Linguistics Study Guide Morphology

University:
Michigan State University
Course:
LIN 401 | Introduction to Linguistics
Academic year:

2022
Views:

401

Pages:

3
Author:

Killian Mata

Notes- Morphology The Basics of Morphology • Morphology: system of word formation • Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning • Words are words because of common usage, not the dictionary Morphological Processes • Suffix: addition to the end • Prefix: addition to the beginning • Infix: addition to the middle o Circumfixes: an infix in a specific environment • Reduplication: part or all of a word is doubled o sometimes with phonological changes • Suppletion: change to a completely different stem o ex: is → was or go → went • Compounding: formally, a kind of prefixation but in actually, it just combines two independent words o ex: blackboard • 0 Derivation: change in grammatical category and meaning with no phonological change o “google” went from noun to verb • Reversative: applies to something in order to undo an action or meaning o ex: “un” • Coercion: forcing things into simpler/neighboring/applicable meanings • Recursive: a rule can apply to its own output Units of Morphology • Transitive verb: a verb with an object o ex: “I placed the book” • Scalar adjectives: adjectives that describe a point on or in a range o ex: happy 5 • Binary adjectives: adjectives that either apply fully or not at all o ex: true • Telic verb: a verb that is a process with an end state o ex: build Productivity • A productive process: a process that applies to all words that fit the input description and the effect is predictable o ex: suffixation of /z/ in English to pluralize • Blocking effect: if there is already a word for something, it’s blocked from a process applying • Reproductive morphology: cases where we can break things into morphemes BUT: o the semantic effect is not entirely predictable and/or o not all words in the relevant class allow this (exceptions) The Wug Test • Jean Berko Gleason did it • “This is a wug. Now there is another one.” → asks for plural word • Kids knew to say “wugz” • steps of language acquisition: o children first learn irregular forms as irregular (ex: go → went) o children overgeneralize (ex: go → goed) o they then retreat from overgeneralizing and relearn irregularities ▪ the blocking effect is used Parts of Morphological Rules • Three parts: o formal part: actual rule ▪ ex: suffixes o syntactic part: the grammatical categories ▪ ex: -able makes a verb into an adjective 6 o semantic part: applications to word meanings The case of “un” • Negative “un”: as in lower on an adjective’s scale o ex: unhappy • Reversative “un”: as in to reverse a verb’s action o ex: undo Recursive Processes • Recursive processes: a process that can apply to its own output o ex: rereredecorate or the reversative un Misc Morphology • Agglutinative languages: languages with very productive morphology o lots of suffixes and prefixes, packs lots of meaning into single words o Turkish is an example • Object incorporation: incorporating an object into a verb o ex: deer hunt • Lingua franka: someone’s second learned language • Agentive construction: a noun that denotes the do-er of the action • Born: created, not predictable 7