Chapter 3 Lexicon
What is a word?
? A word is dead
? When it is said,
? Some say.
? I say it just begins to live that day.
? Emily Dickinson,― A Word‖
? A particular string of sounds must be united with a
meaning and a meaning must be united with
specific sounds in order for the sounds or the
meaning to be a word in our mental lexicon.
? A word,then,is a free form which does not
consist entirely of (2/3) lesser free forms; in brief,
a word is a minimum free form,
? Bloomfield,1933,p178).
I Features of WORD
? Word,a unit of expression that has
universal intuitive recognition by native
speakers but difficult to define
1,Three senses of a word
2,Identifications of words
3,Classification of words
Morphology
? Morphology is the branch of grammar
that studies the internal structure of
words and the rules of word formation,
? Morphology falls into two categories,
inflectional morphology (study of
inflections) and lexical/derivational
morphology (study of word formation).
? Morpheme,Definition and classification
? Definition,The morpheme is the smallest
unit of meaning,lexical or grammatical,
? Ask,weaknesses,how many morphemes?
Classification
? free/bound morpheme e.g,weak/ness
? derivational/inflectional morpheme
? (lexical meaning) (grammatical meaning)
? e.g,weak/ness-es
Morphology,the science of word
forms
?, They gave it me,― Humpty Dumpty continued,― for an un-birthday
present.‖
? ―I beg your pardon?‖ Alice said with a puzzled
air.
? ―I‘m not offended,‖ said Humpty Dumpty.
? ― I mean,what is an un-birthday present?‘
? ― A present given when it isn‘t your birthday,of course.‖
? Lewis Carroll,Through the Looking Glass
Lexemes
? Lexeme:denotes an item of vocabulary with a
single referent whether it consists of one
word or more,e.g,kick the bucket = die
Classes of words
? Lexical content words:
– Nouns,verbs,adj,and adv make us the largest part of
the vocabulary in English.
– Also called open-class words,download,weatherwise,
saleswise,
? Function Words:
– Prep.,conjunctions,determiners,pronouns
– Also kown as grammatical words,closed class words
– Generic form:n,―We will hire the best person for the
job regardless of his sex.‖ he/she,his/her ―e,‖ they &
their
Rules of Word Formation
?, I never heard of ?uglification,‘‖ Alice ventured
to say,―What is it?‖ The Gryphon lifted up both
its paws in surprise,― Never heard of uglifying!‖ it
exclaimed,―You know what to beautify is,I
suppose?‖ ―Yes,‖ said Alice doubtfully,―it means
–to make—anything—prettier.‖ ―Well,then,‖ the
Gryphon went on,―if you don‘t know what to
uglify is,you are a simpleton.‖
? Lewis Carroll,Alice in Wonderland
? Lexical gaps,Ugly+ify,beauty+ify,Morphemes
can be combined in this way because there are
morphological rules in every language that
determine how morphemes combine to form
new words.
Derivational Morphology
? Bound morphemes like –ify and –ation are called
derivational morphemes,When they are added to
root morphemes or stems a word is derived,
Wonderful creativity of language
? ―He likes to be nussed.‖ ―Is he really nussable?‖
derivational morphemes and the rules that
determine how they are added to roots or stems to
form new words.
? A word is not a simple sequence of morpheme but
has a hierarchical structure.
? Un system atic al ly
Words & Word-formation Processes
? Onomatopoeic words,crash,bang;
? Coinage,aspirin,nylon Kleenex,xerox
? Borrowing,alcohol(Arabic),boss(Dutch),
piano(Italian),suupaamaaketto
– Loan translation/calque un gratteciel ―a scrape-sky‖,
German wolkenfratzer ―cloud scraper‖ = skyscraper;
– Borrowing with sound modification:boyifurendo,as a
calque:nan pengyou
? Compounding:flatfoot,policeman,detective
? Blending,smog=smoke+fog,infotaiment
? Acronyms,NASA,MORF,FAQ,WYSIWYG,POP
? Backformation,TV & televise,editor-edit,
? Conversion/category change/functional shift,
noun to verbs (paper,butter,vacation,can) verbs
to nouns (guess,spy),printout,handout,takeover;
complex verb combination (wannabe=want to be)
? Clipping/abbreviations:fax=facsimile,
gas=gasoline,condo=condominium,clip
names:Al,Ed,Sam,tec/dick for detective
? Eponyms:Words from names
– Sandwich,4th Earl of Sandwich
– jumbo,after an elephant brought to the United States
by the P.T,Barnum
Inflectional Morphemes
? Inflectional endings:Bound morphemes that are
for the most part purely grammatical markers,
representing such concepts as tense,number,
gender,case,and so forth,They never change
the syntactic category of the words or morphemes
to which they are attached,They are always
attached to complete words,
Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes
that are not inflectional,Inflectional ~ signal
grammatical relations and are required by the
syntactic sentence formation rules,Derivational ~,
when affixed to roots,change the grammatical
word class/or basic meaning of the word,which
may then be inflected as to number,tense,etc,
English Inflectional Morphemes
? -s 3rd person sl present she wait-s at home.
? -ed past tense She wait-ed at home.
? -ing progressive eat-ing the donut.
? -en past participle has eat-en the donut.
? -s plural She ate the donut-s.
? -‘s possessive Disa‘s hair
? -er comparative short-er
? -est superlative the short-est hair
Morphological Analysis,
Identifying Morphemes
? Recurring Forms,to see if there are any forms that
mean the same thing in different words, ugly
occurs in ugly,uglier,ugliest.
? Ugly root morpheme
? Pretty root morpheme
? Tall root morpheme
? -er bound morpheme ―comparative‖
? -est bound morpheme ―superlative‖
? Consider the following nouns in Zulu and
proceed to look for recurring forms,Note that
the ordering of morphemes is not identical
across languages,Thus,what is a prefix in
one language may be a suffix or infix in
another
,
Data Set I
? Umfazi ―married woman‖ abafazi ―married women‖
? Umfani ―boy‖ abafani ―boys‖
? Umzali ―parent‖ abazali ―parents‖
? Umfundisi ―teacher‖ abafundisi ―teachers‖
? Umbazi ―carver‖ ababazi ―carvers‖
? Umlimi ―farmer‖ abalimi ―farmers‖
? Umdlali ―player‖ abadlali ―players‖
? Umfundi ―reader‖ abafundi ―readers
? What is the morpheme meaning ―singular‖
in Zulu?
? What the morpheme meaning ―plural‖ in
Zulu?
? List the Zulu stems and their meaning to
which the singular and plural morphemes
are attached.
Data Set II
? The following Zulu verbs are derived from noun stems by
adding a verbal suffix:
– Fundisa ―to teach‖ funda ―to read‖
– Lima ―to cultivate‖ baza ―to carve‖
Compare these to words in Data set I that are related in
meaning,What is the derivational suffix morpheme
that specifies the category verb?
What is the nominal suffix morpheme?
State the morphological noun formation rule in Zulu.
What is the stem morpheme meaning ―read‖?
What is the stem morpheme meaning ―carve‖?
Allomorphy
? Walk ~walked
? jog ~ jogged
? go ~ went
Summary
? Each word is stored in our mental lexicon
with information on its pronunciation
(phonological representation),its meaning
(semantic properties),and its syntactic class
or category specification,Orthography
? Words are not the most elemental sound –
meaning units; some words are structurally
complex,The most elemental grammatical
units in a language are morphemes,A
morpheme is the minimal unit of linguistic
meaning or grammatical function,
? A word consists one or more morphemes,
Lexical content morphemes that cannot be
analyzed into smaller parts are called root
morphemes,When a root morpheme is
combined with affix morphemes it forms a
stem,Other affixes can be added to a stem to
form a more complex stem.
? Morphemes are of two kinds,free or bound,
derivational or inflectional.
? Bound morphemes,affixes,prefixes,
suffixes,infixes and circumfixes.
? Lexical content words and function words
? Morphological rules are rules of word
formation,
What is a word?
? A word is dead
? When it is said,
? Some say.
? I say it just begins to live that day.
? Emily Dickinson,― A Word‖
? A particular string of sounds must be united with a
meaning and a meaning must be united with
specific sounds in order for the sounds or the
meaning to be a word in our mental lexicon.
? A word,then,is a free form which does not
consist entirely of (2/3) lesser free forms; in brief,
a word is a minimum free form,
? Bloomfield,1933,p178).
I Features of WORD
? Word,a unit of expression that has
universal intuitive recognition by native
speakers but difficult to define
1,Three senses of a word
2,Identifications of words
3,Classification of words
Morphology
? Morphology is the branch of grammar
that studies the internal structure of
words and the rules of word formation,
? Morphology falls into two categories,
inflectional morphology (study of
inflections) and lexical/derivational
morphology (study of word formation).
? Morpheme,Definition and classification
? Definition,The morpheme is the smallest
unit of meaning,lexical or grammatical,
? Ask,weaknesses,how many morphemes?
Classification
? free/bound morpheme e.g,weak/ness
? derivational/inflectional morpheme
? (lexical meaning) (grammatical meaning)
? e.g,weak/ness-es
Morphology,the science of word
forms
?, They gave it me,― Humpty Dumpty continued,― for an un-birthday
present.‖
? ―I beg your pardon?‖ Alice said with a puzzled
air.
? ―I‘m not offended,‖ said Humpty Dumpty.
? ― I mean,what is an un-birthday present?‘
? ― A present given when it isn‘t your birthday,of course.‖
? Lewis Carroll,Through the Looking Glass
Lexemes
? Lexeme:denotes an item of vocabulary with a
single referent whether it consists of one
word or more,e.g,kick the bucket = die
Classes of words
? Lexical content words:
– Nouns,verbs,adj,and adv make us the largest part of
the vocabulary in English.
– Also called open-class words,download,weatherwise,
saleswise,
? Function Words:
– Prep.,conjunctions,determiners,pronouns
– Also kown as grammatical words,closed class words
– Generic form:n,―We will hire the best person for the
job regardless of his sex.‖ he/she,his/her ―e,‖ they &
their
Rules of Word Formation
?, I never heard of ?uglification,‘‖ Alice ventured
to say,―What is it?‖ The Gryphon lifted up both
its paws in surprise,― Never heard of uglifying!‖ it
exclaimed,―You know what to beautify is,I
suppose?‖ ―Yes,‖ said Alice doubtfully,―it means
–to make—anything—prettier.‖ ―Well,then,‖ the
Gryphon went on,―if you don‘t know what to
uglify is,you are a simpleton.‖
? Lewis Carroll,Alice in Wonderland
? Lexical gaps,Ugly+ify,beauty+ify,Morphemes
can be combined in this way because there are
morphological rules in every language that
determine how morphemes combine to form
new words.
Derivational Morphology
? Bound morphemes like –ify and –ation are called
derivational morphemes,When they are added to
root morphemes or stems a word is derived,
Wonderful creativity of language
? ―He likes to be nussed.‖ ―Is he really nussable?‖
derivational morphemes and the rules that
determine how they are added to roots or stems to
form new words.
? A word is not a simple sequence of morpheme but
has a hierarchical structure.
? Un system atic al ly
Words & Word-formation Processes
? Onomatopoeic words,crash,bang;
? Coinage,aspirin,nylon Kleenex,xerox
? Borrowing,alcohol(Arabic),boss(Dutch),
piano(Italian),suupaamaaketto
– Loan translation/calque un gratteciel ―a scrape-sky‖,
German wolkenfratzer ―cloud scraper‖ = skyscraper;
– Borrowing with sound modification:boyifurendo,as a
calque:nan pengyou
? Compounding:flatfoot,policeman,detective
? Blending,smog=smoke+fog,infotaiment
? Acronyms,NASA,MORF,FAQ,WYSIWYG,POP
? Backformation,TV & televise,editor-edit,
? Conversion/category change/functional shift,
noun to verbs (paper,butter,vacation,can) verbs
to nouns (guess,spy),printout,handout,takeover;
complex verb combination (wannabe=want to be)
? Clipping/abbreviations:fax=facsimile,
gas=gasoline,condo=condominium,clip
names:Al,Ed,Sam,tec/dick for detective
? Eponyms:Words from names
– Sandwich,4th Earl of Sandwich
– jumbo,after an elephant brought to the United States
by the P.T,Barnum
Inflectional Morphemes
? Inflectional endings:Bound morphemes that are
for the most part purely grammatical markers,
representing such concepts as tense,number,
gender,case,and so forth,They never change
the syntactic category of the words or morphemes
to which they are attached,They are always
attached to complete words,
Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes
that are not inflectional,Inflectional ~ signal
grammatical relations and are required by the
syntactic sentence formation rules,Derivational ~,
when affixed to roots,change the grammatical
word class/or basic meaning of the word,which
may then be inflected as to number,tense,etc,
English Inflectional Morphemes
? -s 3rd person sl present she wait-s at home.
? -ed past tense She wait-ed at home.
? -ing progressive eat-ing the donut.
? -en past participle has eat-en the donut.
? -s plural She ate the donut-s.
? -‘s possessive Disa‘s hair
? -er comparative short-er
? -est superlative the short-est hair
Morphological Analysis,
Identifying Morphemes
? Recurring Forms,to see if there are any forms that
mean the same thing in different words, ugly
occurs in ugly,uglier,ugliest.
? Ugly root morpheme
? Pretty root morpheme
? Tall root morpheme
? -er bound morpheme ―comparative‖
? -est bound morpheme ―superlative‖
? Consider the following nouns in Zulu and
proceed to look for recurring forms,Note that
the ordering of morphemes is not identical
across languages,Thus,what is a prefix in
one language may be a suffix or infix in
another
,
Data Set I
? Umfazi ―married woman‖ abafazi ―married women‖
? Umfani ―boy‖ abafani ―boys‖
? Umzali ―parent‖ abazali ―parents‖
? Umfundisi ―teacher‖ abafundisi ―teachers‖
? Umbazi ―carver‖ ababazi ―carvers‖
? Umlimi ―farmer‖ abalimi ―farmers‖
? Umdlali ―player‖ abadlali ―players‖
? Umfundi ―reader‖ abafundi ―readers
? What is the morpheme meaning ―singular‖
in Zulu?
? What the morpheme meaning ―plural‖ in
Zulu?
? List the Zulu stems and their meaning to
which the singular and plural morphemes
are attached.
Data Set II
? The following Zulu verbs are derived from noun stems by
adding a verbal suffix:
– Fundisa ―to teach‖ funda ―to read‖
– Lima ―to cultivate‖ baza ―to carve‖
Compare these to words in Data set I that are related in
meaning,What is the derivational suffix morpheme
that specifies the category verb?
What is the nominal suffix morpheme?
State the morphological noun formation rule in Zulu.
What is the stem morpheme meaning ―read‖?
What is the stem morpheme meaning ―carve‖?
Allomorphy
? Walk ~walked
? jog ~ jogged
? go ~ went
Summary
? Each word is stored in our mental lexicon
with information on its pronunciation
(phonological representation),its meaning
(semantic properties),and its syntactic class
or category specification,Orthography
? Words are not the most elemental sound –
meaning units; some words are structurally
complex,The most elemental grammatical
units in a language are morphemes,A
morpheme is the minimal unit of linguistic
meaning or grammatical function,
? A word consists one or more morphemes,
Lexical content morphemes that cannot be
analyzed into smaller parts are called root
morphemes,When a root morpheme is
combined with affix morphemes it forms a
stem,Other affixes can be added to a stem to
form a more complex stem.
? Morphemes are of two kinds,free or bound,
derivational or inflectional.
? Bound morphemes,affixes,prefixes,
suffixes,infixes and circumfixes.
? Lexical content words and function words
? Morphological rules are rules of word
formation,
