1. English Morphology – Lecture
1
David Brett
Antonio Pinna
University of Sassari 2007

2. A definition of morphology
• The area of grammar concerned with the
structure of words and with relationships
between words involving the morphemes
that compose them

3. What is a word?
• An orthographic definition
• A phonological definition
• A semantic definition
• A syntactic definition

4. An orthographic definition
• Words as units in the writing system:
words are uninterrupted strings of letters
• For ex. writing is a word because there are
blank spaces surrounding it

5. Problems with this definition:
• Can you make a list of punctuation marks?
• Can you think of instances of words
characterized by different spellings?
• What about compound nouns?

6. How many words are there in the
following sentences?
• a. John’s girl friend lives in a high-rise
apartment building.
• b. Mary’s a policewoman in the United
States.
• - Is John’s in a. above one or two words?
• - Is Mary’s in b. above one or two words?
• - Is high-rise in a. above one or two
words?

7. The orthographic word may not
coincide with our intuitions:
• Compound nouns: apartment building,
parking ticket, ground floor, United States.
• Phrasal verbs: get up, look after, put up
with.

8. A phonological definition
• Words as phonological units: spoken in
isolation each word can only have one
main stress
• E.g. Words as elements of the system
The underlined characters indicate the
main stress

9. Problems with this definition:
• Function words (i.e. words such as as, of,
the) do not seem to have a main stress;
• Clitics (i.e. ‘s in the example below) do not
seem to have a main stress-
• Ex. Jane’s in the garden: ‘s, in, the are not
stressed.

10. A semantic definition
• Words as meaningful units:
• a. Words express unified concepts
• b. Words are the minimum meaningful
units of a language

11. Problems with these definitions:
• Concepts can be expressed by noun
groups or larger units; for ex. the man who
lives next door or that beautiful summer
morning of 1985 when we drove to the
beach on an old CV2
• Function words may not have an easily
identifiable meaning (for ex. can you
specify the meaning of the?)

12. 4. A syntactic definition #1
• Words as syntactic units: words are the smallest
syntactic elements in a sentence:
• a. They belong to certain word classes (and follow the
rules of these syntactic categories)
• Words can be grouped into 2 main categories:
• 1. Open-class words: classes of words which can
contain an infinite number of words
• (i.e. nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
• 2. Closed-class words: classes of words which
contain a limited number of words
• (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and
modal verbs, conjunctions, determiners)

13. 4. A syntactic definition #2
• b. Only words (and groups of words) can be
moved to a different position in a sentence
• 1. She can ride the bike
• 2. Can she ride the bike?
• 1. She brought the can opener.
• 2a. The can was brought by her opener. ✘
• 2b. The can opener was brought by her. ✓

14. The relationship between words and
meanings
Words with unpredictable meanings:
dog, door, desk, book, pen, …
Words with predictable meanings
Complex words: unhappy, helpful, madly, …
E.g. The relationship between the sequence of letters cat and its
meaning [domestic feline] in English is the result of a convention.
Whenever this association form-meaning is the result of a
convention, the meaning of a word is unpredictable on the basis of
its form.
Exception: onomatopoeic words
splash resembles the sound of a liquid hitting something;
beep resembles a short high sound, like the sound of a car horn.

15. Non-words and meanings
• entities that are larger than a word with
unpredictable meanings
– Idioms: pull someone’s leg; kick the bucket; …
– Collocations: hard work, white coffee, white-collar
worker …
– Proverbs: All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
birds of a feather flock together, a bad
workman blames his tools, …

16. The difference between words and
lexical items
Words are the smallest syntactic units in a
sentence (i.e. words are grammatical
entities)
• Lexical items are semantic units whose
meanings are unpredictable; they may be
larger than words, but often they can
coincide with them (i.e. lexical items are
semantic entities)

17. Taking words apart
• Why is the meaning of the following words
predictable to a certain extent?
• unbelievable, capitalistic, mismatched,
disproportional, misunderstanding,
irregularity.
• lighthouse, shoplift, team manager,
apartment building, concentration camp,
low-flying, cupboard, sickness benefit.

18. Complex words: affixation
• Words can be composed of identifiable smaller parts, morphemes,
put together in a systematic fashion, so that the meaning of the
whole can reliably be determined on the basis of the meaning of the
smaller parts.
• un-believe-able, anti-capital-ist-ic, de-colony-al-ize-ation, dis-proportion-
al, mis-under-stand-ing, ir-regul-ar-ity.
• This group contains words which are divisible into:
• a component that carries most of the meaning (e.g. believe, capital,
colony, proportion, etc.)
• other elements that are associated with it to add some other aspects
of meaning (e.g. –able in believable = something or someone is
capable of being believed; un- in unbelievable = something or
someone is not capable of being believed).
• The process through which these words are formed is called
affixation.

19. Word compounding
• B. lighthouse, shoplift, team manager, apartment
building, concentration camp, low-flying, cupboard,
sickness benefit.
• Group B contains words which are divisible into two
other words.
• These component words can be found independently in
an English dictionary, but when they associate they form
a compound word
• The meaning of the union is not necessarily a function of
the meaning of the two combining words. For ex. a
lighthouse is neither a light nor a house. This process is
called word compounding.

20. Word compounding: exercise
• How many compund words can you create with
the following words?
bag
car
box
case

21. Hand-, body-, air-, sick-,
punch-, sleeping
bag
Sports, estate,
company, courtesy,
car
Mail-, post-, letter-,
telephone, gear-box
Book-, suit-, brief-,
display, lower
case

22. A morpheme must
– be identifiable from one word to another
– However, consider:
Attack
Stack
Tackle
Taxi (/tæksi/)

23. A morpheme must
– Also contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word
Believ-able
Eat-able
Read-able
Work-able
N.b. this extra meaning is not necessarily equal in all
cases, e.g. readable, does not mean ‘can be read’ in a
literal sense, but rather ‘enjoyable to read’.

24. How can I recognise a
morpheme?
Morphemes must be identifiable from one
word to another: identifying affixes:
– un- : uncomplicated, unhappy, unclear, …
– -able: variable, changeable, solvable, …
– de- : deselect, dethrone, detoxify, …
– -al: cultural, federal, liberal, modal, …
– -ize: computerize, realize, …

25. Identifying the core element:
• Happy: un-happy, happi-ness, happi-ly;
• Change: change-able, chang-ing, un-chang-
ed;
• Select: de-select, select-ion, select-ive-ly;
• Liber-: liber-al, liber-al-ism, liber-ate, liber-ty;
• Oper-: oper-ate, oper-at-ion, oper-at-ion-al

26. Distinguishing between
morphemes:
• Bound and free morphemes:
• Free morphemes can occur on their own:
– happy, change, select, green, house, …
• Bound morphemes can occur only if they are attached to
other morphemes:
– Affixes (un-, -ness, -able, de-, -ive, -er, …)
– liber-, oper-, circul-, legitim-, materi-, …
• Eg. liber-ation, oper-ate, circul-ar, legitim-(a)cy, materi-al

27. Bound morphemes as core
elements: words derived from Latin
Circul- Circular Liber- Liberty
Circulation Liberation
Circulator Liberalize
Circulatory Libertine

28. Problem case: Verbs of Latin origin
receive deceive conceive perceive
revert convert pervert
relate collate translate
reduce deduce conduce
Should these be considered to be composed of a single morpheme?
Or prefix + bound morpheme?

29. General tendency
• The core vocabulary of English is
generally composed of words of Anglo-
Saxon origin
• There is a general tendency for core
elements to be free morphemes
• E.g. Hand
• Hand-y, hand-le, hand-ful, mis-hand-le,

30. What is the difference between
these two sets of complex words
Fair-ly
Fast-er
Sing-ing
Open-ed
Car-s
Write-s
Big-gest
Treat-ment
Rude-ness
Un-kind
Fam-ous
Use-less
Help-ful
Ir-regular
Red-dish

31. Fast-er, Sing-ing, Open-ed,
Car-s, Write-s, Big-gest
• These affixes do not change the word
class, but rather contribute to meeting
grammatical constraints. These are called:
Inflectional morphemes

32. Treat-ment Rude-ness Un-kind Red-dish
Fam-ous Use-less Help-ful Ir-regular
These affixes do not necessarily change the class
of the word, but this is normally the case, e.g.
fame (n.)> famous (adj.)
• Furthermore, the semantic element is notably
higher. These morphemes are called:
Derivational morphemes

33. Derivation with –ful and –less
• Which words can be derived by adding the
following suffixes
-ful/less Only -ful Only -less
Age, Bag, Care, Cease, Cheer, Child, Colour, Cup,
Defence, Delight, Effort, End, Fate, Friend, Help, Hope,
Penny, Play, Spoon, Tact , Taste , Use,

34. -ful/less Only -ful Only -less
Care
Fate
Friend
Use
Spoon
Age
Cheer
Delight
Cease
Colour
Bag
Child
Help
Play
Defence
Taste
Cup
End
Hope
Effort
Tact
Penny