What Is Morphology. This is very important question for every Language student.The morphology is the part of linguistics that analyzes the internal structure of words and how this relationship with the meaning.
Many people think of language in terms of words , but the words are not the main subject of analysis in morphology. Linguists are more interested in morphemes , which can be defined as the minimum unit of meaning of the grammar of a language or as “minimum operating units in the composition of words.” Both definitions have in common the idea of the morpheme as a minimum unit in the construction of words or the grammar of a language.
Each word contains at least one morpheme and some may have many more. For example, the word esperanto plimalboniĝintus (a verb meaning ‘would be getting worse’) consists of six morphemes.
This might seem like a lot, but the words in some languages can be composed of many more morphemes.
Morphemes can be free in this case they may appear to be just like English cat (cat) or can be linked together with other elements in the same type of word. Terminations plurals in English and in Polish -s and -y are linked.
Not all languages have the same free and bound morphemes. The Spanish word gato (cat) contains two bound morphemes gat- and -owhich marks the noun as masculine. If we replace it with -a , we will have a cat:
The word for esperanto cat is kato and is constituted by two morphemes, the root kat- and -o that appears in all the common nouns.
Often the morphemes do not have the same shape. Different versions of the same morpheme are called allomorphs . The Hungarian word for cat {} is macska and macská- . Before the plural ending -k can be added, the last vowel changes so that macska and macská-allomorphs are the same morpheme: macska + k = macsk á k
Types of words
In all languages, words can be categorized into groups depending on their function in the sentence, these groups are called classes of words (or parts of speech )
The only two parts of discourse common to all languages are the nouns and verbs . Both are large classes of words with subclasses.
Nouns include:
- Common names: names of things that belong to the same class: dog, house, friendship
- proper names: names of people, animals or place: John Nemo, Berlin
- Personal pronouns: they refer to the person who performs the action I , receives the action you or subject them to a sentence.
- demonstrative pronouns: refer to things close to this, this , and far that, that.
There are also other types of pronouns like the questions ( who, whom ), negative ( no ), the relative ( who, whom ), and undefined (someone, something ).
Verbs can be classified into: lexical verbs (also called complete verbs) that indicate what someone or something does, how they swim, talk , or think , auxiliary verbs that have grammatical meanings, that are used along with lexical verbs usually to indicate a specific time or a way (for example is walking , he was gone ).
The adjectives that describe quality, can work well as a word class of its own (as in many European languages) or be considered a subclass of nouns or verbs.
akai = is red
akakatta = it was red
10 Universal facts About What Is Morphology You Must Understand.
In most European languages, adjectives are closely related to nouns, and thus express their own categories (number, gender and case).In some languages, such as Japanese, they are a subclass of verbs and express typical categories of the verb as time.
ther important word classes include conjunctions , who form words or phrases, the adverbs that modify different parts of a sentence and appositions that indicate the location or other relationships between the noun and the verb that change.
How they change the words
The morphological processes can be divided into two categories. The changes inflected do not change the basic meaning of the words, but they indicate the grammatical function. The list of all grammatical forms of a word can be called paradigm . This is the paradigm of the word name in esperanto (nome) that has two numbers (singular and plural) and two cases (nominative and accusative).
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | nome | nomoj |
| accusative | nomon | nomojn |
The native speakers of a language do not think in terms of paradigms (often what surprises the non-native speakers). But paradigms are a very useful tool for describing and language learning. An appropiate way to refer to all grammatical forms of a word is the lexeme (or lexical word). The four words in esperanto in the paradigm mentioned belong to the same lexeme nomo .
The changes Derivational are of two types. One type can transform part of the sentence to which belong the words (eg can change a noun into a verb or adjective, an adjective into a noun and adverb or a noun into a verb into a noun). In Polish the noun pytanie(demand) is derived from the verb pytać (ask). The ending -nie is added to the root pyta- .
Another type of derivational change does not transform the type of speech, but it changes the meaning so as to create a new lexeme. In German , adding peri- od (outside) to the verb sprechen (speaking), the meaning becomes pronounce.
Most morphological changes are accomplished through the affixes : bound morphemes are added to the root. The most common are the prefixes and suffixes respectively before or after the root.
A convenient way to think of the words is in terms of roots and themes. The root is the morpheme or lexeme basic vocabulary that is always present. The theme is the root plus any derivational affixes to which you can add affixes inflected . For example, the English word alphabet (alphabet) is simultaneously root and theme. The word alphabetize (literacy) shares the same root, but the theme becomes alphabetize , with the addition of the derivational suffix -ize that turns into a verb.
The affixes as inflectional {vo} for the imperfect and {} ndo for the gerund are added to the subject resulting in forms such as singing {} or {} singing.
Similarly, the Polish word przeczytam (I will read it (all)) can be analyzed as: based on the root czyta- (read), to which is added the prefix derivational prze- (all) to create przeczyta- (read all) with l ‘ adding the ending inflected -m (first person singular).
The prefixes and suffixes are examples of linear morphology (where morphemes are added in a linear order). In the non-linear morphology of a new morpheme begins before the first end.
A circumfix has two parts that appear in different places. In many German past participles are made with the man- circumfix -t, likegesagt (said):
A frame appears within another morpheme, or in other words stops it. In Tagalog, the lingua franca of the Philippines, Sulat is a root meaning to write . The frame -um- transforms it into a finite verb which directs the attenzioe the subject: sumulat means (someone) writes .
L ‘ ablaut is a phonetic modification of the root without adding additional elements. In Europe the Germanic languages have many verbs whose past participle is created by changing a vowel. In English both the past and the past participle is obtained by changing a vowel of the root as it happens in the swim , whose past is swam .
A morphological process more complex the transfixed ie an element that runs through the root. In Malta, some adjectives have a radically different form, but are consistent with the genre. For these adjectives, male pattern is vCCvC (v = vowel, C = consonant), while the female is CvCCa.
| root | male | female | |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | bjd, | abjad | Bajda |
| black | swd | iswed | sewda |
Other types of morphological constructs include compound words that combine more than one root to make a new theme. The German word for language is Sprachwissenschaft {}, a word made from the root {} Sprache (language) and Wissenschaft (science).
Some languages prefer to create new words through the composition and choose other methods such as modification of a noun through a prepositional phrase. The coffee grinder is a compound word in German Kaffemühle and Hungarian kavédaraló , while in french moulin à café and Polish Młynek do kawy is a noun plus a prepositional phrase.
The reduplication is the repetition of a word to express some grammatical function. In Indonesia, the nouns are repeated to create the plural eg buku (book) and buku-buku (books). Sometimes it is repeated only a part of the word as the turkish beyaz (white) and bembeyaz (very white).
The suppletion is a complete change of a word to express a grammatical function. Often due to historical reasons. In Spanish the infinitive and the future of the verb ir (to go) are descended from the Latin verb ire while the present time comes from vadere(forward).
| Infinity | ir | go |
|---|---|---|
| future | iré | I will go |
| this | voy | I go, I’m going |
Types of morphological structures
Different languages add affixes in different ways. Sometimes we refer to a language basing on the type of morphology that mostly it uses. In agglutinative languages certain grammatical features such as person, number and case are expressed by separate affixes that are added to the root. In turkish, for example evlerimin (of my house) it consists of a root on which three suffixes have been added.
In inflected languages , affixes combine different functions so that the termination czech -u indicates at the same time plural and genitive. In addition to this function, if it is added to the noun dům (house) the vowel of the stem changes resulting domů .
The insulating languages use less than the posted caking or inflected. To show grammatical relationships, using a fixed order of words which add other words to the functions normally carried out by posted in the most morphologically oriented languages. In Vietnam, for example, the time is expressed by projecting particles to the lexical verb.
The variety of forms in which different languages can change the words to change its function, is too broad to be described here. The morphological, like every other aspect of the language, are never static so that the speakers of a language consistently achieve minimum changes that over time become enormously language.
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