Branches of

Linguistics

Morphology

May, 04th 2019

Licda. Milvia Rosales
 Morphology
Morphemes are the minimal units of words
that have a meaning and cannot be
subdivided.

Types of Morphemes:
Free Morpheme: They can occur alone.
Example: Bad

Bound Morpheme: They must occur with

another morpheme.
Example: ly
 Affixes, prefixes, suffixes, infixes
and circumfixes.
Affixes are the bound morpheme.
Prefixes are added to the beginning of
another morpheme.
Suffixes are added to the end.
Infixes are inserted into other
morphemes.
Circumfixes are attached to another
morpheme at the beginning and end.
 Examples:
Prefix: re- added to do = redo

Suffix: -or added to edit = editor

Infix:-um- added to fikas (strong) =

fumikas (to be strong) in Bontoc
Philippines

Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) =

geliebt (loved) in German
There are two categories of affixes:

Derivational and inflectional

are added to morphemes to
form new words.

Inflectional affixes are added

to the end of an existing word
for purely grammatical reasons.
 In English there are only eight total
inflectional affixes:
-s 3rd person singular present She waits

-ed Past tense She waited

-ing Progressive She's eating
-en Past participle She has eaten
-s Plural Three apples
-'s Possessive Lori's son
-er Comparative You are taller

-est Superlative You are the shortest

Syntax
 The study of the combination of words. It deals
with phrase and sentence formation out of
words.
Examples:
 Nouns: dog, house, kid, men, women
 Verbs: sing, jump, run, read.
 Adjectives: small, big, nice.
 Adverbs: quickly, badly.
 Determiners: a, an, the, this, that, these.
 Auxiliary verbs: forms of be, have, may can,
shall, should.
 Prepositions: at, in, on, under, over, of.
 Conjuctions: and, but or.
 Phonetics and Phonology
There are three types of the study of
the sounds of language.

Acoustic Phonetics is the study of

the physical properties of sounds.
Auditory Phonetics is the study of
the way listeners perceive sounds.
Articulatory Phonetics is the study of
how the vocal tracts produce the
sounds.
I take it you already know of tough and
bough and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you, on
hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of
less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that
looks like beard, but sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead; for
goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and
debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother, nor
both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
nor dear and fear, for bear and
pear.
And then there's dose and rose and
lose - just look them up - and goose
and choose
And cork and work and card and
ward and font and front and word
and sword
International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.)
Phonetic Alphabet for English Pronunciation
p pill d dill h heal ʌ but
b bill n neal l leaf aj light
m mill s seal r reef ɔj boy
f feel z zeal j you ɪ bit
witc
v veal č chill w ɛ bet
h
thig
θ ǰ Jill i beet ʊ foot
h
whic
ð thy ʍ e bait ɔ awe
h

š shill k kill u boot a bar

azur boa
ž g gill o ə sofa
e t
t till ŋ ring æ bat aw cow
Places of Articulation
 Bilabial:lips together
 Labiodental: lower lip against front teeth
 Interdental: tongue between teeth
 Alveolar: tongue near alveolar ridge on roof
of mouth (in between teeth and hard
palate)
 Palatal: tongue on hard palate
 Velar: tongue near velum
 Glottal: space between vocal folds
The following sound is not found in the English
language, although it is common in
languages such as French and Arabic:
 Uvular: raise back of tongue to uvula
Manners of Articulation
Stop: obstruct airstream completely
Fricative: partial obstruction with
friction
Affricate: stop airstream, then
release
Liquids: partial obstruction, no
friction
Glides: little or no obstruction, must
occur with a vowel
Minimal pair exercise /f/ /v/
 http://www.manythings.org/mp/m09.html
 http://www.esl-lab.com/pron3.htm
Phones and Allophones
 Phones are not physical sounds, they are
mental representations of the phonological
units of language.
 An allophone is a phonetic variant of a
phoneme in a particular language.

 Examples:
 I will use slashes // to enclose phonemes and
brackets [] to enclose allophones

 [i] and [ĩ] are allophones of the phoneme /i/;

[ɪ] and [ɪ]̃ are allophones of the phoneme /ɪ/.
Semantics
Lexical semantics is
concerned with the meanings
of words and the meaning of
relationships among words.

Phrasal semantics is
concerned with the meaning
of syntactic units larger than
the word.
 The –nyms
 Homonyms: different words that are pronounced
the same, but may or may not be spelled the
same (to, two, and too)

 Polysemous: word that has multiple meanings

that are related conceptually or historically (bear
can mean to tolerate or to carry or to support)

 Homograph: different words that are spelled

identically and possibly pronounced the same; if
they are pronounced the same, they are also
homonyms
(pen can mean writing utensil or cage)
Metonym: word used in place of
another to convey the same
meaning (jock used for athlete,
Washington used for American
government, crown used for
monarchy)

Retronym: expressions that are no

longer redundant (silent movie used
to be redundant because a long time
ago, all movies were silent, but this is
no longer true or redundant)
Pragmatics
It is the study of how context affects
meaning, such as how sentences are
interpreted in certain situations.

The kids have eaten already

and surprisingly, they are hungry.

The linguistic context helps to interpret

the second sentence depending on
what the first sentence says.
Psycholinguistics
 The study of the mental aspects of
language and speech.
 It studies how word meaning, sentence
meaning, and discourse meaning are
computed and represented in the mind.

The three primary processes investigated

in psycholinguistics
 •Language Comprehension
 •Language Production
 •Language Acquisition
To summarize
 Morphology is the component of
grammar that builds words out of units
of meaning (morphemes)
 Semantics: The meaning of words and
sentences
 Syntax: The grammatical arrangement
of words in a sentence or phrase
 Phonology: The sound pattern of
language
 Pragmatics: How language is used in a
social context
 E-graphy
 Linguistics 101: An Introduction to the Study of Language.

 http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/nlp/InteractiveNLP/NLP_syn1.html

 Pragmatics:
http://www.watertown.k12.sd.us/education/components/links/links.php?s
ectiondetailid=1734

 Comics creation http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/

 Antonym and synonyms http://www.k12reader.com/worksheet/fix-the-

story-with-antonyms/view/

 Homonyms: http://www.edhelper.com/language/Homonyms4512.html

http://englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Homonyms,%20Homographs,%20Hom
ophones.pdf