Appunti lingua inglese

Morphology and the anatomy of words

Morphology focuses on the anatomy of words — the way words are formed, including their internal structure, rules, and the creation of neologisms (new words).

What is a word?

Words can be defined from many viewpoints:

• Orthographic
• Phonological
• Lexical item/Lexeme

By leaving space one from the other, we differentiate grammatical word forms and semantic words.

Content words vs function words

Content words give information, for example, "where," while function words serve a grammatical function, like articles.

Word-forms or grammatical words

Lexemes are abstract units, while types and tokens are also important concepts:

• Types refer to abstract elements such as "the," "students," "borrowed," "books," "from," "library."
• Tokens indicate the repetition of types, e.g., 8 tokens in "The students borrowed the books from the library."

In morphology, we focus on the anatomy of words — the way words are formed, including internal structure, rules, and the creation of neologisms (new words).

Defining a word

• Orthographic
• Phonological
• Lexical item/Lexeme

Grammatical word forms are abstract ideas found in dictionaries, whereas semantic words involve the lexicon, such as "give" instead of "gave."

Content words vs function words

Content words provide information, while function words have grammatical functions, such as articles.

Word-forms or grammatical words

Lexemes represent abstract units, and types and tokens are crucial:

• Types are abstract elements: "the," "students," "borrowed," "books," "from," "library."
• Tokens are repetitions of types, with 8 tokens in "The students borrowed the books from the library."

Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units, akin to Lego bricks that can be combined. Each morpheme has both form and meaning. Some words can be broken down into smaller parts, such as:

• Students
• Borrowed
• Books

Free and bound morphemes

A free morpheme is also a word, while a bound morpheme is never a word alone; they can't stand alone, like "happiness" = "happy" + "ness."

Morphemes and words are not necessarily the same, with exceptions like "cranberry," a unique morpheme that can't stand alone as it doesn't exist alone.

Simplex vs complex words

• Simplex words are formed by one morpheme.
• Complex words are formed by more than one morpheme, such as "dog" vs. "doggy."

Morphology vs etymology

Words like "sustain," "contain," and "pertain" derive "tain" from Latin "tenere" (to hold), while "reduce," "deduce," and "seduce" get "duc" from Latin (lead), and "pedal," "pedestrian," "biped" have "ped" from Latin (foot). Nowadays, many are unaware of these Latin origins, so they may seem simplex despite being complex.

Morphemes vs syllables

A morpheme is a unit of meaning, whereas a syllable is a unit of sound. For example, "cats" has two morphemes in one syllable. The number of morphemes may not match the number of syllables, as syllables may divide a morpheme:

• Pregnant: 3 morphemes, 2 syllables ("pre-," "-gn-," "-ent")

Morphemes

• They add meaning to a word.
• They cannot be subdivided.
• They can have any number of syllables.
• They can appear in many different words.

Tricky cases

(1) Two different meanings via the same arrangement of sounds:

• "In" meaning "not" in words like "incapable," "insufficient."
• "In" meaning "into, within," as in "invade," "include."
• "Gon" as "birth type origin" in "gonorrhea," and as "knee, angle" in "diagonal."

(2) Two different forms with the same meaning:

• 2 forms, one meaning = 2 morphemes, different from one another.
• "Andr" as "man, male" in "android."
• "Vir" as "man, male" in "virile."

(3) Forms may be the same but from different historical pathways:

• "In" as "into, within" from Latin.
• "In" as a native English preposition.

(4) Two (or more) forms, one meaning = ONE morpheme; alternate forms of the same morpheme:

• "A/an" as different forms of a Greek morpheme meaning "not, without."

The alternate forms of a single morpheme are called allomorphs. They can organize a single form, adapting its beginning or ending sound to the sounds found in other morphemes with which it combines:

• "A cat," "an apple."

Different realizations of the same morpheme include:

• Un- in "unelegant," im- in "impolite," il- in "illegal," ir- in "irregular."

Different realizations of the morpheme {-1plur}: ...