Essentials
A good command of all the definitions of the basic concepts, together with their explanation with examples;
To apply the knowledge to observe and analyze the actual language phenomena to summarize the rules in morphology, syntax and morphophonology. Main contents
What is word? A vague definition: A unit of expression that has universal intuitive recognition by native speakers, whether it is expressed in spoken or written form.
Three senses of “word”
Three senses are involved in defining ―word‖, none of which is satisfactory to cope with all the situations.
A physical unit: a cluster of sound segments or letters between two pauses or blanks, e.g. Phonological: wonderful. Three words are recognized.
However, in casual speech or writing, it often becomes: Phonological:
Orthographic: It‘s wonderful. Are they two words or three?
Word both as a general term and as a specific term。A general term for word is a lexeme which includes all of the grammatical forms 。e.g. write, writes, writing, wrote, written。A specific term for word refers to the
Orthographic: It is
lexical item which represents an entry in a dictionary. A set of forms: walk, walks, walking, walked 。How many words are there?
– I usually have dinner at 6 but yesterday I had it at seven.
How many times did the word ―have‖ occur?
A grammatical unit: one of the ranks which constitute a hierarchical Sentence ，clause，phrase，word，Morpheme A recommended definition 。
a word is a sound-meaning unit and a fundamental unit of speech and writing.-- Bloomfield defines word as ―a minimum free form‖, that is, the smallest form that can occur by itself. Problem: sea level; seaside; sea-maiden Related terms。
Lexis: the vocabulary of a language, in contrast to its grammar or syntax. Lexicon: the set of all the words and idioms of any language, often interchangeably with vocabulary.
Lexeme: is postulated to reduce the ambiguity of the term ―word‖. It is the abstract unit underlying the smallest unit in the lexical system of a language, which appears in different grammatical contexts.
Lexical word: a word carrying the semantic content, nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs belong to it.
Vocabulary: a compete inventory of the words in a language.
Identification of words
Stability: stable linguistic units in respect of the internal structure. However, we can rearrange a sentence into a different order. chairman, but not *manchair 。 John is a clever boy. A clever boy John is. Relative uninterruptibility: though we recognize three components in the word disappointment, we cannot pause and insert a new element into a word, as in *disinterestappointment. But we can add another word between words: Paul, (John) and Mary ...
A minimum free form: the smallest unit that can constitute a complete utterance by itself, e.g.—Is Jane coming tonight? —Possibly. ----What is missing in a sentence ―egg is on the table‖? --- An.
Classification of words
Variable and invariable words 、Grammatical words and lexical words、Simple, compound and complex words、Closed-class words and open-class words、Word class
Variable words: words that may have inflective changes. Part of the word remains constant while the other part changes regularly to fulfill different grammatical functions. Such as write, writes, writing, wrote, written; cat, cats.
Invariable words: do not have inflective ending, such as since, when, seldom, through, etc.
Grammatical/Function words: those expressing grammatical meanings, such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns.
Lexical/Content words: those having lexical meaning, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
Closed-class words: the ones whose membership is fixed or limited, and new members cannot normally be added, e.g. pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, auxiliaries.
Open-class words: the ones whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited, and new members can be added, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
On the morphological level, words can be classified into simple words, compound words and complex words according to the number and type of morphemes words contain:
Simple words: a single morpheme: black
Compound words: two or more free morphemes: blackboard
Complex words: a free morpheme together with one or more than one bound morpheme, or of two bound morphemes: careful, conceive. Word class , known as Parts of Speech in traditional grammar. Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction, interjection, article, etc.
Some new terms in word class: Particle (助词): infinitive to, negative not, subordinate units in phrasal verbs ―get by”, ―look back‖, etc. Auxiliary （助动词）: do, have
Pro-forms: substitutes for other terms. Pronoun: he, she, I, they, everyone.
Pro-adjective: Your car is red. So is his. Pro-verb: He speaks English better than he did. Pro-adverb: He hopes to win and I hope so too. Pro-locative: He went there.
Determiner: all the articles, demonstratives, and quantifiers that appear before the noun and its modifiers. As many as three types of determiners may be used and there is a fixed order when there is more than one. Pre-; Central-; Post- Modifier Noun
Predeterminers: all, both; half, one-third, three-quarters …;)
Central determiners: the; this, these, that, those; PossP; we, us; you; which, what (relative), what (interrogative); a, another, some,
Postdeterminers: every; many, several, few, little; one, two, three …; (a) dozen
*their all trouble 、*five the all boys、*all this boy、*all both girls
Morpheme
It is the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be further divided into smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.
A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning. It is not like the sound patterns or syllables, which can be further divided into segments. Words may consist of one morpheme or more than one morphemes.
Types of morphemes
Free and Bound morphemes，In terms of their capacity of occurring alone: Free morphemes: those that may occur alone, or which may constitute words by themselves, e.g. boy, girl, table, nation.
Bound morphemes: those may appear with at least one other morpheme and cannot stand by themselves, e.g. -s, -ed, dis-, un- Inflectional and Derivative morphemes
Inflectional morphemes do not change the word class of the word but only ass a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem. That is it provides further grammatical meaning to the existing lexical item. In English, inflectional affixes are mostly suffixes.
Derivative morphemes often change the lexical meaning and the word class. That is it provides lexical information to the existing lexical item. In English, derivative affixes can be prefixes or suffixes. Main types of inflectional morphemes
Inflectional affixes (or inflectional morphemes) serve to indicate the syntactic relationships between words and function as grammatical markers. They include：Plurality名词复数 -s in chairs, pens; -es in boxes, tomatoes; -en in oxen 。The genitive case名词所有格， e.g. 's in boy's, The comparative and superlative degrees形容词/副词比较级,最高级 The verbal endings动词词尾变化
a. -(e)s in words like eats, teaches shows the third person singular present
tense. b. -ing in words like eating, shows the present participle or gerund. c. -(e)d in words like worked shows the past tense or past participle.
Main types of derivational morphemes Classification of Prefixes：
1)''negative ''否定prefixes: un-,non, in-,dis-, a- etc.
2)''reversative相反or privative否定的前缀''prefixes:un-,de-dis etc. 3)''pejorative变坏的, 轻蔑的''prefixes: mis-, mal-, pseudo- etc. 4)''degree
or
size
''prefixes:
arch-,
super-,out-,sub-,over-,under-,hyper-,ultra-,mini- etc. 5)''attitude态度''prefixes: co-,counter-,anti-,pro- etc. 6)''locative位置格''prefixes: super-,sub-,inter-,trans- etc. 7)''time and order '‗ prefixes:fore-,pre-,post-,ex-,re- etc. 8)''number '‗ prefixes:uni-/mono-,bi-/di-,tri-,multi-/poly- etc
Classification of suffixes: (omitted).deverbal nouns, deadjective verb, denominal adjective etc. More differences
Inflectional morphemes are generally less productive than their derivational counterparts and they serve to produce different forms of a single lexeme. Derivational affixes are very productive in making new words.
Inflectional morphemes cannot change the word class of the word they
attach to, but derivational affixes might change the word class and they often change the lexical meaning.
Inflectional morphemes are decided by factors within the phrase or sentence, whereas derivational affixes are based on meaning distinctions.
In English, inflection morphemes are mostly suffixes, whereas derivational affixes can both be prefixes and suffixes. One word usually has only one inflectional morpheme, whereas it may have two or more derivational morphemes.
Root and affix morpheme
Poly-morphemic words other than compounds may be divided into roots and affixes.
A root is the base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total loss of identity. All words contain a root morpheme which may be a bound morpheme or a free morpheme.
An affix is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme (the root or stem), which has three subtypes, prefix, suffix and infix. All affixes are bound morphemes.
Root, affix, stem and base
Root: A ―root‖ is the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. In other words, a ―root‖ is that part of the word left when all the affixes are removed.
―Internationalism‖ is a four-morpheme derivative which keeps its free morpheme ―nation‖ as its root when ― inter-‖, ―-al‖ and ―-ism‖ are taken away. All words contain a root morpheme.
Roots may be ；free: those that can stand by themselves, e.g. black+board; nation+-al; or bound: those that cannot stand by themselves, eg -ceive in receive, perceive, conceive.
A word consisting of one free root or one morpheme is a simple word. e.g. man, talk, red, etc. A free root is a free morpheme. Some words (i. e., compounds ) have more than one root ,e. g., ―mailman‖ , ―girlfriend‖. “affix‖ is a collective term for the type of formative that can be used, only when added to another morpheme (the root or stem). Affixes are naturally bound and they are limited in number in a language.
Normally divided into ：prefix (dis-, un-) and suffix (-en, -ify). infix( a bound morpheme that is inserted in the middle of another morpheme)。Massafuckingchusetts, absobloominlutely
A stem is the part of a word to which an inflectional affix is or can be added. e.g. 'worker' in 'workers' is a stem.
The stem of a word can be : a simple stem consisting of only one morpheme or root, eg, work; a root plus a derivational affix, eg, worker; two or more roots, eg, workshop;
So we can understand stem as any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added. It may be the
same as , and in other cases, different from, a root.
For example, in the word ―friends‖ , ―friend‖ is both the root and the stem, but in the word ―friendships‖, ―friendship‖ is its stem, ―friend‖ is its root. A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added; it may also be defined as ''a form to which a rule of word-formation is applied.'‗ This means that any root or stem can be termed a base. E.g. desirable is a base in undesirable.
A root is the basic unchangeable part of a word with no further analysis. Such as nation is a root in international.
A stem is the surplus part after the cutting of inflectional morpheme in a word, and it can be further analyzed, it sometimes could be a root. e.g. desire is a stem in desired.
A base is a form to which a rule of word-formation is applied, it could be a root or a stem. Such as internation is a base in international. Morphs (形素) and allomorphs （形位变体）
Morphs are the smallest meaningful phonetic segments of an utterance on the level of parole. They are the phonological (spoken) or orthographic (written) forms which realize morphemes and they are the carriers of meaning.
Most morphemes are realized by single morphs, like student. Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph depending on the context in which they occur, and each morph can be said to be an
allomorph of the morpheme. E.g. the morpheme {-s}. (morphemes in the abstract notion are symbolized by brace brackets)
We can say that ―dog + plural‖, ―sheep+ plural‖, ―goose +plural‖ are abstract analyses at the morpheme-level, and are realized as dogs, sheep, geese at the morph-level.
But very often the term ―morpheme‖ is used for convenience when we actually refer to a morph. So many people refer to morphs like –s and –ed, as morphemes.
形位是最小的句法单位， 是抽象的，形素是形位在具体被运用时所表现的一种变异，形素有语法变体（同一个词在不同言语中的不同词类作用）、语音变体和语义变体（词的多种词汇意义在不同语境中的出现）（高名凯1995）。
The actual phonetic representation of a morpheme is called a morph, with the different morphs representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
So, allomorphs are phonological or orthographic variants of the same morpheme. {-ed} is realized orthographically by –d, -ed, and other forms corresponding to irregular verbs, phonologically by [-t],[-d],[-id] and other forms. Allomorphs are in complementary distribution and never occur in the same environment.
形位变体的三特点： 互补分布，相同意义，相同的语法功能。 Morphemic conditions
Phonologically conditioned: assimilation vs. dissimilation (the process in which the influence of one sound segment upon the articulation of another, so that the sounds become less alike or different) e.g. injustice, imperfect; grammar → glammer
Morphologically conditioned: morphemes can also be influenced by morphological factors. All the allomorphs should share the same sememe, and they should be in complementary distribution to fill the same functional place in the grammatical structure of the language. Morphological classification of languages (Wilhelm von Humboldt) An isolating language （孤立语） is also called an analytical language or root language, in which the words are invariable, e.g. Chinese. Grammatical meaning is mainly conveyed by independent grammatical or empty words or word orders rather than inflectional morphemes. So, each word only consists of one morpheme. 虚词重要，词序严格，派生词少复合词多
A language isolate refers to a natural language with no demonstrable genetic relationship with other languages. The language family consists of a single language.
An inflecting language （屈折语）is also called a synthetic language or fusional language（融合语）, in which grammatical relationships are expressed by changing the internal structure of the words----typically by the use of inflectional endings which express several grammatical
meanings at once. Latin, Greek, Germen etc.
有比较丰富的词形变化，表达不同语法意义，词尾和词干或词根结合十分紧密，脱离开词尾，句子中的词根就不能独立存在。
An agglutinating language(粘着语) is also called agglutinative language, in which a word typically consists of a linear sequence of morphemes, all clearly recognizable. E.g. Turkish. Ev-house, ler-plural, im-my, in-possessive. These morphemes, each corresponding to a single meaning, are simply connected linearly to form a word evlerimin, which means my houses.
粘着语的前面和中间不发生变化，只是词的尾部发生变化，表示语法意义。 变词语素的每一种变化只表示一种语法意义，多种语法意义就要用多个变词语素来表示。 词根与变词语素结合不很紧密，两者有很大的独立性，只是在用的时候临时贴上去，故名粘着语。 English used to be an inflecting language, but now it‘s more similar to an isolating language: few inflectional endings, and word-order changes are the basis of the grammar. e.g. The mouse loves the rice. The rice loves the mouse. Die Maus liebt den Reis. Den Reis liebt die Maus. Besides, English has some agglutinating structures as well, e.g. antidisestablishmentarianism ―the belief which opposes removing the tie between church and state‖
Morphology: the study of word-formation, or the internal structure of words, or the rules by which words are formed from smaller components
– morphemes. Morphology is concerned with two branches, inflections (inflectional morphology) and word formation (lexical or derivational morphology)
MorphologyInflectionalMorphologyDerivational/LexicalMorphology Inflection indicates grammatical relations by adding inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect and case to a stem whose grammatical class will not change.
Word-formation，a new word or expression is often referred to as a neologism, which can be a coinage, i.e. a word or phrase that has been recently invented, or a word with a new meaning. e.g. glass ceiling, laptop, mouse, memory.
Word formation is an area of derivational morphology which studies the processes of word building and rules that governing the formation of new words.
In English, major word formation processes are productive and mainly include derivation, compounding and conversion.
Minor word formation processes are less productive such as blending, clipping, back-formation and acronymy. Compounding
Two or more free roots combine to make a new word.
Noun compounds: daybreak, playboy, haircut, windmill Verb compounds: brainstorm, lipread, babysit Adjective compounds: gray-haired, duty-free Preposition compounds: into, throughout
Endocentric: one element serves as the head, the relationship of ―a kind of‖; 内向复合词有一个意义上的中心词（head word）,其它为修饰成分。E.g. self-control: a kind of control
Exocentric: there is no head, so not a relationship of ―a kind of something‖, e.g. scarecrow: not a kind of crow、breakneck: not a kind of neck
Written forms of compounds：three forms：Solid: blackboard, teapot, bodyguard、Hyphenated: wedding-ring, wave-length、Open: coffee table, washing machine, grass snake
Free variation: businessman, business-man, business man
Compounds and free phrases
semantic features of compounds: the meaning of a compound is, in most cases, no longer a simple combination of the meanings of the component elements.
orthographic features: most compounds are hyphenated or directly conjoined.
phonological features: the stress in a compound falls on the first constituent morpheme.
grammatical features: compounds have special internal
structures ,which are unacceptable in free phrases, e.g. angel-faced, fine arts(美术), flowerpot, daughter-in-law Chinese compounds
a compound in Chinese can be distinguished from a phrase when we check whether the words in it still keep their own meaning. E.g. 冬瓜 vs. 冬雪,大方vs. 贫富
different semantic relationships within the morphemes comprising a compound， e.g. verb-compliment: action-object,打靶；cause-effect, 推翻 Derivation Class-changing:
N → V: lengthen, hospitalize, discard N → A: friendly, delightful, speechless V → N: worker, employee, inhabitant V → A: acceptable, adorable A → N: rapidness, rapidity A → V: deafen, sweeten Adj → Adv: exactly, quickly Class-preserving:
N→N: nonsmoker, ex-wife, booklet V→V: disobey, unfasten
A→A: grayish, irrelevant Derivations in computer words：
-ware: products for running a computer, e.g. software, hardware, shareware, freeware
-cyber-and e-: ―relating to the internet‖, e.g. cyberspace, cyberchat, e-mail, e-commerce e-cash
Zero derivation (conversion)：Definition: a word can be converted from one word class into another without any morphological change. Conversion occurs mostly on simple word or one-morpheme words, like work (n., v.) types: n. →v. milk → to milk; v. →n. to doubt → doubt; adj./adv. →v. dry → to dry; adj. →n. native →native word-formation through lexical change
Invention/Coinage/ neologism: words created to denote new objects or ideas such as nylon. Mostly brand names: Kodak, Coke.
Blending: A complex form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining together the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by only joining the initial parts of the two words. smoke+fog→smog
Back-formation: an unusually abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. editor→edit、laze ← lazy、televise ←televisio Abbreviations
Clipping：Back-clippings: ad(vertisement), exam(ination). Fore-clippings: (ham)burger, (omni)bus, ( (tele)phone, (earth)quake Fore-and-aft clippings: (in)flu(enza), (de)tec(tive)
Acronym：AIDS, Aids: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome、 ASAP: as soon as possible、 CD-ROM: compact disc read-only memory Initialism ：AI: artificial intelligence、a.s.a.p.: as soon as possible、ECU: European Currency Unit Analogical creation
From irregular to regular: work: wrought → worked slay: slew → slayed?
So, analogical creation is different from overgeneralization, which is a mistake in the use of language. Borrowing
Loanwords: both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight change, in some cases, to the phonological system of the target language. For example, tea from Chinese, au pair from French.
Loanblend: part of the form is native and the rest has been borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed. E.g. coconut: coco (Spanish) + nut (English); Chinatown: China (Chinese) + town (English)
Loanshift: the meaning is borrowed, but the form is native. E.g. Bridge Loan translation (Calque): one morpheme or word is translated in the equivalent language. E.g. almighty← Latin omnipotents, free verse←
Latin‘s verse libre
Other kinds of language changes：Phonological change、Morphosyntactic change、Semantic change 、Orthographic change Phonological change (changes in sound leading to changes in form) Loss of sound (脱落):
loss of the velar fricative /x/ which existed in O.E. loss of sound in fast speech, eg library, laboratory，and → ‘n in connected speech, eg rock-‘n-roll
Addition of sound: sounds may be added to the original sound sequence. L. studium → O.F. estudie, Sp. estudio, Port. estudo 。English: rascal → rapscallion
Metathesis (换位): changing the sequence of sound。O.E. brid → bird, O.E. ox/ax → ask
Assimilation: the change of a sound by the influence of an adjacent sound (contact or contiguous assimilation) impossible, irregular, illogical.
Non-contiguous/distant assimilation: between two sounds that are not too far separated. Discussing shortly
Morphosyntactic change
Morphological change: third person singular present tense: -(e)th: do(e)th, goeth→。 -(e)s: does, goes, has, finds 。the campus of the university →the university‘s campus
Syntactic change:
He saw you not. → He didn‘t see you.
I know not where to hide my head. → I don‘t know where to hide my head.
Fusion/blending: equally good + just as good → equally as good It‘s no use getting there before nine + There‘s no use in getting there before nine → There‘s no use getting there before nine.
Semantic change
Broadening: holiday: holy day (religion) → day for rest、 bird: young bird → any kind、 task: tax → work
Narrowing: girl: young person → young woman、deer: beast → a special kind of animal
Meaning shift: bead: prayer → the prayer bead → small, ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood
Class shift: conversion to other word classes
engineer: person trained in engineering → to act as an engineer (N → V) Folk etymology: a popular but mistaken account of the origin of a word or phrase .
wiz: he is a wiz at math.
Fake etymology: a kind of folk etymology Manhattan: man with hat on MBA: married but available
PhD: perhaps have divorced
golf: Gentlemen Only; Ladies Forbidden Orthographic change
Change of spelling: Iesus > Jesus、sate > sat、Sunne > Sun
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