Form Of The Word example essay topic

Words and Morphemes The Morpheme In order to describe the form of the linguistic expressions (phrases, sentences, texts) in a language, we must describe how those complex expressions are built from smaller parts, until ultimately we which the atoms of linguistic form. The term morpheme is used to refer to an atom of linguistic form. Most languages have a word like the English word 'word', that appears at first to refer to precisely the sorts of minimal linguistic objects we have in mind. But there are two reasons to reject 'word' as the label for the minimal unit of linguistic form: The term 'word' is ambiguous, referring to at least three different sorts of object. In many languages, linguistic expressions we would want to identify as words are in fact structurally complex. We consider the second of these points here; the first is taken up below.

The following are all words of English: cat cats cat+s catty cat+y help helped help+ed unhelpful un+help+full bake bakery bak+er baker bak+er dedicate dedication dedicate+ion rededicate re+dedicate re+dedicate+ion+ing+s establish establishment establish+men antidisestablishmentarianism anti+dis+establish+men+are+an+ism The words in the centre column can be broken down into parts, as indicated in the right-hand column. It is not obvious that those in the left-hand column can be factored in the same way. A mono morphemic word like 'help' is structurally complex in one sense; it can be decomposed into distinct phonological elements (sounds, if you will), each associated with some configuration of the speech organs. The same is true of 'helped' of course, but that is not what leads up to segment 'helped' into two morphemes: help+ed (/help+t/). The intuition that leads us to divide 'helped' into two parts is that each part is associated with a meaning. Thus, the usual definition of morpheme is something like the following: A morpheme is the minimal unit of linguistic expression that is associated with a meaning.

The term 'duality of patterning' was current in the 1960's to refer to this design feature of human language; that phonological objects without meaning combine to form meaningful atoms, which themselves combine to form complex linguistic expressions. Types of Morphemes The standard typology of morphemes classifies them according to their: freedom of occurrence free bound morphological function root stem affix mode of attachment prefix suffix infix reduplication Free and Bound Morphemes Free morphemes are those that can occur alone, as mono morphemic words; bound morphemes always occur in combination with some other morpheme: It is often the case, in a morphologically-complex word, that none of the component morphemes are free, as in: ante++ian or in the set: guess aggress aggression aggressive digress digression digressive regress regression regressive or, conversely, that none are bound: silver beet baby-sit tearoom side-saddle Root, Stem, and Affix In the following table, the words in each row and in each column have a morpheme in common (with some allowance for column 1): work seem live book works seems lives books working seeming living booking worked seemed lived booked But we would also probably want to say that the forms in the same column are more closely related to one another than those in the same row. We might think of the former as 'different forms of the same word', while the latter accidentally happen to share a morpheme. In a morphologically complex word, the morpheme that carries the central element of meaning is the root morpheme; those bound morphemes that operate on or modify the meaning of the root are affixes. So, in the above table, the rows share a common root, and the columns, a common affix. Morphologically-complex forms like those in the final set in the preceding section have more than one root morpheme.

Such forms are termed compounds. The term stem is applied to the form of a root to which an affix is added. In English, the stem is usually the same for all affixed forms of the same root, so the need for a distinction between root and stem is not obvious. In other languages, the basis for the distinction is clearer. The following table gives present, preterite, and present subjunctive forms for the two Portuguese verbs can tar 'to sing' and ap render 'to learn " present indicative preterite present subjunctive singular plural singular plural singular plural 1st canto cant amos canter cant amos can te cant emos 2nd cant as can tais can taste can tastes can tes canters 3rd cant a can tam canto u cant aram can te cant em 1st apr endo 2nd 3rd apre nde Each verb has at least three distinct stems -- one consonant-final, one a-final, and one e-final -- to which the following affixes are added: pres indic pret pres subj sing plur sing plur sing plur 1st -o -mos -i -mos - -mos 2nd -s -is -ste -step -s -is 3rd - -m -u -ram - -m (As in other Romance languages, which stem is used in which tense depends on the class of verb.) Affix Types A prefix is an affix that is attached in front of a stem. A suffix is an affix that is attached after a stem.

All English affixes (at least under the most common analyses of English morphology) are either prefixes or suffixes. Indeed, most affixes in most languages are either prefixes or suffixes. A is a combination of a prefix and a suffix, functioning as a unit with a single meaning. Forms like Malay ke-... -an and peng-... -an: hab is 'finish' 'outcome' ada 'exist, be' 'existence' are often analyzed as. The term infix is applied to affixes like Tagalog -um- and -in-, as in: sul at 'write' program a 'plan' ( Sp. program a) ul an inulin 'attack' The placement of an infix is not defined in terms of the periphery of the stem, but in terms of some other phonological condition (s) that might result in the infix appearing within the root to which it is affixed. In the Tagalog case, the appropriate condition might be formulated as: insert before the first vowel of the stem If the stem is vowel-initial, the infixes give the appearance of being simple prefixes.

English allows the in fixation of two-syllable expletives under phonological conditions rather more complex than those governing the Tagalog infixes: fantastic fan-bloody-tactic detach de-bloody-tach absolutely also-bloody-lately Wooloomooloo Wooloomoo-bloody-loo Canberra Can-bloody-berra The expletive appears: immediately before the syllable bearing the main stress in forms with at least one foot preceding the main stress In reduplication, the form of the affix is a function of the stem to which it is attached; the affix is a copy of [some portion of] the stem. Reduplication may be complete or partial, and, if partial, may be prefix al, suffix al, or infix al. Gilbertese, a Micronesian language, has both prefix al and suffix al reduplication: bike 'sand' bike bike 'sandy' anti 'ghost' ant inti 'haunted' ko rom 'to husk' 'to continue husking' 'to engage in husking' Gilbertese Bimoric Suffix Reduplication Gilbertese prefix al reduplication copies the first mora of the stem (C [on sonant] V [owe] or V [owe], depending on the form of the word), and lengthens the vowel. Gilbertese suffix al reduplication copies the final two moral of the stem (CVC V, CVS, VCR, VV, or N [a sal] CV, depending on the form of the word). Non- Morphology When a poly morphemic word can be factored into discrete continuous component morphemes, the morphological structure of the word is said to be. Much of English morphology is: devil+ish+ly mus+ing+s un+repent+ent forget+full+ness In all Germanic languages, including English, a contrast is traditionally drawn between those verbs whose past tense is formed by suffixing an apical consonant, and those whose past tense is formed by internal (and non-linear) modification of the non-past stem.

The former are called weak verbs, and the latter, strong verbs. In modern standard English, all weak verbs have exactly four distinct forms; for example: bare present / infinitive 3's present present participle past past participle work works working worked worked play plays playing played played die dies dying died died while strong verbs may have five forms: bare present / infinitive 3's present present participle past past participle sing sings singing sang sung break breaks breaking broke broken take takes taking took taken drive drives driving drove driven dive dives diving dove dove dig digs digging dug dug cut cuts cutting cut cut A few English nouns have non- plurals: goose geese mouse mice man men The morphological structure of English strong past tense forms like dive / dove and of irregular plurals like goose / geese ) is non-linear (non-) because it is not possible to segment forms like dove into two continuous morphemic blocks, one with the meaning 'dive' and the other, 'past'. Non-linear morphology is most elaborated in Semitic languages like Arabic, as exemplified in Fine gan et al. 1997: 90-91 and in many other texts. Notes 1. Portuguese first conjugation (or a-stem) verbs like can tar 'to sing' might be analysed as having a fourth stem in -o, used in the 3rd singular preterite.