheep -es and -s in foxes and dogs are BOUND MORPHEMES. They both denote that these are plural nouns. es and s are therefore ALLOMORPHS. Is it helpful to think of the plural form of SHEEP having a ZERO MORPH? Slide 28 LEXICAL and FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES So far, weve seen that cat, dog, sheep, and fox are all LEXICAL MORPHEMES. s and es are FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES sheepdogs sheepdogsheepdogssheepish Now we see DERIVATION in action. Here, word-formation is changing meaning or class: -sheep to sheepdog changes meaning -the affix ish changes word class -the affix s in sheepdogs is functional The affixation of -s to dog and sheepdog exemplify INFLECTION. Slide 29 SIMPLE AND CUMULATIVE EXPONENCE -s and es have SIMPLE EXPONENCE at the end of nouns. The morph realises a single morpho-syntactic feature (plural) But consider the following: -s in The fox wants to eat the sheep. The dog wants to protect the sheep. The sheep wants everyone to leave it alone. What features are realised by s in this examples? The s has CUMULATIVE EXPONENCE. It realises THREE featureswhat are they? (third person, present tense, singular) Slide 30 Morphology and phonology Slide 31 What allomorphs are used in English to make nouns plural? 1.-s 2.-es 3.internal change (apophony) 4. 5.-en 6.-ren 7.-a 8.-e 9.-i 10.-ii 11.-x 12.-ces? 13.-ora? 14.enough? 1.dogs 2.foxes 3.mice 4.sheep 5.oxen 6.-children 7.media 8.antennae 9.syllabi 10.radii 11.plateaux 12.appendices 13.corpora How are the mophs s and es pronounced? Slide 32 bees dogs cribs ways buns bells buses judges foxes badges watches mazes socks bits steps proofs paths myths Slide 33 Slide 34 In English verbs, what are the roles of the morph ed? -ed has four roles. It forms: - the past tense - the perfect participle - the passive participle - verbal adjectives But how many different ways is ed pronounced? enjoyed played loved rubbed kicked punched hopped smashed decided proceeded tweeted patted Slide 35 Slide 36 Affixes and word stress 1.Wheres the stress in semi-circle, personality, refugee, mountaineer, Portuguese, cigarette, picturesque? 2.Wheres the stress in unpleasant, marketing, comfortable, anchorage, refusal, widen, wonderful, birdlike, powerless, hurriedly, punishment, happiness, poisonous, glorify, otherwise, funny, childish? 3.Wheres the stress in magnet and magnetic, advantage and advantageous, photograph and photography, proverb and proverbial, climate and climatic, perfect and perfection, injury and injurious, tranquil and tranquillity, reflex and reflexive? Slide 37 Difficulties for the learner Slide 38 Scott Thornbury (2005) Unovering Grammar : How to Help Grammar Emerge. MacMillan, p.18 One researcher, for example, found that learners pass through a stage when they tend to attach the ending ing to action verbs, irrespective of tense. They seem to be using ing simply to mark the presence of a verb: I going work by bus; I eating every day Burger King, etc. Clumsy as this may seem, it marks an important step from using purely lexical means to using more grammatical ones. At first the -ing ending is applied indiscriminately to all verbs. But over time, the learners in the study started to restrict the use of ing to certain contexts, and mainly as a marker of pastness: Yesterday I no working. Other favoured contexts for ing were in subordinate clauses (He the man who I talking him) and verbal complements, ie constructions where one verb follows another, eg I want working and I can doing any job. Why ing? The researcher hypothesized that, of all the possible word endings in English, -ing is the most easily identified: it is a whole syllable and it is phonetically simple and regular. As grammaring processes start to emerge, -ing is a convenient tool for flagging verbiness, or, more specifically, action. At first, all verbs are flagged. Then the learner starts to discriminate between varying degrees of distance: present and past. The later use of ing in the more relatively specialised contexts of pastness, subordinate clauses and verbal complements suggests learners are aware of the more grammaticized nature of these contexts and nee dto flag them accordingly. Not yet aware of how these specialized meanings are signalled, they use the all purpose ing, as if to say here be grammar. Slide 39 Compositionality In morphology, we can work out the meaning of words we havent met before. However, we need to be careful. Whats the meaning of the following words: - Seeker, writer, driver, cooker, looker? Noncompositional words are therefore problematic. Consider the unfortunate wording of this sign in a Chinese hotel: The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable. Conversion Because conversion is common in English (nouns become verbs and vice versa), syntactic make-up may not reflect syntactic category, e.g. hoover, upmarket Slide 40 Difficulties for the teacher Slide 41 Below are examples from essays by international students in response to a question about the differences between choosing a subject for undergraduate study, and choosing a subject for postgraduate study: 1.An interest subject give them more power to improve themselves. 2.Some of us think no interest, no power, which means they cant study hard in a no- interesting major. 3.Some people have responsibilities to socialty. 4.It may not be too much to say that postgraduate students purposes are job. 5.A lot of prospective undergraduate students may tend to be based on their own interests to think about their studying fields. 6.The following example will be clear this. 7.That is a common phenomena for the Chinese student, when they are in an important timepoint in their life. 8.A subject field for undergraduate study provides easily opportunities for people to get well-paid jobs. 9.For the postgraduate students, no thing cant more important than their interesting for the subject. 10.Some parents believe that if their relatives have a well-educated and a good career job, they probably want to this case for their children. To what extent can analysis of morphological features of English help these students? Slide 42 Difficulties for everyone Slide 43 Option 1Option 2Preferred plural form? cowboyscowsboy cowgirlscowsgirl breakfastsbreaksfast christmaseschristsmas businessesbusiesness girl from Ipanemasgirls from Ipanema mother-in-lawsmothers-in-law gin and tonicsgins and tonic tablespoonfulstablespoonsful work of artsworks of art hole in onesholes in one passerbyspassersby governor-generalsgovernors-general POWsPOW For Pinker, there is no correct answer how people pluralize an expression depends on how they tacitly analyse it: as a word or as a phrase Slide 44 illogical illegal illicit irrational irrevocable irregular improper impure impartial imprudent impartial unlovable unlikable unrealistic unruly unrenewable unpopular unparalleled Can phonology help us to explain the morphological features of English at work in these examples? Slide 45 blackberry blueberry strawberry raspberry gooseberry cranberry huckleberry mulberry How can we classify the morphemes from which these words are formed? How helpful is this classification? Slide 46 To what extent is knowledge of etymology necessary? Slide 47 Slide 48 Next week : Corpora Neologisms and word class Morphology : the study of word structure Morphology and phonology Slide 49