An-Introduction-to-English-Morphology

什么是word?

• 一种是因为其含义无法预测而必须被写进词典的word，另一种是组成phrase和sentence的基本元素之外的其他基本元素。真实情况远比这种分类复杂
• meaning units or building blocks

一个句子中有多少word？

• 区分token和type，token是type的实例，一个句子中可能存在一个type的多个token
• 我们常说的word可能指type或者token

words with predictable meanings

• onomatopoeic words, (eg. miaow)
• sound symbolism, (eg. slip, slurp, sleek)
• the associations between words and their meanings are mostly conventional.

what words should not be listed in a dictionary?

• dioecious-ly, as its meaning is guessable, Xly means "in a X fashion"
• this means "building blocks" dose not entail "meaning unit".

2.4 Idiom

idiom, expression whose meaning is unpredictable based on its component

idiom:unpredictable
phrase:special meaning
proverb:unpredictable, but metaphorical meaning

lexical item(unpredictable meaning) vs word(building block)
dioecious-ly is not lexical item but word
idiom, phrase and proverb are lexical item but not words

what belongs to lexical item?
idiom,
what belongs to word？

3 A word and its parts: roots, affixes and their shapes

Q: what does word consist of?
A: call it morpheme

Q: relationship between morpheme and meaning?
A: not definitely

Q：characteristics of morphemes?
A: 1. identifiable in words. 2. contribute to the meaning of the word.

Q: relationship between morphological structure and phonological structure?
A: independent(ten-th-s). duality of patterning.

Q: morpheme classification?
A:

1. free and bound. help(free)-ful(bound)-ness(bound).
2. most of the free morphemes are from Germanic branch, when bound morphemes are from from Latin.
3. cranberry morpheme is a subset of bound morpheme. Such morpheme is limited in its distribution to just certain complex word.
4. kinds of morpheme: root, affix, combining form. most root is a subset of free morpheme, affix is bound morpheme, combining form is bound compound.
5. compound: contain more than one root.
6. combining form's bound morpheme may get freedom. (photo from photograph)

Allomorphs

some morphemes have different pronounciation, called allomorphs.
eg. cats[s], dogs[z], horses[iz] or [əz]
wife is free morpheme, and wive- is bound. wive- is noly used before -s.
restore and re-store, re and re- are different morphemes. With different prounciation, [ri] and [rə]

Q: How to choose allomorphs?
A: based on the sound immediately preceding the suffix.

morpheme does not necessarily have the same meanig in all words. Like re- in reserve has no meaning, differ from rewrite

Inflection

derivational morphology vs inflectional morphology

perform, performs, performed are dependent on the grammatical context, while perform-ance is not

PERFORM is a lexeme
perform, performs, performed are all inflectional variants of PERFORM

Regualr vs Irregular
pianist, pianists; tooth, teed

Suppletion

a relationship between roots, such as go and went, went is suppletion, not inflection

Forms of words

Forms of nouns

nouns have two inflections, singular and plural

plural:
regular suffix: -s
irregular suffix: -i, -ae, -a, -(r)en, -im
eg. cacti, formulae, phenomena, oxen, children, brethren, cherubim, kibbutzim
vowel change: teeth, men
no change: sheep, fish, deer, trout

no singlur form:
periphrastic form: pair of scissors

apostrophe-s attaches to noun phrase

Forms of pronouns and determiners

pronouns and determiners are not open class, so they are limited

pronouns

• nominative case vs accusative case
• I/me, she/her, we/us, they/them, you

determiners

this/these, that/those, the, a/an, some

undecided

my, his, her, their and our all have a possessive meaning, are they a third case or determiners?

Form of verbs

gives, gave, giving, given, give

• third person singular present tense
• past tense
• progressive participle
• perfect or passive participle
• basic form

modal + v

Form of adjectives