MORPHOLOGY: The Words of Language

I. Introduction: Dictionaries

Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and
making it hard and inelastic
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

LEXICON

WHAT INFORMATION DO DICTIONARIES PROVIDE ABOUT A WORD?

1- spelling
2- “standard” pronunciation
3- Definitions to represent the word’s one or more meanings
4- Parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.)

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 II. CONTENT WORDS & FUNCTION WORDS

A. CONTENT WORDS
The OPEN CLASS words

DO YOU KNOW WHAT STEGANOGRAPHY IS?

ANSWER: The art of hiding information in electronic text.

CAN YOU THINK OF OTHER WORDS THAT ENTERED THE ENGLISH

LANGUAGE DUE TO THE INTERNET REVOLUTION?

B. FUNCTION WORDS
The CLOSED CLASS WORDS

EXERCISE: Count the number of F’s in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE

RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

III. WORD FORMATION: COMPOUNDING

Head constituent
Longboat - consists of an adjective - long, and a noun - boat
Income is a noun consisting of a preposition followed by a verb

Nouns: signpost, sunlight, bluebird, redwood, outhouse

Verbs: window shop, stargaze, outlive, undertake
Adjectives: icecold, hell-bent, undersized
Prepositions: into, onto, upon

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Multi-word compounds: three-time loser, four-dimensional space-time, master of
ceremonies, daughter-in-law

EXERCISE ABOUT COMPOUNDS: Compounds are often frequent in modern technical

areas where new vocabulary is being created. Find the compounds in the following
passage:

Free Talker
Nokia 610 Car Kit
The cell phone stays by your side -- instead of your ear -- with Nokia's hands-free
Bluetooth system. An unobtrusive dash-mounted screen provides the same information as
your cell-phone display, and you can effortlessly download contact info from your phone.
A small console-mounted control unit with three intuitive buttons and a dial is but one
way to manage calls and messages, which sound off through your car's speakers: Choose
to use Nokia's decent voice-recognition software and neither hand has to leave the wheel.
$300; www.nokia.com.
CNN Business (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,695018,00.html)

IV. MORPHEMES
MORPHOLOGY - morph + ology
A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes:
one morpheme boy
desire
two morphemes boy + ish
desire + able
three morphemes boy + ish + ness
desire + able + ity
four morphemes gentle + man + li + ness
un + desire + able + ity
more than four un +gentle + man +li + ness
anti + dis +establish + ment +ari +an +ism

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Single sound morpheme - the morpheme a meaning “without” - as in amoral or asexual,
Single syllable morpheme - child and ish in child + ish
More than one syllable morphemes: camel, lady, and water, crocodile, hallucinate.

EXERCISE: If “to write” to a disk or CD means to put information on it, what do the
following words mean in the same context?
writable CD rewritable CD (CD-RW) unrewritable CD (CD-W)

A. BOUND & FREE MORPHEMES

FREE MORPHEMES - boy, desire, gentle, and man

BOUND MORPHEMES - –ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans- and un
AFFIXES:
PREFIXES - un-, pre-, and bi
SUFFIXES - -ing, -er, -ist, and –ly

EXERCISE ON BOUND AND FREE MORPHEMES: Divide the following into free and bound sets:
ation, nation, pre, post, angle, ible, infra, out

B. STEMS & AFFIXES

STEM - the form of a word to which affixes are attached.

Example: possible - ible is attached to the stem poss, which is itself bound

EXERCISE ON STEMS & AFFIXES: Separate the affixes from the stems in the following words:
Trains, succeeded, lighter, predetermined, retroactive, confusions, instructional.

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 C. Inflectional Morphemes

Suppletive forms - an unpredictable and unrelated form of a word for a particular

morphosyntactic realization that is completely unpredictable ones.

Example - the past tense form of the verb go, namely went. This form is suppletive.

Syncretism - two different grammatical words have the same inflected form

Examples: Joanna has towed the boat. And

Joanna towed the boat.

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EXERCISE ON SYNCRETISM: Remove all the inflectional affixes from the following
passage:
The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it down, went to the
window. His rooms were the highest flat of a lofty building, and his glance could travel
afar beyond the clear panes of glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a
lighthouse.
(Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim)
What happens to the text when all inflectional affixes are removed?

ANSWER:
The privileged man open the packet, look in, then lay it down, went to the window. His
room were the high flat of a lofty building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the
clear pane of glass, as though he were look out of the lantern of a lighthouse.

MORE EXERCISES ON THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS:

(a) Divide the following words into their constituent morphemes by placing a plus sign
(+) between the morphemes, and indicate for each morpheme whether it is bound or free:

Cleaning lady, anti-skidding device, mushroom, nationhood, deputise, derailments,

predestination, and internationalization.

(b) Indicate for each of the following words, which have been divided up into
morphemes, which are affixes and for each affix, what is its associated stem.

Involve + ment, in + support + able, sub + profess + or + ial, inter + sub + ject + iv + ity.

(c) A number of morphemes in the following passage are italicized. For each, say
whether it is bound or free; if bound, whether it is an inflection or a derivational affix.

We are at once the most resilient, most resourceful, most restive, most receptive, most
radical, most reactionary people who ever lived. We have had time and the tide for
everything but those moments of thought necessary to reverse the priorities to cause us
occasionally to look before leaping.

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 D. DIAGRAMING WORD STRUCTURE

COMPOUNDS
Example: blackboard

Noun

Adjective Noun

Black board

AFFIXES
Example: nationalisation
Noun

Verb

Adjective

Noun

nation al ise ation

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Exercise on Tree Diagrams: Represent the following words in tree diagrams.

(a) bookworm
(b) singer
(c) mislay
(d) tax collector

Answers:

(a) bookworm (b) singer

Noun Noun

Noun Noun Verb

book worm sing er

(c) mislay (d) tax collector

Verb Noun

Verb Noun Noun

mis lay Verb

tax collect or

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Exercise:
Study the following passage and then answer the questions below. Take your examples
from the passage.

The dogs swam ahead, fatuously important; the foals, nodding solemnly, swayed along
behind up to their necks: sunlight sparkled on the calm water, which further downstream
where the river narrowed broke into furious little waves, swirling and eddying close
inshore against black rocks, giving an effect of wildness, almost of rapids; low over their
heads an ecstatic lightning of strange birds manoeuvred, looping-the-loop and
immelmanning at unbelievable speed, aerobatic as new-born dragonflies. The opposite
shore was thickly wooded.
(Malcom Lowry, Under the Volcano)
(immelmanning – (n) an aircraft manoeuvre used to gain height while reversing the direction of flight. It
consists of a halfloop followed by a half roll.)

(a) Identify 3 compound words. For each one, name the grammatical category of the
compound, and the grammatical category of the elements that compose it.
(Example: watertight is an adjective, made up of noun + adjective.)
(b) Divide the following words into their component morphemes, labeling each
morpheme F (free), I (inflectional), or D (derivational):
unbelievable dragonflies
(c) What is the function of the suffix –ly in the words fatuously, solemnly, and
thickly?
(d) Identify two other words containing (different) derivational suffixes, name the
grammatical category of the stem to which the suffix is attached, and the
grammatical category of the derived word.
(e) Describe the function of the suffix –s in foals and waves, and that of the suffix-
ed in swayed and sparkled.
(f) Comment on the past tense forms swam and broke.

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