Morphology: Lexemes, Morphemes, and Word Formation

Posted on Jan 4, 2025 in Social sciences

Lexeme: An abstract vocabulary item that is listed in the lexicon with a common core of meaning.

  • Pockled off/ pockling/pockles: Physical realizations of the lexeme “POCLE” (word-forms).
  • The term “word” is ambiguous (lexeme, word-form, grammatical words).

Syncretism: Identical word-forms, belonging to the same lexeme but fulfilling different grammatical functions, i.e. they are different grammatical words.

Morpheme: The smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function that words are made up of. (place/ment, boy/s, work/ed, care/less)

Morph: Physical realizations of the morpheme.

  • Lexemes (abstract, realized by word-forms) are made up of Morphemes (abstract, realized by morphs).
  • Word-forms (Physical) are made up of morphs (physical realization of the morpheme).

Allomorphs: Several morphs that represent the same morpheme. Allomorphs are always in complementary distribution.

  1. They represent the same meaning or realize the same grammatical function (they belong to the same morpheme).
  2. They are never found in identical contexts. They are phonologically conditioned.

Sometimes there are some morphs that don’t represent any morphemes. They are called empty morphs or formatives. Adib: sensual – sens.(u).al, factual- fact.(u).al

Zero morph: It is a morpheme that is not physically represented. Adib: Yesterday they shut_ (the past is not represented, zero morph) the factory.

Types of Morphemes

  • Bound (obligatorily bound)
  • Free (potentially free)

Differences Between Derivation and Inflection

  1. (d) There may be a change in the word-class (humor-humorless, hard-hardship); (i) there is no change in the word-class (buy-buys, book-books)
  2. (d) Less productive, optional. (i) More regular or productive. It can be attached to more forms. Obligatory
  3. (d) It is marked closer to the root than inflection (teach.er.s) (i) It is marked further from the root.
  4. (d) The cognitive meaning may change (i) The basic meaning of the word does not change.
  5. (d) It can be iterated (truthfulness) (i) It cannot be iterated (repeated) (work.ing – work.ing.s not)
  6. (d) You create new lexemes (kind-KIND, unkind- UNKIND) (i) You create new word-forms of the same lexeme (work, working, works, worked- WORK)

A portmanteau: A morph that simultaneously realizes several morphemes. Adib: work.s. (s: 3 person, singular, present tense)

Compounding: We can’t trust the writing. We have to look at the stress, normally compounds have early stress (power drill, shop assistant).

Compounds with Late Stress

Some expressions are grammatically compounds, that nevertheless have late stress:

  • If the first element names the material/ingredient out of which a thing is made, cherry pie, gold ring, plastic bag… (but expressions involving cake, juice or water take early stress: ginger cake, orange juice, Perrier water)
  • If the first element is a proper name, Camden Town, Melrose Place, Oxford Circus (but expressions with street take early stress, Oxford Street, High Street).
  • If the first element names a place or time (town hall, city center, summer holidays) (exceptions Christmas card and birthday card)

Inflecting languages (Latin): Portmanteau morphs. One morph that realizes several morphemes.

Incorporating languages (Greenlandic Eskimo).

Infixing languages (Egyptian Arabic): We add vowels to the skeleton or root.

English is an analytic language.

Endocentric compounds: The head is in the compound. Compounds with the head on the right.

Verbal compounds: Complex head adjective or noun, divided from a verb. The non-head is the object. The meaning is transparent.

Exocentric compounds: Compounds that have the semantic head outside the word.

Copulative compounds: North-east, singer-songwriter

The right-hand head rule: In morphology, we define the head of a compound to be the right-hand member of the word. This rule works quite well for Germanic languages and English. Not for other languages (Roman languages).

Conversion: It’s a word-formation process that there is a change in the word-class of a word without changing the form of a word.

By attaching the suffix we form a word of three or more syllables, the tense vowel (long vowels or diphthongs) of the root becomes a lax vowel (short vowel). Sane-sanity, holy-holiday, supreme-supremacy, chaste-chastity, type-typical.

Umlaut: Fronting of a back vowel when it is followed by a front vowel. Umlaut refers specifically to alternations between vowels which arose because of the effect of some following vowel sound (foot-feet)

In homonymy we’ve got two words with unrelated meanings. Pronounced the same and written but unrelated meanings (bat, fair). Homonyms are homographs (iual idatzi diferente pronuntziau) and homophones (iual pronuntziau baña diferente idatzi).

Hyponymy: Meanings found in a superordinate category. Animals (superordinate category/hyperonym) – mammals – cat/dog.

Polysemy: Words with several meanings and these meanings are all related.

Loanword: You borrow the word and its meaning ( direct: omelet), (indirect: through several languages, kahueh-coffee).

Loan shift: You borrow the meaning but you translate it into your own language. (Latin: omnipotens-almighty, spiritus sanctus-holy spirit) (French: ça va sans dire-it goes without saying, en principe-in principle).

Reasons for Borrowings

Borrowings happen due to:

  1. Contact with another language, and the lack of a certain word.
  2. Prestige.
  3. New concepts (usually related to politics, science… taken from the lingua franca)
  4. Identity (inserting words of your original language to keep that identity)
  5. Find the right word.
  6. Euphemism (gigolo-male prostitute)

Sources of English Loanwords

  • French (for government, religion, fine food…),
  • Classical language (most learned words. Doublets consisting of native and classical words),
  • Scandinavian language (she, they, give, take, law, sister. Words starting with sk)

Acronym: We reduce a phrase to its initial letters and we read it (RADAR: radio direction and ranging, LASER, YUPPIE, UNICEF)

Clipping: We cut the first or the last part of a word (backclipping, foreclipping).

Abbreviation: REM (rapid eye movement) VAT (value added tax) OD (overdose)

Root: Hitz bati prefijo ta sufijo danak kendutakuan geaketan dana.

Stem: Inflexilua jarten dan zatixa

Base: Root ta stem danak. Adib: Crows (root: crow, stem: crow, base: crow), teachers (root: teach, stem: teacher, bases: teach, teacher).

Analytic languages (Chinese): Each morph is going to be a word. Bound morphemes are going to be infrequent.

Agglutinating languages (Turkish): Glue together several morphs and each morph is a morpheme.