MORPHOLOGY, PART 2

MORE ON FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES

Morphemes can also be divided into the two categories of content and function morphemes, a distinction that is conceptually distinct from the free-bound distinction, but that partially overlaps with it in practice.

Content Morphemes: morphemes that have semantic content; that is, they either have some kind of independent, identifiable meaning or indicate a change in meaning when added to a word.

Function Morphemes: morphemes that serve only to provide information about grammatical function by relating certain words in a sentence to each other. Free morphemes can also be function morphemes, e.g., prepositions, articles, pronouns, and conjunctions.
The concept of the morpheme does not directly map onto the units of sound that represent morphemes in speech. To do this, linguists developed the concept of the allomorph. Here is the definition given in Language Files.

Allomorphs: Nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar. For example, the English plural morpheme can appear as [s] as in cats, [z] as in dogs, or ['z] as in churches. Each of these three pronunciations is said to be an allomorph of the same morpheme.
Perhaps the most significant distinction among types of morphemes is another one that appears to be universal in the languages of the world: the distinction between derivational and inflectional morphemes.
 

INFLECTIONAL VS. DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Derivational Morphemes: (from Language Files 5.1)

1) Change the part of speech or the meaning of a word. e.g., -ment added to a verb forms a noun, judg-ment, re-activate means "activate again."

2) Are not required by syntax. They typically indicate semantic relations within a word, but no syntactic relations outside the word..., e.g., un-kind relates un- "not" to kind but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word -- note that the same word can be used in he is unkind and they are unkind.

3) Are usually not very productive -- derivational morphemes generally are selective about what they'll combine with, e.g., the suffix -hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others. e.g., friend, daughter, or candle.

4) Typically occur before inflectional suffixes, e.g., govern-ment-s: -ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix.

5) May be prefixes or suffixes (in English), e.g. pre-arrange, arrange-ment.

Inflectional morphology: the way in which words vary (or "inflect") in order to express grammatical contrasts in sentences, such as singular/plural or past/present tense... Boy and boys, for example, are two forms of the "same" word; the choice between them, singular vs. plural, is a matter of grammar and thus the business of inflectional morphology. (Crystal, p. 90.)

Inflectional Morphemes: (from Language Files 5.1)

1) Do not change meaning or part of speech, e.g., big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives.

2) Are required by the syntax. They typically indicate syntactic or semantic relations between different words in the sentence, e.g., Nim love-s banana-s: -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, relating it to the 3rd singular subject Nim.

3) Are very productive. They typically occur with all members of some large class of morphemes, e.g., the plural morpheme -s occurs with almost all nouns.

4) Occur at the margin of a word, after any derivational morphemes, e.g., ration-al-iz-ation-s: -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word.

5) Are suffixes only (in English).

Some English morphemes, by category

HOW TO DESCRIBE AN AFFIX:
some examples from DERIVATIONAL morphology

un-
is added to a verb (tie)
to give a verb(untie)

un-
is added to an adjective (happy)
to give an adjective (happy)

-al
is added to a noun(institution)
to give an adjective (institutional)

-ize
is added to an adjective (concrete)
to give a verb (concretize)

What is the meaning of the affix?

Are derivational affixes sensitive to the historical source of the roots they attach to?

According to Hans Marchand, who wrote a book entitled The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word Formation, (University of Alabama Press, 1969), the suffix -ize comes originally from the Greek -izo. Many words ending with this suffix passed from Ecclesiastical Greek into Latin, where, by the fourth century, they had become established as verbs with the ending -izare, such as barbarizare, catechizare, christianizare. In Old French we find many such verbs, belonging primarily to the ecclesistical sphere: baptiser (11th c.), canoniser (13th c.), exorciser (14th c.).

The first -ize words to be found in English are loans with both a French and Latin pattern such as baptize (1297), catechize, and organize (both 15th c.) Towards the end of the 16th century, however, we come across many new formations in English, such as bastardize, equalize, popularize, and womanize. The formal and semantic patterns were the same as those from the borrowed French and Latin forms, but owing to the renewed study of Greek, the educated had become more familiar with its vocabulary and used the patterns of Old Greek word formation freely.

Between 1580 and 1700, the disciplines of literature, medicine, natural science and theology introduced a great deal of new terminology into the language. Some of the terms still in use today include criticize, fertilize, humanize, naturalize, satirize, sterilize, and symbolize. The growth of science contributed vast numbers of -ize formations through the 19th century and into the 20th.

The -ize words collected by students in the Monday recitation section show that -ize is almost entirely restricted to Romance vocabulary, the only exceptions we found being womanize and winterize. Even though most contemporary English speakers are not aware of which words in their vocabulary are from which source, apparently, in coining new words, they have respected this distinction.

The major differences between derivational and inflectional morphology

Constituent structure of morphemes

To figure out how to draw the diagram, we need to see whether un- or -able can be attached directly to use. According to Language Files, "The prefix un-, meaning 'not', attaches only to adjectives and creates new words that are also adjectives. (Compare with unkind, unwise, and unhappy.) The suffix -able, on the other hand, attaches to verbs and forms words that are adjectives. (Compare with stoppable, doable, and washable.) Therefore, un- cannot attach to use, since use is a verb and not an adjective. However, if -able attaches first to the stem use, then it creates an adjective, usable, and the prefix un- is allowed to combine with it. Thus, the formation of the word unusable is a two-step process whereby use and -able attach first, then un- attaches to the word usable."

Now let's consider the word unlockable. We can see that there are two different meanings for this word: the one corresponding to the left-hand figure, meaning "not lockable," and the one corresponding to the right-hand figure, meaning "able to be unlocked."

By making explicit the different possible hierarchies for a single word, we can better understand why its meaning might be ambiguous.  

[On to the next lecture]