MEANINGFUL BUILDING BLOCKS

MORPHOLOGY
 The branch of linguistics that studies the
structure of words

can be defined as the study of the elements

needed to construct syntactic groups and
sentences
MORPHOLOGY
can be described as the study of the internal
structure of composite words

The study of morphemes - building elements

used to form composite words or grammatical
units.
 from Greek morphè ‘form’ the smallest
meaningful unit in the language

are divided into lexical morphemes (lexemes) and

grammatical morphemes

can be simple words ( which can stand alone.

MORPHEMES They are called “free morphemes”

Affixes never exist as words themselves, but are

always attached to some other morpheme. They
are called “bound morphemes”.
They allow us to build composite words and
composite grammatical units.
Composite words can be created in 2 ways which are known as compounding and derivation :
 
a) 1 st way is to combine two “free” morphemes as in fruit juice
b) 2nd way is to combine a “free” morpheme with a “bound” morpheme as in fruitless.

Compounding -forming new words but from two or more independent words for example: fruit juice, peanut butter ,
cream cheese

Derivational morphemes create or derive new words by changing the meaning or by changing the word class of the
word.
(It consist of a free morpheme and a bound morpheme )
• CO M P O S I T E W O RD S
We can further divide bound morphemes into three categories:
• prefix un-kind
•suffix fruitl-less , happi-ness
• infix abso-blooming-lutely
• The general term for all three is affix.
 
• un - carries a negative meaning
• less ,ness - expresses a state or quality
• s- expresses plurality
• ing - conveys a sense of duration
 GRAMMATICAL
MORPHE MES
• Grammatical morphemes are used to link
words in a grammatical unit. They
function as building elements for syntactic
groups (e.g. many books) or for sentence
construction (e.g. He worked).  
• When it comes to grammatical morphenes
we can make a further distinction between
two types: 
a) free morphemes like the particle to in to
go. They are also known as function words
which are less free than content words such
as book or like However function word and
one or more content words can be linked
together in a syntactic group, such as a
(very) (nice) present
b) bound morphemes – 3rd person ending -s
in he likes. They are also called inflectional
mor- phemes Words combined with bound
grammatical morphemes are known as
inflected forms ( this is the part of
morphology – Inflectional morphology
The set of grammatical morphemes is summarized in Table 2
 WORD
FORMATION

•The formation of composite words. The

processes of word Formation:

• compounding e.g. apple tree

• derivation, e.g. breathless.
• conversion (clean and to clean
• backderivation (typewriter and to
typewrite),
• blending (motor + hotel and motel),
• clipping (a miniskirt and a mini)
• acronyms (European Union and
EU).
 WORD
FORMATION AND
NAME-GIVING
 WHY IS ONE NAME AND NOT THE
OTHER ACCEPTED IN THE LANGUAGE?

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

Let us look at a example :

TELEPHONE

•The engineers in a big electronic firm are sitting around

the table to discuss a new type of telephone not fixed to a
plug which can be carried around. They might find all sorts
of names for it like mobile telephone, cellular telephone,
pocket telephone, digital phone, portable phone, etc. Each
name reflects a different construal and highlights one
salient aspect of the phone.
• In American English is called a cellular
phone, a cell phone or cellular . It is based on
the internal cellular system .

•In British English is called mobile phone

because the emphasis is placed on the movable
quality of such a phone

•In German: Ein Handy because the “useful and

simple to use” aspect is stressed. This word is an
instance of German word formation with
English elements

•In French un portable because its movability is

stressed

•In Flemmish een gsm because an acro- nym

standing for ‘global system for mobile
communication’)

•In Dutch een mobile

 CAR

In both British English (BrE) and American English (AmE), car

refers to a vehicle with a fuel engine. )

However, car is more usual in BrE than in AmE, where the

general name automobile or specific names such as sedan or
convertible are frequently used.

In the next example we will focus on a place to park a car

In the next example we will focus on a place to park a car

BrE – car park

AmE- a parking lot (if outside)
a parking garage (enclosed building)

The choice of a new composite word or expression for the many

new things in our cultures is the result of an “onomasiological
struggle”

 
It is something which is also present in the
way British and American English differ
in the naming of kitchen gadgets

Name-giving in American English reflects

to some extent the multicultural
composition of the American population
and the diverse onomasiological resources
of American English.

The study of name-giving or

onomasiology is inked to the culture
prevailing within a given variety of a
language. This is more apparent in
different languages
Summarizing the various onomasiological possibilities of English, we have now
encountered six types of name-giving :
BASIC PATTERNS OF
COMPOUNDS
•Compounding is the process of
combining two or more words 3
morphemes to create a new word
commonly a noun verb or
adjective

example: Black+ bird= Blackbird

•The second element( bird) is a

noun and the compound as a
whole remains a noun. This
second element is called the head
of the compound.

•The head of a compound belongs

to one of the three major word
classes: noun, verb, or adjective.
 NOUN
COMPOUND

• two or more nouns combined to form a

single noun

•  Compounds result from a process of

conceptual blending which means that
two concepts are selected and “blended”
into a new, more complex concept.

• Frame- all all the elements that

constitute a given concept.
Let’s focus on the words: kitchen and chair • The chair frame, on the other hand, refers
to the ways of sitting defined by different
kitchen activities, such as eating, napping,
working, etc
( refers to utilities for cooking, washing up, eating, sitting down)
• Thus a kitchen chair is a blend of the
chair chair frame and the working domain,. it is
typically designed and used for kitchen
(Part of the kitchen frame is its furniture, e.g. a chair) activities
 rocking chair & highchair

• rocking chair

•(The rocking chair is a blend of chair frame and rest domain, by the fact that
it can rock up and down, it helps to lead to a nap)

• highchair

•(is a more complex blend, because the chair frame and the eating domain
frame offer too little input to explain the meaning of this
•blend so that we must assume that in this blend new elements are generated)
 C ON C E P T UA L D O M A I NS – P R O V E NA N C E

•two of the most common elements chosen from the conceptual domains that enter a blend
are those of provenance:
 
a) where something comes from or what it is made of such as:

•leather shoes ‘shoes made of leather’

•alligator shoes ‘shoes made of alligator skin’

b) purpose that is activity such as:

•tennis shoes - shoes to be used for tennis’
horse shoes ‘metal protection for horse hoofs’ ‘
•snow shoes wooden frames for walking in snow’
 
on how we interpret such compounds depends on our knowledge of frames and domains

•alligator
Take the example of an alligator frame. This frame tells us we cannot have a dressing
domain (they don’t wear shoes), it is most likely to be the “provenance” relation but not of
the alligator as a whole, but of one element in the alligator frame only, i.e. its skin.
 VERBS & ADJECTIVES

- Verbs and adjectives denote relations, the blends in these compounds are more
straightforward because the kind of relation is overtly expressed.

Verb compounds- denote an event in the head of the compound, and the first element in the
blend suggests the instruments with which, or circumstances in which the event takes place.

a) Instrumental interpretation  
• noun + verb = to vacuum-clean, to manhandle 
• adjective + verb = to dry-clean, to highlight
(you clean something by blowing it dry)

b) a circumstantial one (you walk in your sleep)

 verb + verb = to sleep-walk, to blow-dry
 
 V ER BS & A D J EC TI V E S

• Adjective compound-is made up of two or more words, and usually describes

appearance and condition. Those two or more words can be nouns,verbs, or adjective

1. noun + adjective = colour-blind, duty-free

(The noun in here denotes the area or field to which the adjective as the head applies)

2. verb + adjective = soaking wet, stinking rich

(The verb denotes the degree to which the property holds and therefore means “very”

3. adjective + adjective = dark-blue, pale yellow

(The adjective denotes a shade in the property denoted by the head element: The blue can
be very dark or move towards the light end of the spectrum)
 COMPOUND VERSUS
SYNTACTIC GROUP

Syntatic group or phrase - is a composite

syntactic unit such as a black bird, which is a
noun phrase and consists of a determiner, an
adjective, and a noun
 
Difference
•Phonological difference is that compound like
blackbird has one main stress, usually on the
first element, whereas a syntactic group like a
black bird has two stresses: Primary or main
stress ( ́) and secondary stress (`) and the main
stress of these two is on the second element.
This phonological difference is accompanied by a fundamental difference in meaning.
Compounds have meanings of their own.
•darkened compounds- means that they are no
longer transparent or analyzable such as
cranberry or daisy

cranberry- cran ( related to crane (bird)

•the first element cran does not evoke any

meaning although it is etymologically relatable
to the name of a bird, i.e. crane.

•In the word daisy we do not realize that a word

was originally a compound which derives from
the “day’s eye”, for example a flower opening
up early in the morning
THE ROLE OF COMPOUNDS IN NAMING
THINGS
•Compounds play a major role in developing
taxonomies in the lexicon.
• As it was previously discussed taxonomies
contain basic level terms with, above them,
superordinate terms, and, beneath them,
subordinate terms
• The Main function of the Compound is to
“name” a subordinate category of a given
type. For example a sports car is a subtype of
a car, a miniskirt a subtype of a skirt.
• When a new type of road for (motor)cars was
built without normal level crossings, a new
name, i.e. motorway (BrE), or an existing
word, highway (AmE), was applied to it.
• The large number of composite words are
needed to name new subcategories and to
show the relation between these new
hyponyms and their hypernyms as in the pair
motorway/highway and way.
• If we invented a new simple form for each
conceptual subcategory, we would overburden
our memory capacity and no longer have a
clearly hierarchically structured lexicon. It
would become almost impossible to name the
thousands of phenomena that arise every year.
 Thank You

Source:

René Dirven, Marjolijn Verspoor,Johan de Caluwé:

Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics,2004