Morphemic Analysis
A morpheme can be defined as the smallest unit of language that has an associated
meaning. This small unit cannot be subdivided into smaller units that have meaning. Thus,
the purpose of morphemic analysis is to study the morphemes of words to aid in understanding the meaning of those words. In mathematics, this literacy strategy can be applied
to study meaningful parts of words. For example, the word triangle has two morphemes, tri
and angle. These morphemes mean three and the relationship of rays respectively; thus, a
triangle is a three-sided or angled figure.
Morphemic Analysis in the mathematics classroom involves selecting words, identifying
a morpheme of that word, defining the morpheme, identifying mathematics words with that
morpheme, and relating it to words of general usage with the same morpheme. Going
through this process with students helps them understand the meanings of specific words
and the relationships between words. For example, tri in tripod means three and tri in
triangle means three as well. In the mathematics classroom, students in small groups can
identify difficult terminology. As a whole class, the students can create a chart listing a
morpheme, mathematics words that use that morpheme, and finally general usage words
that use the same morphemes.
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest component of word, or other linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning. The term is used as part of the branch of linguistics known as morphology. A morpheme is composed by phoneme (s) (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound) in spoken language, and by grapheme (s) (the smallest units of written language) in written language.
The concept of word and morpheme are different, a morpheme may or may not stand alone. One or several morphemes compose a word. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone (ex: "one", "possible"), or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme (ex: "im" in im possible). Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the different morphs ("in-", "im-") representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
English example:
The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", a bound morpheme; "break", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme. "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both "un-" and "-able" are affixes.
The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", /s/, in cats (/kæts/), but "-es", /ɨz/, in dishes (/dɪʃɨz/), and even the voiced "-s", /z/, in dogs (/dɒɡz/). "-s". These are allomorphs.
Types of morphemes
Free morphemes, like town and dog, can appear with other lexemes (as in town hall or dog house) or they can stand alone, i.e., "free".
Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.
|
|
|
Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness." They carry semantic information.
Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category (as in the "dog" morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme "-s" becomes "dogs"). They carry grammatical information.
Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g., the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /-ɨz/.
11) Segmentability of words (3 types: complete, conditional, defective)
Word structure
There are 2 levels of approach to the study of word-structure:
v the level of morphemic analysis
the level of derivational or word-formation analysis
The basic unit of morphemic level is the morpheme defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit.
Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished:
complete
conditional
defective
Words of conditional and defective segmentability are made up of full morphemes and pseudo (quasi) morphemes. The latter do not rise to the status of full morphemes either for semantic reasons or because of their unique distribution.
Semantically morphemes fall into:
1. root-morphemes
2. affixational morphemes
Structurally morphemes fall into:
1. free
2. bound
3. semi-free (semi-bound)
The structural types of words at the morphemic level are described in terms of the number and type of their ICs (immediate constituents) as monomorphic and polymorphic words.
Derivational level of analysis aims at finding out the derivative types of words, the interrelation between them and at finding out how different types of derivatives are constructed.
Derivationately all words form 2 structural classes:
1. simplexes (non-derived)
complexes (derivatives) which in their turn may be divided into:
sufficial
prefixal
conversions
compounds
Each structural type of complexes shows preference for one or another part of speech. Within part of speech derivative structures are characterized by a set of derivational patterns.
Derivational basis differ from stems both structurally and semantically. Derivational bases are built on the following language units:
stems of various structure
word-forms
word-group or phrases
Each class and subset bases has its own range of collocability and shows peculiar ties with different parts of speech.
Derivational affixes form derived stems by repattering derivational bases. Semantically derivational affixes present a unity of lexical meaning and other types of meaning: functional, distributional and differential unlike non-derivational affixes which lack lexical meaning.
Derivational patterns (DP) are meaningful arrangements of various types of ICs that can be observed in a set of words based on their mutual interdependence. DPs can be viewed in terms of collocability of each IC.
|
|
|
There are 2 types of DPs: 1) structural that specify base classes and individual affixes.
2) structural-semantic that specify semantic peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of the affix.
DPs of different levels of generalization signal:
the class of source unit that motivates the derivative and the direction of motivation between different classes of words.
The part of speech of the derivative.
The lexical sets and semantic features of derivatives.
12)Wordbuilding ways (patterned ways, nonpatterned ways)
Word-building is one of the main ways of enriching vocabulary. There are four main ways of word-building in modern English: affixation, composition, conversion, abbreviation. There are also secondary ways of word-building: sound interchange, stress interchange, sound imitation, blends, and back formation
In word-formation of the English language derivation and compounding are known to occupy a very important place.
Affixation is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation [2].
Suffixes may be classified proceeding from different criteria. According to the part of speech classification they fall into:
a) suffixes forming nouns;
b) suffixes forming adjectives;
c) suffixes forming verbs;
d) and adverb-suffixes [5].
Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. Prefixes are more independent than suffixes. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used: prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words [2].
A compound word is a word composed entirely of smaller words.
Blending is a special type of compounding by means of merging parts of words into one new word. This category of word-formation is a development which has linguistic value of its own in various languages. The tendency towards shortness has become most active in recent times, in present-day English, particularly [5].
Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation [2].
Rayevska thinks that derivative and compound words, as lexemes, have naturally the properties revealed in their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. But there are cases when some semantic elements of such words do not find their formal expression and remain in "deep sense word-structure" [5].
Meshkov defines that in English words can be simple, derivative and compound. A simple word consists of a root to which morphological flexions can join: for example table , book are simple words. A derivative is a word which is formed by adding some affixes: for example, speaker , government , to bed are derivatives. Thus a verb to bed on a morphological structure is a simple word, and in this sense does not differ, from a noun, a bed , however, a verb is the product of the word-formation act (conversion) and, therefore, to bed is a derivative word. Consequently, morphological and word-formation structure of word can not coincide from the point of view of their divisibility and indivisibility [4].
A compound word is a word which appeared as a result of addition two or more bases: for example: blackboard , handcraft , weekend . Also in linguistic literature it is accepted to determine derivative compound words, these are compound words which have one or more derivative affixes.
13) Conversion as a modern way of word formation (term conversion+ examples!, noun and verb - which one is a source word?)
