Morphology is the branch of language study which deals with the way words are formed. An understanding of word-formation is necessary for the study of language change, grammar and also areas such as sociolinguistics and child language development.
Activity 1 Look at the following words and divide them into any parts which they seem naturally to fall into. antisocial, eats, flying, ostriches, predictable, precooked, uncouth |
Words can be split up in various ways. For example, you can divide them into syllables, and you may have done this in Activity 1. Usually this is easy, but there are some quite tricky cases. How many syllables are there in buyer, byre, higher, hire ? Syllabification is more a matter of how we say the words than of what they mean, and while this is also important, it is not primarily what we are looking at here. Being able to recognise syllables may well underlie the ability to do morphology, but in general it is a skill which does not need to be taught.
Words also consist of one or more morphemes. The basic definition of a morpheme is 'the smallest meaningful unit of language'. Many words consist of just one morpheme, e.g. cat, mouse, catapult, cattle. They cannot apparently be broken down into any smaller units of meaning. Words like, catty, catfish, moused, cows on the other hand can be broken down into smaller units of meaning; for example, cat + -ty, where cat refers to the animal and -ty to the property of being like the animal. The first syllable of catapult is not a morpheme because it does not have an identifiable meaning - it certainly does not refer to cats for example. Interestingly, even quite young children know this. The difference between cattle and cows is that cattle has no singular form, whereas cows is formed from two morphemes, cow + -s. Notice that it follows from the above that a word might easily consist of one syllable and two morphemes (e.g. eats) or two syllables and one morpheme (e.g. cattle).
Activity 2 How many morphemes does each of the following words have? basic, cynic, frantic, gnomic, nationalistic, panic, periodic, topic, uneconomic. |
Free morphemes can stand alone. Bound morphemes can only occur when joined on to another bound morpheme or to a free morpheme. Cat is a free morpheme because it occurs alone in a sentence, e.g. Please feed my cat. -ty is a bound morpheme because it can only occur when joined on to a free morpheme like cat. In a word like disrupt, there are two morphemes, but both of them are bound. Neither dis- nor -rupt can occur by themselves, but joined to each other they make a word. In a word like catfish, there are two free morphemes: both cat and fish can stand alone.
It is traditional to distinguish inflexions from derivations. Inflexions are the different forms of verbs and nouns used to mark grammatical meanings such as tense, number and case. In He reads the Guardian, the verb read is inflected by adding a morpheme to show third person singular. This morpheme is realised in speech by the sound /z/, and shown in writing by -s. Similarly, in He detested the Guardian, detested consists of two morphemes, the base morpheme detest and the inflectional suffix for the past tense, -ed. In English, inflexions are always suffixes, but in other languages they may be prefixes, or even infixes (items added to the middle of words). Some of the words in Activity 1 are inflected, e.g. eats, flying, ostriches and precooked. The inflected morphemes are underlined.
Derivations are new words which are formed by adding meaning through affixes to other words. This usually has the effect of changing the word class. For example, the verb read can have the suffix -able added to form the adjective readable, which in turn can have the prefix un- added to form another adjective unreadable, which, possibly, could have the suffix -ness added to form the noun unreadableness. (cited in Chambers Dictionary, but no examples in the COBUILD corpus). Such additions are known as derivational morphemes, either prefixes or suffixes. The -ic ending on some of the words in Activity 2 is a derivational morpheme.
The notion of "adding meaning" is not as straightforward as it might seem, especially in the case of prefixes. Take the prefix re-. We might suppose that this adds the meaning of "again". For example, He told me to rewrite my essay means He told me to write my essay again. But He told me to return his essay does not mean He told me to turn his essay again. The different pronunciations of re- in each of these cases shows that the re- is a more integral part of return than it is of repaint. The re- in return has a much less clear meaning, even though it occurs in a great many words. Many of these words already carried the re- prefix in their origin language - Latin or French. So we can see that through a diachronic process of lexical change, prefixes which may have had a clear meaning at some stage in the past lose it as the words to which they are bound become more established as lexical items in their own right or less specialised in their use. For example, remark _________ (comment) comes from the old French, has been an English word for hundreds of years, and has lost its specialised meaning of "marking something again". Remark _________ (mark again) is a much more recent addition to the language and is more specialised - e.g. the remarking of exams, essays etc. Sometimes the distinction between the less specialised and the more specialised item is not so clearly a matter of diachronic change. Consider the pair reform _________ (improve) and reform _________ (form anew). Both these words have been in the language for hundreds of years, and their origins are probably the same. But the difference in the meaning of re- is clear enough, and reinforced by the pronunciation/stress.
Notice that both categories of morpheme discussed in this section, i.e. inflexional and derivational, are bound. Free morphemes cannot be inflexional or derivational. Where a word is formed by adding one free morpheme to another, e.g. catfish, the process is known as compounding.
Morphemes do not always have a surface realisation in speech and writing. For example, in He read the Guardian, the verb read ______)is changed to read _____), when spoken, to show past tense. In this example, the spelling of the past tense form is the same as that of the base form, while the sound changes. The process, which comes into English from German, is known as vowel gradation. The verbs in I hit the road tomorrow and I hit the road yesterday are pronounced and spelt the same, but are not the same from a morphological point of view, since the second is a past tense version of the first. The past tense form hit , therefore, can be said to consist of two morphemes, the lexical morpheme hit and the grammatical morpheme 'past tense', which in this case has no overt manifestation. It is thus theoretically possible to argue that hit in I hit the road tomorrow also consists of two morphemes, the lexical morpheme hit and the grammatical morpheme 'present tense'. Grammatical morphemes are thus fundamentally abstract categories which usually have surface realisations, but not always. Notice that inflexions do not alter the basic meaning of lexical morphemes, but add information about their grammar.
Activity 3 In the following words, say how many morphemes there are and whether they are inflectional or derivational. cracked, cracker, linger, singer, harbinger, immense, immodest, harness, indissolubility, beat, disruption, were. |
One of the problems involved in examining word-formation is deciding what a word is. We are used to the idea that English is made up from identifiable words, but there are many languages where the concept 'word' is less easy to define, and even in English there are difficult cases. In principle, languages tend to fall into relatively distinct types regarding their word-formation processes: isolating, agglutinating and inflecting.
Isolating languages consist of a set of monosyllabic 'items', mostly meaningful in themselves, which do not alter their form, but which may be combined to form new meanings. The less combinable the items are into new words, the more isolating is the language. They are best thought of as either morphemes (components of words) or as words in their own right. Grammatical meaning (e.g. past time, or completedness in the verb) is expressed by using one of these items in the right part of the sentence and by arranging the items in the right order. The Chinese for they have paid us is:
ta + men |
yi + jing |
fu + guo |
wo + men |
qian |
le |
pron.+pl. |
one + time |
pay + past |
pron.+ pl. |
completed | |
'they' |
'already' |
'did pay' |
'us' |
money |
'have done the action' |
Each monosyllable is represented by one character in writing. None of these items ever change their form, but some of them typically combine to make 'words' e.g. ta + men.
Agglutinating languages tend to consist of lexical words, often of more than one syllable, and a set of morphemic affixes which can be added to these words to express grammatical meanings. The Swahili for they have paid us is wametulipa, written as one string.
wa |
me |
tu |
lipa |
they |
completed |
us |
pay |
Notice that the lexical word lipa itself does not change its form, but has a series of components added to it. This is similar to the derivational word-formation process of English.
Inflecting languages consist of words of varying length, many of which are capable of changing their form in at least one way, and sometimes in several ways in order to express grammatical meaning. The French for they have paid us is ils nous ont payés .
ils |
nous |
ont |
payés |
they |
us |
have |
paid |
Here, the word ont is an inflexion of the word avoir. It represents several morphemes at once, i.e. the lexical verb avoir, third person reference, plural number, and present tense. Such inflexions are termed 'irregular', because the resulting form ont is so unlike the original form avoir. The é in payés is a 'regular' inflexional morpheme which, here, combines with the avoir to represent completedness. The -s at the end of payés is a further morpheme representing plural number, but also showing agreement with the nous. It is quite redundant from the point of view of the meaning of the sentence, but language in general often is redundant.
Where does English stand in this scheme? It is important to note that the three types described above are types, and that few languages conform 100% to the ideal. English makes use of all three methods of word formation. Like isolating languages, it joins meaningful lexical items together in compounds. Like agglutinating languages it uses affixes to alter meaning and like inflecting languages it also changes the form of some words.
Activity 4 Which morphemes can you identify, and which of the tendencies described above are operating, in the underlined words in the following? A: 'John's car's been broken into.' C: 'Oh, no! Where did it happen?' A: 'Outside the flats. In the carpark.' C: 'Did they steal anything?' A: 'No, it's got an immobiliser and they couldn't get the radio out either.' |
As discussed above in the case of French ont, verbs in inflecting languages can change their form to reflect different types of meaning, such as when the action takes place, how many people are performing the action, what the attitude of the speaker is to the performance of the action, and so on. English is not particularly complex in this regard, because over the centuries some of the inflections have been neutralised or lost. In other words, the language has 'decided' that it can get its meaning across perfectly well without the need for such inflections. Another process which has occurred over the centuries is that the evolution of inflection has not been uniform in all parts of the English-speaking community. One of the most obvious markers of dialect is in the matter of verb inflection, or variation in choice of inflection. In the US dove is the past tense of dive, but not in the UK. In the UK, done is the effective past tense of do as a main verb in many dialects: I reckon the lads done OK today. Where do is an auxiliary, the past tense is still did in these dialects: Did the lads do OK? not Done the lads do OK?
Verbs show tense to indicate the time of the action. French has several tenses, e.g. present, past, imperfect and future. In each case the form of the verb alters to show the time reference. It is also possible to combine main verbs with what are called auxiliary verbs (such as avoir) to make new 'tenses', e.g. perfect, past perfect. Linguists disagree somewhat on whether these latter forms should be called tenses.
Using a strict definition of tense related to form, English has only two tenses, present and past: the train leaves at four vs. the train left at four Forms like leaves and left, which show the time of the action, are known as finite forms.
To talk about the future we use a variety of other methods, e.g. I leave tomorrow (present tense), I shall leave tomorrow (auxiliary + main verb), I am leaving tomorrow (auxiliary + main verb) etc. Forms such as am leaving consist of an inflexion of the verb be used as an auxiliary + an inflexion of the verb leave. The tense is actually marked on the auxiliary, since am is present tense of be. So this form of the verb - am leaving - is usually known as the 'present continuous' or 'present progressive' form or, if you prefer a looser definition of tense, the present continuous/progressive tense.
By itself, leaving does not indicate any time reference. If we begin a sentence with the words: 'On leaving the room,...' we do not know whether the reference is past: '...he stumbled', or present (timeless): '...they usually heave a sigh of relief', or future: 'please take your belongings with you.' So leaving is known as non-finite, because by itself it does not show tense or time reference. It needs a finite verb, such as am, to combine with before tense is shown. From this it follows that am leaving, as a package, is finite.
The so-called past participle can be viewed in the same way. In he has left, has is the finite present tense form of have and left is the non-finite past participle form of leave. The finite combination has left is thus usually known as the 'present perfect' form in English (or present perfect, or simply perfect, tense if you use the looser definition). It is a compound verb form expressing completedness, partly by a process of inflexion, and partly by a process of combining isolated forms
Notice that the actual word-form left can therefore be either the finite past tense of leave, or the non-finite past participle of leave. This multiple function of the same form is quite common in English verbs. In particular, it affects the base form itself. The word leave may either be the finite present tense, as in I leave tomorrow, or a non-finite form as in I want to leave. This last example is, of course, often termed the 'infinitive', which is not so far removed from 'non-finite'.
Activity 5 For the verbs listed below, give their available forms under two headings, finite and non-finite. Some examples are done for you. Remember that not all verbs have the same number of forms, and that the same written word might occur under both headings, as with hit and left in the explanations above. |
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FINITE FORMS |
NON-FINITE FORMS | |
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move |
move, moves, moved |
move, moving, moved |
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leave |
leave, leaves, left |
leave, leaving, left |
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drink |
drink, drinks, ? |
drink, drinking, ? |
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shrink |
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lie |
||
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lay |
||
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beat |
||
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cleave |
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go |
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have |
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be |
Activity 6 Comment on the morphological structure and acceptability of the underlined forms in the following examples, all taken from the COBUILD corpus:
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