DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR

Morphology
L. Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

„They gave it me,” Humpty Dumpty continued, „for an

un-birthday present.”
„I beg your pardon?” Alice said with puzzled air.
„I’m not ofended,” said Humpty Dumpty.
„I mean, what is an un-birthday present?”
„A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of
course.”
Words
 words are not the most basic units of meaning;
 some can be analysed further into smaller
meaningful units
Words
 phon – the minimal form (root) ‘pertaining to sound’

 phone, phonetic, phonetics, phonetician, phonic,

phonology, phonologist, phonological, telephone,
telephonic, phoneme, phonemic, allophone,
euphonious, symphony
Morphology
‘the study of word forms’

Morpheme – ‘a minimal unit of meaning or

grammatical function’ which cannot be analysed or
broken down into simpler elements
‘the smallest meaningful unit in a language’
Types of morphemes
morpheme

grammatical lexical

function inflectional content derivational

word affix word affix
Lexical morphemes
 Lexical, or dictionary meaning;
 4 word classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb.
 Open class – new items can be added

 Independent words (free roots) OR

 Parts of words (derivational affixes, bound roots)
Grammatical morphemes
 Express relations within the sentence OR
 A limited number of very common meanings

 Closed categories; can be listed

 Parts of words (inflectional affixes OR

 Independent function words of minor words classes:
pronouns, prepositions, articles, demonstratives,
auxiliaries, conjunctions
Morph
Morpheme – an abstraction
Morph – the concrete realisation of a morpheme, the
actual segment of a word
Sometimes a morpheme has no concrete realisation –
zero morph e.g. plural of fish {FISH} + {pl}

Morphs are represented by word forms or phonetic

forms
Morphs
morph

free (root) bound

content function affix bound enclictic

word word root

prefix suffix auxiliary negative

derivational derivational inflectional

Free vs. bound
Free morph(eme) – can stand alone as an
independent word; is always a root
Bound – cannot stand alone, must be attached to
another morph/word
Root – a (usually) free morph around which words can
be built up through the addition of affixes; it carries
the principal lexical or grammatical meaning
(rdzeń)
Bound root
Bound root – foreign borrowings that were free in the
source language
-vert, -ceive, -mit
-vert: convert, intravert, pervert, revert, subvert
-ceive: conceive, deceive, perceive, receive
-mit: admit, commit, omit, remit, submit, transmit
‘How I Met My Wife’ by Jack Winter

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the

party I was very challant, despite my efforts to
appear gruntled and consolate, I was furling my
wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her
standing alone in the corner. She was a descript
person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair
was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in
a gainly way.
‘How I Met My Wife’ by Jack Winter

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the

party I was very challant, despite my efforts to
appear gruntled and consolate, I was furling my
wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her
standing alone in a corner. She was a descript
person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair
was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in
a gainly way.
‘How I Met My Wife’ by Jack Winter

nonchalant calm
disgruntled unhappy, annoyed
disconsolate disappointed, distressed
unwieldy awkward, clumsy
nondescript ordinary, dull
disarray disorder, confusion
unkempt uncombed
dishevelled untidy, sloven
ungainly awkward, clumsy
Affix
Affix – a bound morph which attaches to a base (root
or stem); limited potential for substitution
Prefix – attached at the beginning of a word
Suffix - attached at the end of a word
Affix
Derivational affix – (prefix or suffix)
 there may be more affixes per word than one

 it attaches to a limited number of roots

 no rule

 function: 1) to convert one part of speech to another

(class changing)
 2) to change the meaning of the root (class maintaing)

 creation of new lexemes

 always precedes an inflectional affix

Affix
Inflectional affix – (suffix)
 only one per word

 it attaches to all members of a particular word class

(few exeptions)
 Function: to indicate grammatical meaning (number,
case, person, tense)
 Semantically transparent (more than one, prior to the
present, etc.)
 always follows derivational suffixes

 productive vs. nonproductive (remnant) inflections foot-

feet. run-ran
Enclictic
A contraction, a bound form, derives from an
independent word, must be attached to a
preceding word
Auxiliaries – attached to the preceding subject and
negative
Base vs. stem
Base – root + derivational affixes to which
derivational affixes are added (podstawa
słowotwórcza)
Stem – root + derivational affixes to which
inflectional suffixes are added (temat wyrazu)
Inflections in English
plural number -s nouns
possessive case -s
present tense, 3rd p sg -s verbs
past tense -ed
past participle -ed
present participle -ing
comparative degree -er adjectives
superlative degree -est
Inflections in English
Internal change (ablaut)
sing sang
drive drove

foot feet (umlaut)

goose geese
man men
mouse mice
Inflections in English
Suppletion – replacing a morpheme with an entirely
different morpheme to indicate a grammatical
contrast
go went (from wendan ‘to turn’) to wend one’s way
be am are is was were
bēon ‘becoming’, sindon ‘being’ and wesan ‘staying,
dwelling’
dobry lepszy
zły gorszy
Inflections
Reduplication
Turkish
iji ‘well’ iij iji ‘very well’
gyzel ‘ beautifully’ gyzel gyzel
Indonesian
anak ‘child’ anak anak
Bibliography
Akmajian, A. 2001. Linguistics. MIT Press ch.2
Brinton, L. The structure of modern English. ch.4
Fromkin, V. An introduction to language. ch.3
Yule, G. The study of language. ch.8