MODULE WEEK NO.

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College of Education
EL 100: Introduction to Linguistics
1st Semester of A.Y. 2020-2021

Introduction

In this module you will find out what these meaning-bearing units are.
Where does meaning reside?

- It is in the term or in the context of the situation?

- Is it the intended meaning of the encoder or the meaning perceived by

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the decoder?

- What kinds of meaning are there?

- What forms do these meaning-bearing units take?

There are some of the questions that this module will answer.

Rationale

This module will sought to respond to few questions like:

Why does communication breakdown occur?
Why is it the intended meaning of a speaker sometimes misconstrued by the listener?
Why do decoders of a message sometimes put meaning where there is none? Is it
because there are many variables that affect meaning?

Actually, Linguistics is concerned with two areas: phonetics or the study of sounds of
a language and semantic, the study of its meanings.

For a while, the structural linguists were wary of describing language with its meaning
in mind because of the many variables that affect meaning.

In fact, it took some time for structural grammar to give way to semantic grammar.
This module is concerned with meaningful units or morphemes of the language, a
parallel could be drawn with that of phonology and morphology.

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Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of the module, students are expected to:

A. discuss the different types of meaning and how these are signaled;
B. distinguish between morphs , allomorphs and morphemes;
C. discuss and cite examples of the different types of morphemes- bound
(inflectional and derivational) and free (function words and contest words),
and;
D. show how rights from morphology may be utilized by the language teacher
in the classroom.

Activity
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Write the letter of the utterance that answers the question about each set of
utterance.

____________1. In which sentence is fire given as command by the firing squad?

____________2. In which sentence is fire mentioned as a response to the question, “What
did you say?”
____________3. In which sentence is fire uttered as a warming that something has caught
fire?

___________4. What question is uttered when someone calls your name and you respond
to find out what he wants?
___________5. Which utterance shows disbeliefs?

___________6. Which utterance shows disbelief?

___________7. Which utterance seeks information?

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Discussion

Types of Meaning

Charles Fries, an applied linguist, cites four different types of meaning based on the linguistic
term that signals the meaning. The first of these is informational meaning.
As the term goes, it is the intonation that signals the change in meaning.
Read these sentences which have been marked with lines to show the rise and fall in the pitch
of the voice. Note that the utterances make use of the same words that differ in the intonation.

1. Which one expresses surprise?

2. Which one shows that the speaker does not put too much importance on what was said?
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Intonation is a suprasegmental phoneme because a change in the intonation results in a change

in meaning.
Find out of you pinpointed the correct meaning signaled by the intonation used in the
sentences you have just read.

1. ____a_____ The answer is a surprise because of the extra high intonation used. Extra
high intonation indicates strong emotion.
2. ____b_____ the rising-falling intonation shows that the speaker considers what was
said earlier as incoursequential so he uses the ordinary rising- falling intonation.
Still another type of meaning according to Charles Fries is morphological meaning which
refers to the added meaning given by affixes to a root word. From the form of the word, the root
word is evident but the affixes indicate added meaning. In the examples that follow, note that
the plural- marking affixes give the added meaning that there are ‘more than one” of the object
mentioned in the root word.

The part tense marking affix, on the other hand, gives the added meaning that the action
mentioned in the root word took place in the part
book + s = books (more than one book)
want + ed= wanted (I wanted it something in the past)
run + (vowel change) = ran (I ran sometime in the past)

Here is a list of words with affixes that give added meaning to the root word, Group together all
the words whose affixes signal the same added meaning.

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A. If you have noticed, the plural-marking affixes are the finals morpheme, the change in
vowel or en.
B. The past time-marking affixes are final ed, vowel change and a change in vowel + the
addition of it.
C. The actor-marking affixes are er,or,or,ar,ian,ist,ee.
D. The negative marking affixes are um,non,and in,im,il,ir depending on the initial phoneme
of the root word to which it is affixed.
E. The gender marking affixes are ess or ime.
F. The affixes et,ette,ime indicate a small size version of the object mentioned in the root
word.
G. The affix cide indicates to “slay”
It might be pointed out that the different meaning-bearing affixes or morphs in each group
are by no means exhaustive. You may want to add other such morphs, signaling the same
meaning as the other morphs in the group.

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A third type of meaning as pointed by Charles Fries is lexical meaning. This refers to the
meaning of the root word or word base. In this respect however, Fries underscores the fact that
a word may take on several meanings depending on the context in which it is used.

Look at this sentence and try to guess what the underlined word would refer to in the
situations listed after the sentence

He finally got the chair.

a. Referring to a convict found guilty of a heinous crime punishable by death.

b. Concerning a professor who was awarded a grant in recognition of his expertise in the
field and to enable him to conduct a research and give a scholarly talk on it, and
c. About a person shopping for furniture to furnish his house with.
Well, in the first situation, the chair referred to must be the electric chair because of the words
in the context, convict, guilty of heinous crime and punishable by death
In the second situation, the chair referred to is a professional chair as hinted at in the clue words
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professor, a grant, recognition of his expertise, conduct a research and give a scholarly talk on
it.
In the last example, the expression shopping for furniture gives a clue this time that the chair in
this situation must be a piece of furniture intended for persons to sit on.

The fourth type of meaning according to Charles Fries is that which is signaled by the order or
position of words is a sentence. Because word order is referred to as grammar or syntax of a
language, the meaning signaled by the position of the word in the sentence is called syntactical
meaning.

Take note of these two sentences:

a. The hunter killed the lion
b. The lion killed the hunter
All the words in the two sentences are identical. Hence, takes separately, the words have
the same lexical meaning. However, put together, in sentence a, it is the lion who died and the
hunter who killed it. On the other hand, in sentence b it is the hunter who died and the lion who
killed him. This change in meaning was due to a shift in the position of the words. In the two
sentences where the doer of the action comes before the verb and the receiver of the action
comes after the verb.
It is not only word order, however, that signals syntactical meaning. The properties of the
verb do, too, since these are considered part of grammar. Hence, there three sentences, although
they do not observe the same order, signal the same meaning.

c. The judges noted Nepomuceno Athlete of the year.

d. Nepomuceno was voted by the judge Athlete of the year.
e. Nepomuceno was voted Athlete of the year by the judges.

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One of the properties of the verb is voice. Sentence C has the doer of the action in subject
position since the verb voted is in the active voice. In contrast. Sentences d and e has the receiver
of the action before the verb because the verb was voted is in the passive voice.
For one to know the syntactical meaning, he has to be aware of the syntactical structures
of a sentence.
Aside from the four types of meaning given by Charles Fries there are other kinds of meaning
The meaning of words given in the dictionary is called denotative since it gives what the
word is supposed to stand for or denote. In contrast to this is the connotative meaning attached
to a word. These are other meanings associated with the word. A semantic shift takes place and
the word takes on new meanings “extending the domain of its reference.” These associated
meanings are usually culturally determined and metaphorical, hence, they are employed in
literary and creative works.
A dove, for example is denotatively a bird that makes a cooing sound and is usually white.
Connotatively, the dove stands for peace and for love. This is why doves are used in wedding
receptions. The word red names a primary color that resembles blood. Connotatively it stands
for courage since a courageous person does not mind shedding his blood and dying for his
country. It could also connote anger because as bull gets angry when it sees a red flag. Hence,
the expression “saw red” means to get enraged.
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*Morphs Allomorphs and Morphemes

You learned that the study of the sounds of a language is called phonology and that it
is concerned with the description of all the speech sounds or phones, the significant sounds or
phonemes both segmental and suprasegmentals , and the variants of those sounds or allophones
resulting from changes in the environment of the said sounds.

*Morphs are the meaningful units of a language. They may come in the form of affixes or root
words.
Whatever form they take, the morphs signal meaning. Examples of these would be un to
signal negation when it is affixed to a word and able to indicate “capacity to do a task” Put
together, the word unable word mean that “one lacks the capacity to do something.”
It might be noted, however that there are different morphs that signal the same meaning.
If you recall in Questions #2 of this unit, you noted how the meanings given below used
signaled by different affixes or morphs. See if you can add more affixes to those given in each
number.
1. Plural marking affixes
s, en, o (e.g. deer-deer)
Where there is no change in form, singular or plural
2. Past tense Marking affixes
ed, change in vowel, change in vowel
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+final morph (e.g. put,put)
Where the same form is used to signal past time and present time.
3. Negative marking affixes (un,il,is,in,dis,non)
4. Feminine gender-marking affixes (ess, ine)
5. Actor-marking affixes (ar, or, er, ist)
6. Diminutive size-marking affixes (et, ette, ine)

All of those affixes are allomorphs or variants of the same morpheme since they signal
the same meaning. They differ because of the change in their environment or to the word to
which they are attached.

Give the negative-marking morpheme that you would attach to these words. Note that the
words to which they are attached have the same roots. However, they now belong to different
form classes. They may be nouns, verbs or objectives. As such the negative marking affix
attached to them would also differ. Study the example that follows,
Example:
inoperable – non-operational
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The root word of the two turns in the example in the verb operate.
With the addition of the affix able the resulting term is an adjective to which we may add the
negative- marking prefix in. on the other hand, with the addition of the affix ion the resulting
term is first a noun and with the further addition of the affix al, the term also becomes an
adjective. But this time, we add the negative-marking affix non instead of – in

Sometimes, a phonemic change occurs in the morphemes because of the environment in which
it occurs. When this happens, then we refer to it as a morphophonemic change. This is true to
the final s plural-marking morpheme and to the final ed past-time marking morpheme as shown
in Set A and Set B which follow,

Set A
s = /S/ s = /Z/ es=/IZ/
ships crabs fishes
masts claims sea horses
rocks shells watches
reefs waves buzzes
shrimps stones ledges

Set B

ed = t ed = d ed = id
chopped watered planted
walked pruned cultivated
laughed climbed uprooted
missed cleaned decided
watched plowed demanded

Types of Morphemes
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I’m sure you must have noted that there are different kinds of morphemes or significant
meaningful units. On the whole, they may be categorized into bound and free morphemes. The
former come in the form of affixes. They cannot occur in isolation, because they have to be
attached to a root word these affixes are called bound morphemes.
Free morphemes, on the other hand, can stand by themselves. As pointed out earlier, all
free morphemes have a denotative meaning, that is, their meanings are given in the dictionary.
Some however, may have connotative meanings, that is, their meanings as well. There are
usually metaphorical extended meanings to cover culturally determined associations with the
word. Earlier, you were given example of these two meanings imputed to some free morphemes.

Bound morphemes or affixes may in turn be categorized into two types. The first of
these are the inflectional bound morphemes which create “variant forms of a word to conform
to the different functional roles of the word in a sentence”. On nouns and pronouns, there
inflectional bound morphemes mark grammatical function lice case, (he-him-his) or semantic
motions like number (plural marking morphs- s, en, unmarked or O morphs). On verbs, they
usually mark tense (past tense-marking affix-final ed and the progressive marking affix ing).
And on adjectives, they serve to mark degree (er to indicate the comparative degree and est to
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signal the superlative degree)

The second type of bound morpheme is the derivational bound morpheme. One kind
of derivational bound morpheme changes the form class or part of speech of the words to which
they are affixed. The meaning remain basically the same but the part of speech or form class of
the word changes. Thus, a word like act becomes an adjective with the addition of – ive as in
active and another noun activity with the addition of ity to the adjective. Where however, the
affix-ly is added to the adjective, the resulting word actively becomes the adverb. The word act
becomes a verb enact when the prefix en is attached to the root word. Thus, there are four kinds
of derivational morphemes, namely:

1. noun marking
2. verb marking
3. adjective marking morphemes
4. adverb marking

The other kind of derivational bound morpheme is the meaning-bearing morphemes

which changes the meaning of the word to which it is attached without altering its syntactic
function. Nouns would remain nouns, verbs stay as verbs adjectives as adjectives an adverb as
adverbs. Examples of this kind of affix are negative- marking affixes (appear-disappear), gender
marking affixes (aviator, aviatrix), and diminutive size marking affixes (river-rivulet)

As mentioned earlier, free morphemes can stand by themselves. Fries further subdivides
them into few sub-types although three of these can be grouped together because unlike the
fourth one which stands for phonemes in the real world. The first three stress grammatical
relations. Among the words that stress grammatical relations are function words substitute
words and paired expressions that indicate the presence of a “negative”
*Examples of function words are markers of content words: auxiliaries like is, has, can, etc.
which mark verbs, articles, namely, a, an, the which mark nouns and intensities such as very
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and truly which mark modifiers. Interrogatives or question words like what, who, when, etc.
also function words since they mark the utterance as wh questions. Also included as
function words are preposition, such as of, in, to, etc. which show the relationship between
two nouns and conjunctions namely, and, but, for, etc. which connect parallel items. Other
linguists would also consider interjections like oh! And Really as function words.
Still another set of words which signal grammatical relations ate substitute words. These
would include noun substitute, or pronouns like he, she, it, etc. as well as verbal and even
phrasal and clausal substitute, as in the sentence “ I know the answer. But he doesn’t”.
The paired expressions that signal the presence or absence of a “negative” are some – any,
yet – already, too or also-either as shows in the examples that follow:
1. I have some but he doesn’t have any.
2. I have yet to know, but he already does.
3. I know it and he does too.
he also does.
so does he.
4. I don’t know it and he doesn’t either
neither does he
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In contrast to those three sets of words that show grammatical relations are the content
words which refer to items in the world. These could be names of things which Fries refers
to as class I words. In effect, these could be the nouns. Then, too the content words could be
actions which are referred to as Class II words or verbs. Finally, for Fries, the third set of
content words name modifies. These are called class III words or adjectives, Although Fries
gives only three form class words, are could add a fourth class, Class IV, which modify verbs.
These would be adverbs.

To synthesize our learnings thus for, we can say that morphology, which is concerned with the
study of meaningful units of a language, looks into the different types of meaning.

These would be informational, morphological, lexical and syntactical.

The meaningful units that morphology scrutinizes are called morphs, allomorphs and
morphemes. The last of these may be bound or free morphemes. Bound morphemes may be
inflectional or derivational. Free morphemes, on the other hand, may signal grammatical
relation or name phenomena in the real world.

Forming words
When bound morphemes or affixes are attached to free morphemes or root words,
they form new words the resulting word may exhibit a modification is meaning depending on
the affix that is attached to it. The new word, for example, may now be negative or it could name
the female of the specie.
At other times, however, the resulting word exhibits no change in meaning with the
addition of a bound morpheme
Instead, a functional shift occurs, changing the word from one form class to another. Thus,
a root word that was originally a noun may be changed to a verb, an adjective or an adverb, as
the case may be, depending on the affix that was attached to it. Nouns may be changed to a verb
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as in friend- befriend or an adjective as in friend-friendly. The noun or verb form can be changed
to an adjective as in construct-constructive and the adjective may in turn, be changed to an
adverb as in constructive-constructively.
Free morphemes may also combine with other free morphemes to come up with a
compound noun. The resulting compound word may be a solid compound where the two
morphemes are merged together to form one word. In writing, they are joined as one, hence the
term solid compound. In many instances, the meaning of the compound may be arrived at by
putting together the meaning of the free morphemes that comprise it. Word analysis, in this
case, would be a good strategy to employ to arrive at an educated guess of the meaning of the
term. Some examples of solid compounds are houseboat made up of the free morphemes house
and boat and nonetheless composed of three morphemes, namely, non, the and less.
It might be pointed out, however, that this is not always the case with compound words.
These are, is fact, some compound words like silverfish, whose meaning cannot be inferred by
putting together the meanings of the two words, silver and fish that compose it since silverfish
is an insect and not a fish nor a marine animal.
Sometimes, the morphemes which are combined to form compounds are not merged into
one but rather, are written as separate words as in verb constructs given below. In such a case,
they are called separate compounds. These two – word verb are written as two separate words
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in contrast to their noun equivalents, which are usually written as solid compounds as shows in
the paired list that follows. Orderly the difference between the two is signaled by the stress
patterns used. In writing, however, noun constructs some in the form of solid compounds
whereas verb constructs come in the form of separate compounds.

Noun Constructs Verb Constructs

A dropout to drop out
A blackout to black out
A standout to stand out
Other examples of separate compounds are swimming pool, serving machine, and
operating table which are takes to same one item. The first word is not taken as an adjectives to
describe the second word as in the expressions shining star, sweet – smelling flower or barking
dog. Those last three items are not compound words but are made up of a verbal adjective
modifying a noun. As was pointed out, we can say:
- A shining star is a star that is shining.
- A sweet-smelling flower is a flower that smells sweet.
- A barking dog is a dog that is barking

But we can say:

- A swimming pool is a pool that is swimming.
- A serving machine is a machine that is sewing.
- An operating table is a table that is operating.
Rather, we may say:
- A swimming pool is a pool used for swimming
- A sewing machine is a machine used for sewing
- An operating table is a table used for operating on patients

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- A third kind of compound word is the hyphenated compound. Here the free morphemes
are not written out as one. Rather, a hyphen is used to show that these morphemes joined
by the hyphen are to be considered as one unit.
Examples of hyphenated compounds are son-in-law, ladies-in-waiting, commander-in-
chief.
- Aside from affixation and compounds, new words can also be formed by combining parts
of existing words. Examples of the resulting blends are smog(smoke and fog), motel
(motor and hotel), and glasphalt (glass and asphalt)
- Then, too, new words may be formed by shortening the original term, Examples of this
would be jet for jet plane obit for obituary and the colloquial yuppy for young urban
professionals + y.

Exercise

Here are other expressions whose underlined words have different lexical meanings depending
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on the context in which they are used. Write the letter of the meaning given in Column B that
suit the underlined word in the expressions given in Column A in each set.
Set I
A B
___________1. A head of cabbage a. leader
___________2. A clear head b. intellectual inclination and ability
___________3. The head of our team c. mind
___________4. Come to a head d. part of body that contains the brain
___________5. A head wound e. be the first or be at the lop
___________6. A head for business f. a unit of measure of a leafy vegetable rolled
or in the place of a ball
___________7. Head for shore g. point of convergence
___________8. Head the list h. to move towards a place

Set II
A B
_________9. A mark of good taste a. target
_________10. A high mark in the test b. sign
_________11. Miss the mark c. starting point
__________12. On your mark. Get set go d. prints
__________13. Leave marks on the floor e. pay attention to a warning
__________14. Mark my word f. legacy
__________15. Leave your mark on society g. score

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Assessment
Graphical Analysis: Create a sketch about the different types of morphemes and put in
the categories that fall under each type.
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Note: You may use this given outline or you may create your own.

Reflection

Respond to these following questions:

1. How clear are those types of meaning to you?
2. Can you distinguish one from the other?
3. Can you cite examples of each of those types?
*if you answered in the negative to any of those three questions, then you might
want to reread the section in this module entitled “Types of Meaning”.

Once more:
1. Can you tell what those concepts are?
2. Can you explain how one differs from the other?
3. Can you cite examples of each of them?
4. Can you discuss and gives examples of each of these subtypes?
*If you cannot answer the four questions, then you could reread the sections
“Morphs, allomorphs Morphemes” and “Types of morpheme”

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Resources and Additional Resources

O’Grady, William et. al. 2001. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction,

4th ed. New York: St. Martin’s.

Radford, Andrew et.al. 1999. Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Paz, Consuelo et.al. 2003. Ang Pag-aaral ng Wika. Quezon City:

University of the Philippines Press.

Additional References:
Crowley, Terry. 1997. Introduction to Historical Linguistics, 3rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
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Salzmann, Zdenek. 2004. Language, Culture, and Society, 3rd ed. Oxford:
Westview Press.

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