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Chapter 4 Morphology ? What is morphology?
? The total number of words stored in the brain is called the lexicon.
? Words are the smallest free units of language that unite sounds with meaning. ? Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure and the formation of words.
? Morphemes and allomorphs
? The smallest meaningful unit of language is called a morpheme.
? A morpheme may be represented by different forms, called allomorphs. ? “zero” form of a morpheme and suppletives ? Some countable nouns do not change form to express plurality. Similarly, some regular verbs do not change form to indicate past tense. In these two cases, the noun or verb contains two morphemes, among which there is one “zero form” of a morpheme. ? Some verbs have irregular changes when they are in past tense. In this case, the verbs also have two morphemes. Words which are not related in form to indicate grammatical contrast with their roots are called suppletives.
? Free and bound morphemes
? Some morphemes constitute words by themselves. These morphemes are called free morphemes.
? Other morphemes are never used independently in speech and writing. They are always attached to free morphemes to form new words. These morphemes are called bound morphemes. ? The distinction between a free morphemes and a bound morpheme is whether it can be used independently in speech or writing.
? Free morphemes are the roots of words, while bound morphemes are the affixes (prefixes and suffixes).
? Inflexional and derivational morphemes
? Inflexional morphemes in modern English indicate case and number of nouns, tense and aspect of verbs, and degree of adjectives and adverbs.
? Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes added to existing forms to construct new words. ? English affixes are divided into prefixes and suffixes.
? Some languages have infixes, bound morphemes which are inserted into other morphemes.
? The process of putting affixes to existing forms to create new words is called derivation. Words thus formed are called derivatives.
? Conclusion: classification of morphemes
? Morphemes ? Free morphemes
? Bound morphemes ? Inflexional
? Derivational: affixes ? Prefixes: -s, -’s, -er, -est, -ing, -ed, -s ? Suffixes
? Formation of new words
? Derivation
? Derivation forms a word by adding an affix to a free morpheme.
? Since derivation can apply more than once, it is possible to create a derived word with a number of affixes. For example, if we add affixes to the word friend, we can form befriend, friendly, unfriendly, friendliness, unfriendliness, etc. This process of adding more than one affix to a free morpheme is termed complex derivation.
? Derivation does not apply freely to any word of a given category. Generally speaking, affixes cannot be added to morphemes of a different language origin. ? Derivation is also constrained by phonological factors. ? Some English suffixes also change the word stress. ? Compounding
? Compounding is another common way to form words. It is the combination of free morphemes. ? The majority of English compounds are the combination of words from the three classes – nouns, verbs and adjectives – and fall into the three classes.
? In compounds, the rightmost morpheme determines the part of speech of the word. ? The meaning of compounds is not always the sum of meaning of the components. ? Conversion
? Conversion is the process putting an existing word of one class into another class. ? Conversion is usually found in words containing one morpheme. ? Clipping
? Clipping is a process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables. ? Clipped words are initially used in spoken English on informal occasions.
? Some clipped words have become widely accepted, and are used even in formal styles. For example, the words bus (omnibus), vet (veterinarian), gym (gymnasium), fridge (refrigerator) and fax (facsimile) are rarely used in their complete form. ? Blending
? Blending is a process that creates new words by putting together non-morphemic parts of existing words. For example, smog (smoke + frog), brunch (a meal in the middle of morning, replacing both breakfast and lunch), motel (motor + hotel). There is also an interesting word in the textbook for junior middle school students – “plike” (a kind of machine that is like both a plane and a bike). ? Back-formation ? Back-formation is the process that creates a new word by dropping a real or supposed suffix. For example, the word televise is back-formed from television. Originally, the word television is formed by putting the prefix tele- (far) to the root vision (viewing). At the same time, there is a suffix –sion in English indicating nouns. Then people consider the –sion in the word television as
that suffix and drop it to form the verb televise. ? Acronyms and abbreviations ? Acronyms and abbreviations are formed by putting together the initial letters of all words in a phrase or title.
? Acronyms can be read as a word and are usually longer than abbreviations, which are read letter by letter.
? This type of word formation is common in names of organizations and scientific terminology. ? Eponyms
? Eponyms are words that originate from proper names of individuals or places. For example, the word sandwich is a common noun originating from the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put his food between two slices of bread so that he could eat while gambling. ? Coinage
? Coinage is a process of inventing words not based on existing morphemes.
? This way of word formation is especially common in cases where industry requires a word for a new product. For example, Kodak and Coca-cola.
? For more detailed explanation to the ways of word formation, see my notes of Practical English Grammar.
转自[英美者]-英语专业网站：http://www.enmajor.com/cn/Html/M/Linguistics/86983.html Chapter 3 Phonology ? What is phonology?
? Phonology is the study of sound systems and patterns.
? Phonology and phonetics are two studies different in perspectives, which are concerned with the study of speech sounds. ? Phonology focuses on three fundamental questions.
? What sounds make up the list of sounds that can distinguish meaning in a particular language? ? What sounds vary in what ways in what context?
? What sounds can appear together in a sequence in a particular language?
? Phonemes and allophones
? A phoneme is a distinctive, abstract sound unit with a distinctive feature. ? The variants of a phoneme are termed allophones. ? We use allophones to realize phonemes.
? Discovering phonemes
? Contrastive distribution – phonemes ? If sounds appear in the same environment, they are said to be in contrastive distribution. ? Typical contrastive distribution of sounds is found in minimal pairs and minimal sets. ? A minimal pair consists of two words that differ by only one sound in the same position.
? Minimal sets are more than two words that are distinguished by one segment in the same position.
? The overwhelming majority of the consonants and vowels represented by the English phonetic alphabet are in contrastive distribution. ? Some sounds can hardly be found in contrastive distribution in English. However, these sounds are distinctive in terms of phonetic features. Therefore, they are separate phonemes. ? Complementary distribution – allophones ? Sounds that are not found in the same position are said to be in complementary distribution. ? If segments are in complementary distribution and share a number of features, they are allophones of the same phoneme. ? Free variation
? If segments appear in the same position but the mutual substitution does not result in change of meaning, they are said to be in free variation.
? Distinctive and non-distinctive features
? Features that distinguish meaning are called distinctive features, and features do not, non-distinctive features. ? Distinctive features in one language may be non-distinctive in another.
? Phonological rules
? Phonemes are abstract sound units stored in the mind, while allophones are the actual pronunciations in speech.
? What phoneme is realized by what allophones in what specific context is another major question in phonology.
? The regularities that what sounds vary in what ways in what context are generalized and stated in phonology as rules.
? There are many phonological rules in English. Take the following ones as examples. ? [+voiced +consonant] – [-voiced]/[-voiced +consonant]_ ? [-voiced +bilabial +stop] – unaspirated/[-voiced +alveolar +fricative]_
? Syllable structure
? A syllable is a phonological unit that is composed of one or more phonemes. ? Every syllable has a nucleus, which is usually a vowel.
? The nucleus may be preceded by one or more consonants called the onset and followed by one or more consonants called the coda.
? Sequence of phonemes
? Native speakers of any language intuitively know what sounds can be put together.
? Some sequences are not possible in English. The impossible sequences are called systematic gaps.
? Sequences that are possible but do not occur yet are called accidental gaps. ? When new words are coined, they may fill some accidental gaps but they will never fill