Concetti Chiave
- The morphology of words involves predictable and unpredictable meanings, distinguishing between words and larger semantic units like idioms and proverbs.
- Complex words are formed by combining smaller units called morphemes, which are identifiable and contribute to the overall meaning.
- Affixation and compounding are key processes in word formation, involving the addition of prefixes or suffixes, or combining whole words.
- Morphemes can be free or bound, with roots providing core meanings and affixes modifying or adding to these meanings.
- Morphology includes inflection and derivation, where inflection modifies existing words for grammatical purposes and derivation creates new words with different meanings.
Indice
Morfologia
The relationship between words and meanings. There are:
* words with predictable meanings: complex words
* words with unpredictable meanings
The only words whose meanings are predictable on the basis of their forms are those which are derived from known words following some precise morphological rules.
* words are the smallest syntactic units in a sentence
* lexical items are semantic units where meanings are unpredictable, they may be larger than words, but often they can coincide with them.
Complex words
they are composed of identifiable smaller parts, the morphemes (that must be: identifiable from one word to another, and contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word).
Affixation
form words which are divisible into components that carries most of the meaning and other elements that are associated with it to add some other aspects of meaning.
Compounding
forms words which are divisible into two other words. Every component can be found independently in an English dictionary. Morphemes must be identifiable from one word to another:
* identifying affixes (un, able, de, al, ize)
* identifying the core element
* identifying morphemes in words of Latin origin.
There is no necessary connection between morphemes an meaning. Complex words can be created:
* combining two or more core elements: Compounding
* adding parts to a core element: affixation
* changing the word class of a given word: conversion
* clipping a longer word: truncation
* amalgamating parts of different words
Distinguishing between morphemes
Bound and free morphemes:
* free morphemes can occur on their own
* bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to other morphemes
Roots, bases and affixes
* root: makes the most precise and concrete contribution to the words meaning, it can be free or bound.
* Base: that part of the word that is left when we remove an affix
* Affix: is attached to a root or a base and can contribute to change its meaning. It can only be bound:
* Prefix: precedes the root/base
* Suffix: follows the root/base
Construction of complex words
* Affixation: free root più affix(es); bound root più affix(es)
* Compounding: more than one free root
Scientific terms with more than one bound root.
* Allomorphy: different form realizations of a morpheme. The distribution of allomorphy may be determined by the: phonological context; morphological context; may be lexically governed
Allomorphy of adjectival -all,-ar is phonologically conditioned: the suffix is realised as -ar when the base ends in /l/, while it is realised as -al in all other cases.
In some words like explain the following morpheme is responsible for the specific realization of the base.
The indefinite article can be realized in speech as // before consonant or /n/ before vowels.
* word form: any syntactic unit different from other units.
* lexeme:an abstract entity which is realized by variant forms in different grammatical contexts.
* grammatical word: the syntactic function of a given word in its grammatical context.
Morphology has two branches
1. Inflection: morphological process by which a variant form of a given lexeme is realized according to its grammatical function in context
2. Derivation: morphological process by which new lexemes are created, that is new abstract entities with partially or totally different meanings and often new word classes.
Inflectional morphology: inflected forms are predictable, because of inflectional rules are regular and the conventional organization of lexicon.
Forms of noun: nouns belongs to three main number classes:
singular invariable nouns: they have no plural form, they consist of:
* abstract uncountable nouns
* concrete uncountable nouns
* proper name
* plural invariable nouns: they only have plural form:
* summation plural
* pluralia tantum
* unmarked plural nouns
* variable nouns: they have singular and plural forms.
The plural form
can be:
* regular: by adding the inflectional suffix -s that have three
* allomorphs: /iz/ after a sibilant; /z/ after a vowel or voiced consonant; /s/ after voiceless consonant
* irregular: Voicing + -s; Mutation -en plural; Zero plural
Foreign plural.
* Genitive's: syntactic phenomenon, that is it attached to a syntactic unit.
* Personal pronouns
* Forms of verbs:
1.Regular verbs taht have five morphological forms: basic form; -s form; /iz/ after a sibilant; /z/ after a vowel or voiced consonant; /s/ after voiceless consonant; -ing form
2. past tense form: /id/ after a dental /t/, /d/; /d/ after a vowel or voiced consonant; /t/ after voiceless consonant; perfect participle
Domande da interrogazione
- Qual è la differenza tra parole e unità lessicali?
- Come si formano le parole complesse?
- Qual è la distinzione tra morfemi liberi e legati?
- Quali sono le due branche della morfologia?
- Come si formano i plurali regolari e irregolari?
Le parole sono le unità sintattiche più piccole in una frase, mentre le unità lessicali sono unità semantiche con significati imprevedibili che possono essere più grandi delle parole, ma spesso coincidono con esse.
Le parole complesse si formano attraverso l'affissazione, il compounding, la conversione, la troncatura e l'amalgamazione di parti di parole diverse.
I morfemi liberi possono comparire da soli, mentre i morfemi legati possono comparire solo se attaccati ad altri morfemi.
Le due branche della morfologia sono l'inflessione, che riguarda la realizzazione di varianti di un lessema secondo la funzione grammaticale, e la derivazione, che crea nuovi lessemi con significati parzialmente o totalmente diversi.
I plurali regolari si formano aggiungendo il suffisso -s con tre allomorfi (/iz/, /z/, /s/), mentre i plurali irregolari possono includere mutazioni, plurali zero e plurali stranieri.
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