general morphology

4. • A morph is a physical form representing
some morphemes in a language. It is a
recurrent distinctive sound ( phoneme)
or sequence of sounds (phonemes).
• If different morphs represent the same
morpheme, they are grouped together
and they are called allomorphs.

5. • If two elements never occur in the same
contexts but, instead divide up some set of
contexts between them, they are said to be
in Complementary distribution.
• For example, the –s suffix is pronounced /s/
after voiceless obstruents, and /z/ after all
other non-sibilant sounds.
• e.g., Ask-s /s/
• Add-s / z/

6. • The term morpheme is used to refer to
an abstraction away from number ( possibly
only one, possibly more) of morphs which
share meaning and form and are in
complementary distribution.
• e.g.,
fee Care-ful the

7. • According to Bauer (2003) ,this is a very
narrow definition of morpheme and few
practising linguists today would wish to
adhere to it. The reason is that there are
a number of problems with such a
definition. Some of the problems those
relating to recognising shared form and
meaning.

8. • The whole notion of morpheme works best
when each word is easily divisible into one or
more discrete morphs.
• e.g.,
•
• This divides each word up into self-contained
units which are adjacent in the word.
Dis-em-power-ment Person-al-ities

9. • While analyses of this type are possible in
large proportions of many languages, there
are also many places where this kind of
analysis simply will not account for the data.
• e.g.,
mosquito *Mos-quito
fierce
*fi-erce

10. • A portmanteau morph is a morph which
realises more than one morpheme.
• For example:
• The morph / –a /, at the end of the word-
form bella in the Italian phrase :
• la mia bella cugina
• My beatiful ( female ) cousin’ realises both
[ feminine and singular ]

11. • Il mio bello cugino.
• ‘my handsome male cousin’
• Le mie belle cugine.
• my beatiful female cousins.
• Some scholars retain the term portmanteau
morph for those instances where two distinct
word-forms are reduced to a single element.

12. • In portmanteau morphs or cumulation we
could have distinct meanings which could not
be attributed to separate morphs but which
had to be piled up on a single morph. The
standard notion of a morpheme requires that
each morpheme should have its own form
and this is not true with cumulation. This is a
case where there is meaning but no form.

13. • The converse is also found : the situation where
there is form but no meaning. This can be found in
the French adverbial formations.
• e.g.,
• It can be seen that the adverbs are consistently
derived from the feminine form of the adjective
but there is no feminie meaning in adverbs. ( empty
morph)
gloss
• Gentle
• Hasty
• Complete
masculine
•du
•atif
• kɔmplɛ
feminine
•dus
•ativ
• kɔmplɛt
adverb
• dusma
•ativma
•kɔmplɛtmἁ

14. • An empty morph is a recurrent form in a
language that doesn’t appear to be related to
any element of meaning.
• e.g.,
sens-u-al Fact-u-al

15. • Ablaut is a change in a vowel in the root of a
word that signals a change in grammatical
function.
e.g.,
sing sang
Stand stood
Take took

16. • One option would be to analyse these forms as
having infixes, and this runs into trouble with the
meanings of the infixes.
• For instance, the / eı / in the middle of take cannot
easily be glossed as ‘present simple’ when it also
appears in taken.
• An alternative analysis, is to see replacement of /ı /
in sing by /æ/ as being a morph. This , however, is
contracting with the theoretical concepts: a morph
is defined as a form, not as a process of replacement.

17. • The next diagram, shows how the different
allomorphs of the morpheme are
phonologically conditioned.

18. • Example:
• Cup – cups
• Leek – leeks
• Example :
• maze – mazes
• beach – beaches
• Examples:
• Room – rooms
• Mug – mugs

19. Singular
• Goose
• Cherub
• Ox
• Tempo
Plural
• Geese
• Cherubim
• Oxen
• Tempi

20. • The only conclusion We can come to
about the words in diagram (2 ) is that
they contain morphs belonging to
morphemes which are synonymous with
the {s} plural morpheme shown in (1) .
They must be seperate morphemes
because they do not clearly share form
with the markers which are found in (1) .

21. • An alternative view, which gives priority to
the semantics rather than to the form, that
sees the markers for the plural on gees, oxen
and children and probably all the plural
markers in 2 as allomorphs of the same
morpheme { plural}. The difference is that
the choice of allomorphs is lexically
conditioned in (2) not phonologically
conditioned, as it is in (1).

22. • First, note that, while the –en in oxen and the
–s in cows are genuinely in complementary
distribution. The same is not true of all the
plural markers illustrated in (2).

23. • Cherubs and cherubim
• Tempos and tempi are possible plural in
English.
• This can be answered in two ways. It is
possible that cherubs and cherubim belong to
separate lexemes in English ,cherubs being
the plural of cherubs ‘ innocent-looking child’
and cherubim the plural of cherub ‘
attendant of god’.

24. • While tempos and tempi are possible plurals
of tempo in English, they are used in different
registers or dialects.

25. • Indeed just the opposite would normally be
taken to be the case : given Wasp
• ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ and wasp ‘
stinging insect’
• We would normally associate them with
different morphemes, on account of their
meaning ,even though they form their plural
in precisely the same way

26. Verb
Conceive
deceive
noun
conception
deception
Verb
confer
defer
noun
Conferral/
conference
Deferral /
deference
verb
commit
emit
Noun
commission
remission

27. • In this case dividing the word into morphs each
representing a morpheme is unacceptable and the
reason is the meaning. For instance :
• Con-ceive
• Re-fer
• Re-mit
• We can feel justified in establishing a morpheme
where the meaning is costant but the form is not.

28. • All the verbs ending in –ceive form their
corresponding nouns in the same way ( by
changing –ceive to ception ) and this is not a
regular way of forming nouns in English.
• All the –fer words have similar nouns and all
the –mit words have similar nouns.

29. • If we find a word ending in –it which does not
contain the element –mit
• For example :
• Edit
• Orbit
• Such a word does not make its corresponding noun
in the same fashion.
• Example :
• *edission
• * orbission
• The way of forming nouns seems to have something
to do precisely with the –ceive , -fer , and –mit
elements.

30. • The word ‘morpheme’ is one of the most basic terms in
linguistics, one which students are expected to control
almost from the beginning of their study of the field.
Linguists of many persuasions use the word freely, if only as
a descriptive convenience, even when their theoretical
commitments are not consistent with the idealized picture
of word structure inherited from our structuralist forebears.
We commonly assume that both the intension and the
extension of the term are virtually self-evident, but it turns
out on closer examination to hold the keys to some of the
deep questions we can ask about the nature of language.
One of these, indeed, is whether or not there is any such
thing as a ‘morpheme’.

31. • Anderson, Stephen R. (in press). “The Morpheme: Its
Nature and Use.” to appear in The Oxford Handbook of
Inflection (Matthew Baerman, ed.).
• Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by Itself: Stems and
Inflectional Classes, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Bauer, Laurie. (2003). Introducing Linguistic Morphology.
Edinburgh University Press. Edinburgh.
• Katamba, Francis (1993), Morphology, Basingstoke:
Macmillan.

32. •