MONDAY 9/22

Levels of Linguistic Analysis; and Morphology, Part 1

INTRODUCTION
This is the first of three 2-lecture units dealing with the structure of language. Crystal's section 13 on Linguistic Levels (pp.82-83) presents various models of linguistic structure, containing anywhere from 2 to 6 levels. In this course, we present a three-level model of the core of linguistic structure, consisting of:
(1) The minimal units of meaning (morphemes), and how they are structured into words: 9/22 - 9/24
(2) The sound structure of language: phonetics (9/29) and phonology (10/1)
(3) The structure of sentences: syntax (10/6 - 10/8)
Of these three levels, Crystal deals with only one (phonetics and phonology) in any detail, and for this reason we have supplementary readings assigned for Morphology and Syntax from "Language Files", a publication of the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University. The relevant sections will be distributed in class. Accordingly, the lecture notes for Morphology and Syntax are not as detailed as the ones we usually provide, since Language Files gives you the detail you need.

READINGS

Crystal

13 Linguistic levels (82-83)
16 Grammar (88-89)

Language Files

5.1 Morphology - the Minimal Units of Meaning
5.2 Exercises in Isolating Morphemes

Note: You will not be responsible for Crystal 15 - Statistical structure of language. pp. 86-87.

HOMEWORK: due in your section meeting, week of September 29.

Language Files:
pp.138-139 - do questions 1-6
p. 142 a-e; j-n; s-w
p. 153 - 1.1 Turkish
p. 155 - 1.6 Cebuano
p. 157 - 2.1 Swahili

LECTURE NOTES

WORDS The basic concepts in any field are often the most difficult to define, and the concept of word is no exception. Crystal enumerates five tests, mentioning that the first-listed ones are the most reliable, and the most universally applicable. "Phonetic boundary" (#4) is only applicable in lucky cases; and the problems with #5, "Semantic units" can be seen by trying to figure out the contribution of on to the sentence Crystal cites to show us how problematic the concept of semantic units is.
1. Potential pause 
2. Indivisibility 
3. Minimal free forms (this was Bloomfield's criterion) 
4. Phonetic boundaries: an example is German Hund (pronounced with a final -t, indicating that it is word-final), vs Bundesbank 
5. Semantic units: I switched on the light 
Crystal defines a word as follows:
&quotthe smallest unit of grammar that can stand alone as a complete utterance,
separated by spaces in written language and potentially by pauses in speech."

Notice that this definition does not say anything about meaning.
This is because a word is not the minimal unit of meaning in linguistic structure.
The minimal unit of meaning is the morpheme, defined as follows by Language Files:
&quotthe smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function."

These definitions may give rise to lots of questions. Two of the most important ones are:
(1) Are words and morphemes universal in human language?
(2) What is the relationship between words and morphemes?

The answer to (1) is "yes". Although not all languages have exactly the same categories of words, they all have words, and almost all share the major categories words come in. What traditional grammar calls the "parts of speech", linguists call either word classes (Crystal) or lexical categories (Language Files). Crystal gives the following list of eight, for English:

noun
pronoun
verb
adjective
adverb
conjunction
preposition
interjection
Languages may differ in some details, for example, languages with a basic Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order tend not to have prepositions. Instead, they usually have &quotpostpositions", that come to the right of the nouns an English speaker would think of them as &quotintroducing". In the syntax section of the class (10/8), we will see that verb-final languagesare better thought of as &quothead-final ", in that many of their constituent structures typically occur to the right rather than to the left as in English. Here is an example of a postposition (-se) in Hindi:
Ram cari-se kutte-ko mara
Ram stick-with dog hit
&quotRam hit the dog with an stick".
All languages also have morphemes, although the classes they fall into are not quite as constrained as the classes languages use for categorizing words.

MORPHEMES, as minimal units of meaning or of grammatical function, may differ from each other in many respects. Here is an initial list of examples:

car
spider
thank
true
succotash
-ed
un-
Bound Morphemes: cannot occur on their own, e.g. anti-, -tion. The main classes of bound morphemes are the prefixes and suffixes, but infixes are also possible -- an affix which is inserted within a stem.

Free Morphemes: can occur as separate words, e.g. car, yes.

In a morphologically complex word, i.e., one composed of a free morpheme and any number of bound affixes, the free morpheme is referred to as the stem, root, or base.
Now we are ready to answer the second question, dealing with the relationship between words and morphemes. The best way to explain this relationship is to break the question down into a series of simpler questions. Along the way, we will also consider the relationship between morphemes and syllables.

Can a word = a morpheme?

 Yes, all of the following words also consist of one and only one morpheme:
Word (=Morpheme)  Word Class 
car  noun 
thank  verb 
true  adjective 
succotash  noun 
gosh  interjection 
under  preposition 
she  pronoun 
so  conjunction 
often  adverb 
Are there morphemes that are not words?

 Yes, none of the following morphemes is a word:
Morpheme  Category 
un-  prefix 
dis-  prefix 
-ness  suffix 
-s  suffix 
kempt (?)  bound morpheme 
(un-kemp-t) (?) 
shevel (?)  bound morpheme 
(dis-shevell-ed) 
(Our class discussion of kempt and shevel will be followed up in the notes for 9/24)

 

Can a word = a syllable?

 Yes, all of the following words also consist of one and only one syllable:
Word  Word Class 
car  noun 
work  verb 
in  preposition 
whoops  interjection 
Are there morphemes that are not syllables?

 Yes, some of the following morphemes consist of more than one syllable; some of them are less than a syllable:
Morpheme  Word Class 
under  preposition (> syll.) 
spider  noun (> syll.) 
-s  'plural' (< syll.) 
Lastly, are there syllables that are not morphemes?

 Yes, many syllables are "less" than morphemes. Just because you can break a word into two or more syllables does not mean it must consist of more than one morpheme!

 
Word  Syllables  Comments 
kayak  (ka.yak)  neither ka nor yak is a morpheme 
broccoli  (bro.ko.li) or (brok.li)  neither bro nor brok nor ko nor li is a morpheme 
angle  (ang.gle)  neither ang nor gle is a morpheme 
jungle  (jung.gle)  neither jung nor gle is a morpheme 
We must conclude that there is no necessary relationship between syllables, morphemes, and words! Each is an independent unit of structure.

 [On to the next lecture]