Lesson 3: Morphology

[ESAL SPIRIT]

Hi everyone
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Lesson 3: Morphology

In this lesson we talk about morphology: the study of word formation.

Morphology

Morphology, for instance, deals with a) the study of word formation b) the way in which speakers of different languages combine words to make new (ones) called compounds. Examples: Bulldog; sittingbull; mooreland; moonlight; senzatetto; pellerossa.
Morphology is a term which derives from Greek [G morphologie, Fr. Morph-+ -logie morpho=form and logy= study, speech] and traditionally it has been accepted with the aim of classifying the part of grammar which deal with the word formation owing to three main factors: the segmentation of various components (root, stem, suffix, ) example: prefix stem suffix [re- arrange- d (rearranged)] derivation (obtained) through composition. Example: ‘creation’ derives from ‘create’ but we are in front of two separate words.

The change (declension, suffixation, inflection): the declension was found above all in the early Indoeuropean languages (gender, number, case) and is a presentation in some prescribed order of the inflectional focus of a noun, adjective, pronoun.

Great part of Indoeuropean languages, except German and some Slavish languages (for instance Russian) do not have any longer the casual inflection reducing the declension only to morphological variations with references to ‘number and gender’.

Italian: libr (o) (singular) versus libr (i) (plural); French ami (singular) versus ami(s) (plural); English boy (singular) versus boy(s) (plural).

Suffixation is a process by which a suffix is a morpheme that is added to a word to create another word by derivation “Felon” thus becomes a new word by adding ‘y’ felony (noun) and an adjective by adding ‘ous’ “felonious”.

The inflection is the change of form that words undergo to mark such distinctions as those of case, gender, number, tense, mood, voice, comparison, person form, suffix or element involved in such variation. Examples: shop/shops; friend/friends; the morpheme ‘s’ clearly expresses the relation between the singular and plural.

Thus Morphology studies the internal structures of words: the parts that make up words (morphemes), the way in which morphemes are combined (word formation processes) and surely the principles (laws) that regulate the processes of word formation. Therefore ‘a morpheme’ is the smallest unit in grammar it is either a word in its own right called free morpheme ‘cat’ ‘chat’ ‘gatto’ or part of a word called bound morpheme (cats chats gatti)’.

Grammatical morphemes form part of grammar , such as the plural ‘s’ ‘s’ ‘i’ in cat, chat, gatto while the morphemes that change one word into another, for example, ‘cook’ ‘cookery’ ‘cookbook’ are part of derivational process whose meaning is “the formation of a word from an earlier word or base usually by the addition of an affix usually an uninflectional as in ‘rebuild’ from ‘build’ or ‘boyish’ from boy. A functional change as in ‘picnic’ (verb) from ‘picnic’ (noun) or a back-formation as in ‘peddle’ from ‘peddler’.

Other examples are ‘trumpet+ er = trumpeter’ or ‘wind+mill= windmill’(contrasting clearly with grammatical inflection).

There are two main classes which deal with morphemes: lexical morphemes (stems, roots, lexemes) and grammatical morphemes (called bound morphemes). Examples: ‘Lexical morphemes’ Italian: amic- buon-; English friend, good, play. Grammatical morphemes Italian: i/e amic/i, amiche; English: ‘s’ in ‘friends or in plays’ Lexical morpheme. Explanation: In the word ‘boys’ we have two morphemes ‘boy’ and ‘s’‘boy’ is a lexical morpheme (with its features ‘human’ ‘male’ ‘not adult’ ‘s’ in a grammatical morpheme (its meaning is ‘plural’). Italian: ‘celermente’ there are two morphemes ‘celer’ lexical morpheme ‘mente’affix.

Sometimes ‘morphemes’and ‘words’ can coincide. In Italian ‘bar’ ‘sempre’ ‘ieri’ are words formed by only one morpheme and for this reason they are called ‘monomorphemic’.