Linguistique anglaise
Morphology - The Study of words and how they are formed
leçon en lien avec le cours de prononciation
Definition:
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and of the rules which govern the way that words are formed.
A morpheme is the smallest unit of linguistic meaning.
Each individual word can be made up of one or many different morphemes.
- Boyish => 2 morphemes
- Desirable => 2 morphemes
- Gentlemanliness => 4 morphemes
It is important not to confuse morphemes and syllables.
- Lady => 2 syllables but one morpheme. Lady is a disyllabic but monomorphemic word.
- Crocodile = 1 morpheme but 3 syllables
- Salamander => 1 morpheme but 4 syllables.
Thus, words can be multisyllabic but monomorphemic.
Attention, c’est toujours l’oral qui détermine, l’orthographe est inutile. We also speak of phonological elements and not written forms.
Example: Catty: (of a woman) saying unkind things about other people. Aggressive, behaving like a cat.
We take the phonological form of a stem and we add elements to it to coin a new word. The elements we add to the stem are called affixes.
STEM:   /kæt/+ AFFIX: /i/

❖ Sometimes, a morpheme can have a grammatical function.
E.G. <S> of the plural form. One cat => 2 cats.
An inflexional morpheme is a morpheme that performs a grammatical function.
Inflexion: a change in the form of a word, especially the ending, according to its grammatical function in a sentence

Affixes :

We make the distinction between 4 types of affixes:
1 & 2 - Prefixes and suffixes
  • A prefix is placed before another morpheme. E.G. <im>+<possible>
  • A suffix follows the stem and is attached to the end of a word. E.G. /ə(r)/ as in teacher, worker, inspector, sailor, operator.

ATTENTION: the same morpheme /ə(r)/ but 2 different written forms <er> and <or>.

Note: one morpheme can have slightly different forms. These are called allomorphs. Allomorphs are the possible variants of a given morpheme.
E.G. The inflexional morpheme of the plural form in English <S> has 3 allomorphs:
1) books /s/
2) bags /z/
3) watches /iz/
  • If the lexical word ends with an unvoiced sound, we will have the /s/ allomorph.
  • If the lexical word ends with a voiced sound, we will have the /z/ allomorph.
  • If the lexical word ends with /ːtʃ/ or /dʒ/ , we will have the /iz/ allomorph.
3 - Inflexes
Affixes that we put inside a stem. It doesn’t exist in the English language.
Example of the Tagalog language: very productive in terms of inflexes. (Philippines)
A letter =>Sulat => Sumulat =>Write (infinitive)
Taken=> Kuha => Kumuha =>Take (infinitive)
Thus, the inflex <-mu-> is used to indicate an infinitive form.
4 - Circumfixes
They are used both at the beginning and at the end of a stem.
It was used in Old English but not anymore. German still uses it.