Bethany Deibler MORPHOLOGY At-home final examination Winter 2009 1. What is a word? How can words be identified as such?

What other kinds of morphemes are there other than words? Explain the differences.

There is no precise definition of a word. It can be defined grammatically, syntactically and phonologically, but there is not one set definition. Syntactically, a word is the smallest unit of syntax. Letters make up words, words make up a sentence and sentences make up paragraphs, etc. Words can also be defined as the smallest unit of language that can stand alone. However this definition doesnt work as there are bound words and free words. Bound words such as the are meant to accompany other words, in this case, nouns. Not all words can stand alone and still make sense. Saying the and nothing else would be very strange. Grammatically we distinguish between words like cat and cats. Those are both words, but what do we do with the morpheme s? It cannot stand alone and is obviously not a word either. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. A word is the next thing up. A morpheme can be a word too, but not all words are single morphemes. Words are the inflected and derived forms of morphemes. Phonologically, we can use the idea of stress to define a word. However, because of clitics, this definition cannot work either. Clitics rely on other words for their stress. To test for potential wordhood, we can examine the order of the sentence, the separability and the stress on the word.

2.

Discuss derivation and inflection. a. What are typical derivational processes and what is their result? Derivation is when we add or subtract part of a word to get a new word. The new

word is often the opposite meaning or a different lexical category from the original word. One derivational process is compounding. This is adding two separate words to get a new one. We can add mail and box to get mailbox, meaning the box where mail is placed. Another derivational process is zero derivation or conversion. This is most commonly seen in small children as they try to figure out how to make nouns into verbs and vice versa. A child might ask, Is Suzy going to babysitter me? They change the lexical category of the word without making the other necessary changes. A third derivational process is affixation. This is simply adding affixes to change the word. With the word do we can add different affixes to make undo or redo. We can also get new words from clipping, backformations, acronyms, blending and folk etymology. b. What kinds of information does inflection generally provide? Inflection is different from derivation in that the inflected word cannot change lexical categories. Inflection most commonly provides information to make nouns plural or to change person in verbs. One cat becomes many cats and I read becomes he reads. Inflection is used through exponence. First we have simple exponence. This is when the word just has one thing changed about it after the inflection. In English, to make something plural, the most common sound added to the end is [z]. This is simple exponence as it tells us one thing, that the noun is now plural. The second type of exponence is cumulative exponence. This is not common in English, but is most often used in languages that have inflecting verbs. The cumulative exponence is when the

inflection adds more than one bit of information to the word. In Spanish we have the verb dormir to sleep. After inflection we can get duermo I sleep. This inflection tells us two things. First it tells us 1st person and second it tells us present tense. There is also extended exponence. This is when a word has been inflected by multiple parts in different places, but it only means one thing. None of the separate inflected parts mean one specific thing.

c. (graduate students only) Which process is more important for a student of English as a non-native language to master, or are they equally important? Does the settingESL vs. EFLmatter? Is there a difference in the way the two processes are learned?

5.

Discuss morphological productivity. Morphological productivity is how words change and which way they are most

likely to change. People make up words all the time as a part of language, but some words are more likely to be used over and over again and actually become words than other. People usually know a word needs to change in order for it to be more than one or plural. The automatic way to do this in English is to add [z] to the end. This is considered the most productive way to make a plural. However, this rule is not universal as we use es in boxes, -en in oxen, -ren in children, and no change in deer. There are many different ways to make a plural, but if the word is unknown, we will most often just add s to the

end. Morphological productivity is not a positive/negative phenomenon. Instead, there is a scale or degrees of productivity. One affix is more productive than the other, not that one is productive and the other isnt. Productivity is related to a persons competence, but is not part of it. It is hard to say whether it is part of competence or performance. There are several constraints on productivity. The first constraint is that it can only be attached to bases ending in a vowel. The second constraint has to do with the suprasegmental make-up of the base. In English you can only add the suffix al to a verb with the stress on the last syllable. The third constraint has to do with the number of syllables in the base of the word. Morphologically, productivity is constrained if the word belongs to a certain gender or word category, or if it already has an affix. Syntactically, productivity is constrained in that you can only add certain affixes to certain lexical categories of words. For example, re- can only be added to verbs. Semantically, productivity is also constrained. One constraint is that the suffix ee can only be used if the referent is sentient and is characterized by a lack of volitional control. Morphological productivity is used to create new words like Bushism to refer to something pronounced incorrectly or uncola which was used to refer to Sprite. People use morphological productivity daily without even knowing it.

7.

What did you learn from the group project inventing a new language? There is a lot more to language that just creating random words to mean specific

things. A language consists of many more things than just words. Without studying it at all, language just sounds and like words that magically mean something and now we can communicate with each other. It was more challenging than I expected but I also learned a great deal from it. You have to think about syntax structures, inflections, derivations, a sound system, and a writing system. Each part contributes to the function of the language. While there are so many languages that are all different, there are actually similarities that all languages share. Every language has a sound system. This is different for every language. For example, it is common to use a sound in Spanish, but this is rarely seen in English or many other languages. I learned how, if a language is going to borrow a word, it is possible that they might have to use a different consonant than the original one that sounds similar or is produced in a similar region in the mouth. There are many different choices that must be made when making a language. It is hard to think that other languages can function with more or less or different sounds and letters than the ones that English has. This project really opened my eyes to all the different possibilities in language.