Morphology

Dr. Radhika Mamidi

Why are we studying morphology? The knowledge of words will help us

process language computationally at word level.

Knowledge of words include word structure and word formation rules.

This knowledge will help us in developing tools like “Morphological Analyzers” and “Morphological Generators”.

What’s Morphology?

The study of word structure The study of the mental dictionary:

How are words stored in the mind? What is a possible word?

Example:(i) At the supermarket, the girls bought pink cheeriots and the boys blue fistings.

(ii) When their mother signaled, the girls barried home unhappily.

The words ‘fistings’ and ‘barried’ do not exist. However, assuming they are valid words of English, we ‘guess’ the meaning by context and the position of the word in the given sentence. We do this using our general knowledge and linguistic knowledge.

What do you know of cheeriots and fistings?

Part of speech = nouns [comes after adjectives][-s ending]= more than oneMeaning= some objects that have color[clue: supermarket]= some object that is sold; perhaps a toyThe word forms are more like toys, balls,

ribbons.

What do you know of barried

Part of Speech = verb [position]

[ends in –ed]= past tense

Base form= barry

Meaning= go

The word form is more like carried, married.

What’s the Longest Word of English?

Could it be ismestablishmentariandisanti ? Why not when antidisestablishmentarianism is

possible. There is a systematic way of word formation. Possible words:

anti-missile (adjective) anti-missile missile: a missile used for anti-missile

purposes anti- anti-missile missile missile: a missile used

against anti-missile missiles antiNmissileN+1, where N can go until….

Morphemes

Have a sound [form] and a meaning:Example: “cats”

/kaet/ “four-legged animal” /-s/ “plural number”

Even though /-s/ has a sound and a meaning, it can’t mean “plural” by itself…

It has to attach to a noun

“A morpheme is the smallest unit of wordform that has meaning”

Examples:

cats = cat + -s

girlish = girl + -ish

unfriendly = un- + friend + -ly

cat, -s, girl, -ish, un-, friend, -ly are morphemes

Even Bush knows morphology

(…though he may use it differently than the rest of us) The war on terrorism has transformationed

the US-Russia Relationship We’re working to help Russia securitize the

dismantled warheads The explorationists are only willing to help

move equipment during the winter This case has had full analyzation and has

been looked at a lot

Compositionality

“Explorationists” explore: to spend an extended effort looking

around a particular area -ation: can attach to Verbs, the process of

Xing -ist: can attach to Nouns, one who performs

an action Y -s: attaches to Nouns, more than one Z explorationists: a compositional word Fully compositional meaning is based on its

parts

Non-compositionality

“Inflect” Is inflect morphologically complex? It contains more than one morpheme. What do in- and flect mean? This is a case of a non-compositional

meaning. In explorationists, if you know the meaning of the parts, you know the meaning of the whole. Not necessarily so for inflect.

Non-compositional meaning cannot be derived from its parts.

Lexical/Content words

Words which are not function words are called content words or lexical words: these include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs, though some adverbs are function words (e.g. then, why).

They belong to open class. Dictionaries define the specific meanings of

content words, but can only describe the general usages of function words.

By contrast, grammars describe the use of function words in detail, but have little interest in lexical words.

Function words

Function words or grammatical words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence.

Function words may be prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, grammatical articles or particles, all of which belong to the group of closed class words.

To know about morpheme we should know about…. Free morphemes vs. Bound morphemes Lexical morphemes vs. Functional

morphemes Null/Zero morpheme Inflectional morphemes vs. Derivational

morphemes Root morphemes vs. Affix morphemes

Free vs Bound morphemes

electr- and tox- have isolable meanings in electric, electrify, toxic, (de-)toxify

But they cannot be pronounced on their own: they are bound morphemes

girl and book have isolable meanings in girls, girlish, books, booked, booking

They can occur on their own: they are free morphemes

Are prefixes and suffixes bound morphemes?

Lexical morpheme

Lexical free morphemes

apple, smart, book, slow, eat, write, morning

They can exist on their own as independent words.

Lexical bound morphemes: -ceive, -ject, cran-, -ship, un-

They cannot be used independently.

They need another morpheme [free or bound] to form a word.

Eg: re-ceive, con-ceive, sub-ject, pro-ject, cran-berry, scholar-ship, fellow-ship, un-kind, happi-ness

Functional morphemes

Functional free morphemes:

of, with, she, it, and, although, however, because, then

Functional bound morphemes:

-s, -s, -ed, -en, -ing

cats, eats, played, eaten, playing

Four-way contrasts

Lexical, Free: Nouns, Verbs, Adj, Advcat, town, call, house, hall, smart, fast

Lexical, Bound: including derivational affixesrasp- [raspberry], cran- [cranberry] , -ceive [conceive, receive], un- [unhappy], re-[rewrite]

Functional, Free: Prepositions, Articleswith, at, and, an, the

Functional, Bound: inflectional affixes-s, -ed, -ing, -en [eats, walked, laughing, eaten]

Exercise 1Identify the free and bound morphemes in the following words

walked, talked, danced, arrived playhouse, watchdog, football player drinking, playing, eating import, export, transport raspberry, cranberry invert, convert, divert

Can the following words be decomposed? delight, news, traitor, bed, evening

Exercise 2Identify the lexical and functional morphemes in the following words.Mention if they are free or bound.

politically beautiful between writing raspberries unable nationalization

Inflection vs. Derivation

Derivational suffixes: allow us to make new words Mary is a writer [writeV – writerN] Mary writes for a living [liveV – livingN]

Inflectional suffixes: required in order to make the sentence grammaticalInflected words belong to the same class *Yesterday I walk to class [walkV – walkedV] *I like all my student [studentN – studentsN]

Inflectional Morphology

Examples: [the POS remains the same]

VERBSEAT = eat, eats, ate, eaten, eating

DRINK = drink, drinks, drank, drunk, drinking

PLAY = play, plays, played, played, playing

-s, -ed, -en, -ing are inflectional morphemes

NOUNSPLAY = play, plays

GIRL = girl, girls

SHEEP = sheep, sheep

-s, 0 are inflectional morphemes

Derivational morphology

Two types: Can change the category {N,V,A,Adv}

driveV +er = driverN

eatv + able = eatableadj

girlN + ish = girlishadj

disturb V + ance = disturbance N

Doesn’t have to change the categoryun + doV = undoV

re+fryv = refryv

un+happinessN = unhappinessN

Derivational – more examples

Verbseat – eatable [adj], eatables [noun]drink – drinking [noun] play – player [noun]

-able, -ing, -er are derivational morphemes

Nounsplay – playful [adj], replay [verb]girl – girlish [adj], girlhood [noun]sheep – sheepish[adj]

-ful, re-, -ish, -hood are derivational morphemes

Exercise 3

Each of the words below contains two morphemes – a root and a derivational affix. Decide if the derivational affix changes only the meaning or the class of the root as well.

rewrite hopeless happily

unclear creation happiness

unhappy helpful undo

Null/Zero morpheme

a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix (an empty string of phonological segments)

a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix It's also called zero morpheme; the process

of adding a null morpheme is called null affixation,

Examples

cat = cat + -0 = ROOT("cat") + SINGULAR cats = cat + -s = ROOT("cat") + PLURAL

sheep = sheep + -0 = ROOT(“sheep") + SINGULAR

sheep = sheep + -0 = ROOT(“sheep") + PLURAL

More examples

darken[verb] = dark [adj] + -en Meaning = make more ‘Adjective’

redden [verb] = red + -en [make more Red]

yellow [verb] = yellow + 0 [make more yellow]

brown [verb] = brown + 0 [make more brown]

blacken [verb] = black + -en [make more black]

Root Morphemes vs Affix morphemes

Root morphemes are morphemes around which larger words are built.

Root morphemes are free or bound.

Affixes are additional morphemes added to roots to create multi- or poly-morphemic words.

Affixes are always bound.

RatsRoot = rat [free morpheme]Affix = -s [bound morpheme]

ProjectRoot = -ject [bound morpheme]Affix = pro- [bound morpheme]

MiceRoot = mouse [free morpheme]Affix = -s [bound morpheme]

AteRoot = eat [free morpheme]Affix = -ed [bound morpheme]

DisgracefulnessRoot = grace [free morpheme]Affixes = dis-, -ful, -ness [bound morpheme]

Affixes

Morphemes added to free forms to make other free forms are called affixes.

Mainly four kinds of affixes:1. Prefixes (at beginning) – “un-” in “unable”

2. Suffixes (at end) – “-ed” in “walked”

3. Circumfixes (at both ends) – “en—en” in enlighten

4. Infixes (in the middle) – “-um-” in kumilad [‘to be red’], fumikas [‘to be strong’]

[ kilad = ‘red’, fikas = ‘strong’ in Bontoc language]

Affixes are bound morphemes.

Prefixes

No prefix can determine the category of a complex word

What does un- mean when it attaches to adjectives?

unkind, unhappy What does un- mean when it attaches to

verbs?

undo, untie

Suffixes

We can represent the fact that the rightmost suffix determines the category of a word for triplets like -

rational, rationalize, rationalization rational = adjective rationalize = verb rationalization = noun

Allomorph

An allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme.

The meaning remains the same, while the sound can vary.

Example: the different forms of past tense morpheme /-ed/ [as we hear] barked, hissed [t] raised, smelled [d] added, trotted [ed]

-s for nouns

Example: the different forms of plural morpheme /-s/ are: [as we read]-s --- cats, dogs, boys, girls-es – watches, churches-0 – sheep

/-s/, /-es/ and 0 are allomorphs of /-s/{If pronunciation is considered, then /-s/, /-z/, /-

iz/ and 0 are allomorphs of /-s/ in the above examples}

Hierarchical Structure within Words the word unlockable is ambiguous

[[un + lock] able]: able to be unlocked [un [lock +able]]: not able-to-be-locked

French History Teacher Old Ladies Hostel Old Bombay Highway

Disgraceful Ungraceful

Adj Adj

/ \ / \

Noun Suffix Prefix Adj

/ \ | | / \

Prefix Noun | | Noun Suffix

| | | | | |

Dis grace ful Un grace ful

Exercise 4Give the hierarchical structure of the following words

unwanted disfigurement interchangeable maladjusted actors retries unhappiness