Morfologia e sintassi

Morphology

What is morphology?

The study of language comprises:

• Phonology
• Lexicon, morphology
• Sintax
• Pragmatics

Morphology

1. Form of words

2. Word formation

Functions

Inflection: Has grammatical function like plural, singular, present, past, comparison…

Word formation: Creates new words.

Ex:

• To upcycle: To give new high value to recycled objects
• Upcycler: A person who upcycles
• Upcycling: The activity of creative reuse
• Upcycled-dresses: Dresses that have been upcycled

Derivation: Driver – Compounding: Bus-driver.

Definitions

Phonological forms: Orthographic and phonetic representation of words

Ex: drive - /draiv/

Lexeme: Different forms of the same word

Ex: Be – was, is, were, am, being, been, are, be

Lexeme Word-form realisations

Dictionary entry, of be (types). Abstract item

Caratteristiche

• A lexeme has:
• (At least) one form (Ex: drive)
• A syntactic category (drive=verb)
• Meaning (gloss of drive=‘direct the movement of a vehicle’)

The link between form and meaning is arbitrary.

Part of speech

(Also word class/ syntactic category):

• Location of the word in phrases
• Syntactic properties

Ex: Nouns can be preceded by articles/adjectives. Prepositions go before nouns. Nouns can take a plural marker. Adjective and verbs cannot take plural marker.

• Nouns: number (sing, plur), genre (m, f, n)
• Verbs: tense (past, present…), person (sing: -s), aspect (ex: -ing, -ed), mood (would, should…)
• Adjectives: degree (-comp./superl.)
• Pronouns: case (nom, gen, acc, dat…)
• Prepositions
• Adverbs
• Articles: a/an, det/inde
• Interjections: ehm, oh…

Gloss = significante

The gloss is a brief notation, a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. The gloss is the word’s semantic representation. Words are associated with a gloss that explains their meaning/s, a word can have more than one meaning.

Grammatical words (Also morphosyntactic words): From which it is grammatically specified.

Summing Up

Basics

1) Drives

Word form: drives

Word class/part of speech: verb

Grammatical word: present indicative

Lexeme (dictionary entrance): [DRIVE]

2) Books

Word form: books

Word class/part of speech: noun

Grammatical word: plural

Lexeme (dictionary entrance): [BOOK]

3) Lexeme: Bello – Nice

Types= word forms

Ex: bello bella, belli, belle, bellissim-o, -a, -i, -e. – nice, nicer, nicest.

Tokens= number of occurrences of each type.

Ex: Meg era bella. Non bella come comunemente inteso. Cioè, i suoi occhi non erano belli, la bocca non era bella, il naso non era di per sé bello, ma nel complesso il suo volto aveva armonia ed espressività. Le sue mani erano però bellissime.

Lexeme: [BELLO]

Types: 4 (bella, bello, belli, bellissime)

Tokens: 6

4) La bambola è bella. Gli occhi sono belli, il naso bello, con un vestito bellissimo.

Adjectives: 4 (bella, belli, bello, bellissimo)

Tokens: 4 (1 bella, 1 belli, 1 bello, 1 bellissimo).

Morphemes

Definition: The smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.

Morpheme, phoneme → structuralism

Caratteristiche:

• Homogeneous and indivisible linguistic units
• Words are made of morphemes
• Every morpheme is represented phonologically by a MORPH.
• Morphemes can be organized in syntagmatic constituents

Morph = fonema

• Homogeneous and indivisible linguistic units → Ex: The 1 morpheme → Farmers – farm -er -s 3 morphemes, 3 units
• *fa-r-m → no meaningful units, no smaller morphemes.
• *fa,*r, *m → no meaning in English (at least connected to the idea of farming)

Words are made of morphemes

Ex: Ball – 1 ball, is made with 1 morpheme

Farmers – 1 far, 2 er, 3s, Farmers is made of 3 morphemes

Morpheme vs. Morph

Every morpheme is represented phonologically by a morph. A morph represents a morpheme.

Biunivocity principle

• Morphemes: farm [meaning: cultivate] -er [meaning: person who does x] -s [meaning: pl]
• Morphs: /fa:m/ -/ ə/ -/z/ → Morph Phonetic representation of a morpheme

Ex: Cats Cat+s 2 Morphemes, -s is a morpheme The morph is [s]

Ex: Dogs Dog+s 2 Morphemes, -s is a morpheme The morph is [z]

Ex: Foxes Fox+s 2 Morphemes, -s is a morpheme The morph is [iz]

Morphemes can be organized in syntagmatic constituents.

Ex: Farmers Farm – er – s Farm – er

Farm

Simple/Free Morphemes vs. Complex/Bound Morphemes

Simple/Free morpheme → Base = struttura fonologica semplice → possono stare da se

Complex morpheme → Morfema più lungo scrittura fonologica più lunga

Ex:

• Address – Addressee
• Employ – Employee
• Happy – Unhappy
• Able – Unable
• Mean – Meaningless
• Son – Son in law
• Law
• House – Greenhouse
• Green

Free vs. Bound Morphemes

Bound morphemes are always attached to free morphemes/bases. A free morpheme can occur on its own, but bound cannot.

There are some kind of Bound → Affixes: prefixes, suffixes, interfixes

• -ee, -er suffixes
• All Un-, dis- prefixes of them are Affixes
• Infix-bloody- abso-bloody-lutely

Infix within the root (Radice): Arabic

Interfix between stem and affix: English, Italian (Ex: capit-ol-ino)

Circumfix around the base: un-accept-able

Infixes Per enfatizzare in maniera ironica

• Abso-bloody-lutely – expletive infix
• Edu-ma-cation → Saxo-ma-phone Ironic sophistication
• Decoloni-al-ization, -al is an infix?
• No, de+colony+al+iz+ation colonial

Recursivity is a property of suffixes

Root, Stem, and Base

Root bases for affixation (radice di parola)

Ex: Ita. libr- , Eng. walk-

Stem base of inflection (parte che ti spiega grammaticalmente la parola)

Ex: Ita. libr-o/i, Eng. Walk-ing

Base where affixes are attached (root + stem insieme)

Ex: Ita. Libr-etto, Eng. Walk-er

Root a root cannot be analysed further into morphemes. Focus on indivisibility.

Roots are bases for affixation. Focus on the indivisible part of a complex word WALK-

Ex: Ita. libr-, Eng. Walk

Stem a stem is the base of inflection (occasionally of derivation). Focus is on the base of inflection WALK-S, WALK-ING, WALK-ED

Ex: Ita. libr-o/i, Eng. Walk-ing

In the book, it is defined as the phonological shape (the form) of the base.

part Base of a word to which an affix is attached. Base for affixation (inflection/derivation) WALK-ER, WALKER-S, WALKie-talkie/walk-over

Ex: Eng. Walk-er, Farm-er, Colonial-ize

Ita. libr-etto, librett-ino

In English root and stem coincide (see walk, farm). Sometimes root, stem and base coincide (see walk) walk, walk-ing, walk-er.

WALK in walk-s is a root, a stem, a base. WALKER in walker-s is a base/stem not a (as it is made of walk+er)

To Sum Up

Walk is the root of walker

Walker is the base of walker-s

But the root is still walk

Free and Bound Morphemes

Free Morphemes

• Car, buy, happy, a, the, at

Bound morphemes

Car-s, buy-ing, buy-er, happy-ness

*An-s/*-er was…

Bound Root (stem)

Bound roots are root that are not used without an affix in the language (synchronically)

• Inflection Stem (Free m.) + suff Bike-s
• Derivation (pref.) + Base (free m.) + (suff.) (suff.) Driv-er
• Composition base + base (free m. +free m.) Truck driver

We will talk about the combinatorial properties of affixes:

• *de-colony – coloni-al-ize
• *de-colonial – de-coloni-al-iza-tion
• *summari-al – summar-ize

Concatenative Morphology

Bike-s → base-suffix

Driv-er → base-suffix

De-coloni-al-ize → prefix-base-suffix-suffix

Green-house → base-base

Element1+element2+element3…

Non-Concatenative Morphology

N→V

Ex: water – to water

Ex: google – to google

V→N

Ex: to walk – have a walk

Ex: to hug – give a hug

Conversion/ zero-suffixation/ transposition

• Italian avverbio= bene – nome= il bene;
• nome= zappa – verbo= zappa-re

Deletion of material

• Ex: Elisabeth – Liz
• Lab – Laboratory
• Math – Mathematics

Truncation/Clipping

• Italian Giovanni – Gio , Professore – Prof

Amalgams of different words

• Ex: smog – smo-ke+fo-g
• Brangelina – Brad+Angelina
• Brunch – Breakfast+Lunch

Blends/Portmanteau words

Lewis Carroll in 1871 in Through the looking glass <> baule ad armadio/composite

Acronyms

• Ex: United Kingdom – UK
• Unidentified Flying Objects – UFO
• Personal Computer – PC

Italian

• Tassa Rifiuti – TARI

Irregular Inflection (Suppletivity)

• Give – gave
• Mouse – mice
• Far – further

See also Italian fare – fecero

Inflection vs. Derivation

Differences

• Derivation inflection Encode lexical meaning Encode grammatical categories
• Isn’t syntactically relevant Is syntactically relevant
• Before/after/within base Suffixes after stem
• Recursivity: suffix-suffix-suffix Infl. suffixes after derivative suffixes
• Change the part of speech Do not change the part of speech
• Transparent but often opaque Morphosemantically transparent, usually
• Restricted in productivity Fully productive
• Not limited to suffixes Always suffixational

Morphotactic/Morphosemantic Transparency vs. Opacity

Property of morphological operation:

• A complex word can be easily segmented into its components parts stem/base+affix
• The meaning of a complex word results from the meaning of its component parts meaning of the base+meaning of the affix

Diagrammatic Iconicity

Addition in form= Addition in meaning

Ex: Turk adam+lar= adam+affix plur.

English man - men

English water – to water

German Hund – Hon

General Notions: Morpheme

Morpheme is a sign. A sign: in semeiotics a sign is something that stands for something else.

• Ex: a red traffic light → stop!
• Ex: -s plural; -a in Italiano singolare femminile

Morpheme has a minimal linguistic unit

Morpheme→ Unit made of form and meaning

They have a meaning and a physical form (their sound)

Ex: cat [k æ t] morph morpheme → ‘cat’ meaning

Ex: Complex morpheme Unhappy → [ ]+[hæpi]=[ n’hæpi] n ‘not’+’happy’= ‘not happy’

Unhappy is a complex sign. It stands for the combined meaning of the morphemes involved. That is ‘meaning of <un> + meaning for <happy>’

The meaning of ‘unhappy’ is a function of the meaning of its parts. Its meaning is called compositional

Ex: ‘interview’ is a complex sign. It doesn’t stand for the combined meaning of the morphemes involved. Meaning of ‘inter’ + ‘view’ is not ‘interview’.

Caratteristiche The meanings of interview and lately:

• Are not predictable