Lecture 2.

Morphological Units

The lecture material is taken from: https://oervlc.de/course/view.php?id=20&section=4

Central Topics
 variable and invariable words
 words and lexemes
 morphemes, morphs, and allomorphs

Questions
1. Why are only variable words important for the morphologist? (Overview)
2. Which word-classes are variable in English?
3. What is a lexeme?
4. What are the differences between paradigms and word-families?
5. What is a morph?  
6. Relate the terms morpheme, morph, and allomorph to one another.
7. Define the terms base/root and stem.
8. What type of affixes do you know?
9. In what way are the processes of morphological and phonological analysis related?

Overview

Morphologists distinguish two types of words:

• invariable words
• variable words
Whereas invariable words are of no interest to the morphologist (they cannot be segmented
into smaller parts), variable words have an internal structure and can be broken into smaller
units.
The analysis of the internal structure of words begins with the isolation of meaningful
internal segments, i.e. of segments that can be associated with semantic content or
grammatical function. This unit introduces the main principles of morphological analysis.

Variable Words
Variable words may vary along different lines:
• walk, walks, walked, walking, walker, ...
• move, moveable, movement, ...
• go, went, gone, undergo, ...
• sweet, sweeter, sweetest, sweeten ...
The mental lexicon, i.e. the human word store, lists only those forms from which
other forms can be derived. This basic form is referred to as a lexeme, the actual
realizations are referred to as word-forms.
In English, variable words constitute open classes, i.e. classes which can be
extended without any limit:
• Nouns (man, woman, school-boy, nation, etc.)
• Verbs (play, watch, etc.)
• Adjectives (quick, big, long, etc.)

Lexemes
A lexeme is defined as the fundamental unit of the mental lexicon of a language, i.e.
an abstract vocabulary item which may be realized in different sets of grammatical
variants. Lexemes are by convention represented using capital letters.
For example, the lexeme LIVE may be realized as live, lives, lived, living.

In other words, the actual realizations of lexemes are word-forms.

Word-Forms
The set of inflectional variants of lexeme constitutes the so-called 'paradigm'.

In many cases, lexemes realize more than just inflectional variants but include word-
forms that are generated by word-formation processes. These extended sets of
word-forms are sometimes referred to as 'word-families':

• read, readable, unreadable, reader, reread ...

logic, logician, logical, illogical, ...

Morphological Analysis

The analysis of words (the actual realization of lexemes) begins with the isolation of
meaningful internal segments, i.e. of segments that can be associated with semantic
content or grammatical function.

  walks {walk} {-s}  

   misleads {mis-} {li:d} {-z}

  adamlar {adam} {-lar}  

The result of such a morphological analysis is a list of segments. They are referred
to as morphs and consist of one or several phonemes. Morphs, which are
represented in curly brackets { ... }, are thus the fundamental building-blocks of
variable words. If several morphs represent the same function, they are grouped
together into a family: the morpheme. Morphological analysis shares many parallels
with phonological analysis.

Morphs

A morph is a basic building-block of a word. Thus, if we analyze words into their

component parts, we get morphs, which are by convention presented in curly
brackets.
Examples:
picked = { pɪk } + { t }
opened = { əʊpən } + { d }
hated = { heɪt } + { ɪd }
Since many languages do not have writing systems, the most general
representation of morphs is a phonemic one.
In a wider context, a morph is a term which refers to alternative forms or realizations
of a single morpheme. For example, in picked, opened and hated we have three
realizations of the past tense morpheme: {-t}, {-d} and {-ɪd}. Since these different
realizations do not affect the meaning, the term 'morph' is sometimes confined to the
phonemic realization of a morpheme:

Phonemic
Morpheme Meaning
Realization
{-ed} /t/ past tense
{-ed} /d/ past tense
{-ed} /ɪd/ past tense

Morphemes

Morphemes are referred to as the smallest indivisible units of semantic content or

grammatical function which words are made up of. Consider the following English
word pairs:
Exemplification:

cat - cats dog - dogs horse - horses

In all three words, the final morph {-s} is phonologically different, yet, its grammatical
function is that of plural. In such cases, these phonologically different (/ s /, / z /,
and / ɪz /) but morphologically identical {-s} elements constitute a family.
Like morphs, morphemes are represented in curly brackets {...}. Their members are
referred to as 'allomorphs'. The whole process of morphological analysis can be
visualized in terms of a morphological analysis chain:

• Words can be analyzed into morphs.

• Morphs can be grouped into morphemes.
• Morphs of the same morpheme are allomorphs.

Words may consist of two types of morphemes:

• The basic form
Morphemes which are added to the base, so-called affixes
Basic Forms
A 'root' is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing attached to it. It is
the part that is always present, possibly with some modification.
Examples:
• Root: read
• word-forms: read-s, read-er, read-er-s, read-able, re-read, etc.
The term 'stem' is usually used for the bases of inflections. In English, roots are often identical with
stems, in other languages, however, roots and stems may be different:
 

root rose Ros-

stem rose Rose
inflected forms rose-0, rose-s, rose-'s ... Rose-0, Rose-n
other forms rose-bud, rose-less Rös-chen, Rose-n-garten

The term 'base' is more general. It is used for any morphological unit to which
affixes (inflectional or derivational) can be attached. Bases and roots are identical if
a base is not reducible:

Root Base reducible to ...

garden + + -
gardener - + garden

Affixes
The simplest and most direct means, perhaps, by which a language can mark a
category is by the addition of some affixal material to the stem. Depending on its
position in relation to the stem, an affix can be called:

 Prefix (before the root): Affix - Root

 Suffix (after the root): Root - Affix
 Infix (within the root): Root1 - Affix - Root2
 Circumfix (around the root): Affix1 - Root - Affix2

It is quite often the case that the morphology of a language is predominately based
on one type of affix. English, for example, is primarily suffixing.

Parallels to Phonology
The morphological analysis of words shares a number of properties with the
phonemic approach in phonology. Like the morpheme, the phoneme is an abstract
concept and it defines a family:
 Phonology
Morphology
• Words: opened, watched, put
• Morphs for past tense: {/-d/}, {/-t/}, {-0}(Morphs are presented in terms of

words lip, pill words opened, watched, put

phones [l], [ɫ] morphs {/-d/}, {/-t/}, {-0}
phoneme /l/ morpheme {-ed}
allophones [l]_, _[ɫ] allomorphs _{/-d/}#, _{/-t/}#
phonemes)
• Morpheme: {-ed}, {past}, {past tense} ...(Since morphemes are abstract units, their
labels can be freely chosen)
Allomorphs: {/-d/}, {/-t/}{-0} is not an allomorph of {-ed}. Its occurrence cannot be
predicted.

Mastery Test - Morphological Units

https://oer-vlc.de/mod/quiz/attempt.php?attempt=57604&cmid=2941