1. Morphology
In linguistics,
morphology is the identification, analysis and
description of the structure of a given language's morphemes
and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of
speech, intonations and stresses, or implied context. In contrast, morphological typology is the
classification of languages according to their use of morphemes, while lexicology
is the study of those words forming a language's wordstock.While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to nouns. Speakers of English, a fusional language, recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of English's rules of word formation. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; and, in similar fashion, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. By contrast, Classical Chinese has very little morphology, using almost exclusively unbound morphemes ("free" morphemes) and depending on word order to convey meaning. (Most words in modern Standard Chinese ("Mandarin"), however, are compounds and most roots are bound.) These are understood as grammars that represent the morphology of the language. The rules understood by a speaker reflect specific patterns or regularities in the way words are formed from smaller units in the language they are using and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
A morpheme is roughly
defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. For example,
the word boy cannot be broken
down into any further unit of meaning. We can have:
·
b;
·
o;
·
y;
·
bo;
·
by and
·
oy – none of
which mean anything. We say that boy
is made of only one morpheme.
But the word antigovernment can be broken down
into:
·
anti- = against
·
govern = to
rule/administrate
·
-ment = noun suffix
Therefore, we say that antigovernment
is made of three morphemes.
One should be careful not to break a single morpheme into multiple
constituent morphemes. This is a common error in the analysis of some
languages, such as Chinese. The word youyu
(猶豫), meaning hesitate is a notorious example. As
most Chinese characters represent a single morpheme, linguists before the Qing
Dynasty believed that all
characters represented a single morpheme. As a result, the word youyu has become the subject of much
nonsensical speculation. One scholar during the Tang Dynasty believed that it
originated from the description of a deer-like monkey that would look left and
right before climbing a tree. Later generations discovered that youyu was, in fact, a single
disyllabic morpheme, disproving these odd claims.
Classifying Morphemes
Morphemes are categorised thus:
·
Bound morphemes: They cannot
stand alone, i.e. they are affixes.
o
Derivational morphemes: We change the
grammatical category or the meaning of the word. Examples are re-, de-, un-, -ness, -ly and so on.
o Inflectional morphemes: We do not change the meaning or grammatical category
of the word with these. We use them to mark plurality, tense, agreement, case
and so on.
·
Free morphemes. They can be
used alone.
o Lexical morphemes: They represent the concepts of the message we wish
to bring across. Ship, orange and president are some examples. They are an open set of words in a
language.
o Functional morphemes: They are functional words, like determiners,
pronouns, conjunctions and so on. Whatever,
because and against are some examples.
Affixation
Affixes are our workhorse morphemes—the tools we use again
and again to assemble new words. There are several kinds of affixes:
- Suffixes Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a word. Examples are -ion in motion and -ate in investigate. Suffixes are written with an initial hyphen.
- Prefixes Prefixes attach to the beginning of a word. Examples are re- in redo and un- in unthinkable. Prefixes are written with a terminal hyphen.
- Infixes. Although English generally does not have infixes, or morphemes that go "in the middle" of a word, other languages do. An exception in English might be -bloody- in the following:
Q: Are you
going to the concert tonight?
A:
Absobloodylutely.
Infixes are
written with initial and terminal hyphens, as above.
- Circumfixes. Circumfixes are affixes that "surround" the word, attaching to the beginning and end of the word. Although English has few examples of this type of affix, other languages use it. The circumfix is probably most widely known from the German past participle (ge- -t for regular verbs). Probably the only circumfixes in English are en- -en in enlighten and em- -en in embolden, which are essentially the same circumfix, as we will see below. In older usage, however, the present participle could be formed using the circumfix a- -ing: a- -ing in a-flying or a- -ing in a-caroling. Circumfixes are written with initial and terminal hyphens.
Sometimes, multiple affixations can take place. The original word, which is
a free morpheme, is known as the stem
or root. We can attach affixes
to it in a continual manner:
anti- inter- govern -ment -al -ist
Here, govern is a root, anti- and inter- are prefixes, and -ment,
-al and -ist are suffixes.
2.
Syntax
Syntax is that
part of our linguistics knowledge which concerns the structure of sentences.
Knowing a language also means being able to put words together to form
sentences to express our thoughts. (Fromkin and Rodman,1983)
Basic idea of syntax
1. Word ordering and meaning
The order of words in a sentences or phrases is
connected to its literal meaning. The basic underlying word order in an English
sentence is subject-verb-object (S-V-O). (Murcia and Freeman,1999). Consider
the English sentences :
a. Joe writes poetry
The factors determines the meaning of sentences: (1) the selection of words
plays a role in determining the literal meaning of the sentences, (2) the
orders of words play a role the literal meaning of the sentences. (Tserdanelis
and Wong, 2004). See the two examples:
a. The mat is on the cat
b. The cat is on the mat
2. Ambiguity
As we have studied before, there is factor determining
what a sentence means. Consider the following examples:
a. Can you tell me the time?
b. We had the president for dinner.
c. We need more intelligent
administrators.
d. Pat shot the soldier with a telescope.
All three sentences are ambiguous-that is, they have
more than one meaning. The first sentences is ambiguous because it can be used
either as a straightforward question (“ are you able to tell me the time?”) .
we call this pragmatic ambiguity. The
second sentence is ambiguous because the
expression have for dinner can mean either “ host for dinner” or “ have for
dinner”. This type of ambiguity is called lexical ambiguity. The third sentence
, this sentence also has two meaning. On one meaning, we need administrators
who are more intelligent. On the other meaning, we need a grater number of
intelligent administrators. The type of ambiguity is called structure ambiguity.
(Tserdanelis and Wong, 2004)
3.
Phrase Structure
a. Lexical categories
In English the main categories are Nouns(N), Verb(V), Adjectives(A),
Prepositions(P), and Adverbs(Adv).
b. Phrasal categories
The phrasal categories are built up from the lexical categories (their
head) in the ways that we have already illustrated. The phrasal categories are
NP(noun phrases), VP(verb phrases), AP(adjective phrases), PP(preposisition
phrases) , AdvP(adverb phrase). (Tserdanelis and Wong, 2004)
a. Noun phrases is any phrase which can
act as a complete subject, object, etc. in a sentence; e.q. “The big red block”, “ Most of the three
coaches”.
b. Verb phrases is basically a verb plus its
complement (s); e.g. “ gave the parcel to the clerk”
c. Prepositional phrases may be
required (for instance, by a verb that it comes after) to contain a particular
preposition.
d. Adjective phrases usually consist of
single adjectives, but it is possible for these to be accompanied by an
indication of degree ad some number of adverb as modifier, as in “very commonly
used”.
References
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