Introduction to Language and

Communication
Dr. Meera Al Kaabi
Spring 2017
HSR 130
 Quick Review

How can we identify phonemes?

What is minimal pairs?
What type of phonological distribution phonemes
have?
What type of phonological distribution allophones
have?
What is contrastive distribution?
What is complementary distribution?
Explain what does this phonological rule mean?
/t/ -> [t] / # __
The phonological analysis/process that helps us
getting the phonological rules is called.?
 Levels of Analysis
Phonetics/Phonology
Sound
Structure

Morphology
Lexicon Syntax
Word Sentence
Structure Grammar Structure

Use
Meaning
Semantics
Pragmatics
 What is Morphology?
Morphology is the formal study of
words and word formation process.

Different languages have different

ways to create words.

We assume that this type of

knowledge is also part of mental
representation.
 What is a Word?
It is so easy to give examples of words,
yet too difficult to define it!

A group of letters?

A group of letters separated by a space?

Ice-cream: 1 or 2 words?
 The Problems
All languages have words, but not all languages have letters.

In some languages, words are not separated by a space (e.g., Japanese!).

o (nani) = What?Unbelievable!
o (jikan) = Time
o (keisatsu) =Police.

More importantly, words are considered as part of mental representation.

If you know a word, it is part of your mental representation, otherwise it is

not a word to you (that word might exist in dictionaries)! Examples?
o Abashed?
= Embarrassed or shamed!
o Xuruuf= ?
= artichoke
 Meaning of words
Words are the smallest free/independent
form/unit found in language.

Words signal a relation between

pronunciation and meaning.

Words are used to form a sentence.

Words are not necessarily defined by the

written form.
 The spelling cat is not a
word, but the
whole package of relation is
 We all have a dictionary in our
mind!
As a native speaker, we store a list of words as part of
our mental representation.

If we know a particular word, we have mental

representations of its sound, its meaning, and the
relation between the particular sound and the
particular meaning.

And we store a large number of these relations in our

mind.

We have a mental dictionary or mental lexicon.

Are mental dictionaries same as
written dictionaries?
Are mental dictionaries same as
written dictionaries?
Arabic words are ordered by roots: you may not find
the word [maktab]
office if you dont know Arabic!
Unused words are dying
out
The following words are erased from
the latest OED (Oxford English
Dictionary).
Brabble (noisy)
growlery (a private room or den)
cassette tape[!!]
 Basic units in morphology:
Morphemes

Morpheme is the smallest unit of language

that carries information about meaning or
function.

Sometimes a morpheme is smaller than a

word

Thus, morpheme is the smallest meaningful

unit!
-s= plural
-er= doer (e.g., teacher, player, writer, singer )
-ive= having the nature of! (e.g., affective; adoptive; contrastive)
-ate= state or quality of (adj.)" and "makes the word a verb (e.g. investigate;
discriminate; validate )
-de= opposite-reduce or remove (e.g., decontaminate; deconstruct)
 Free and Bound
Morphemes
Free morpheme: a morpheme that
can be a word itself.

Bound morpheme: A morpheme that

must be attached to another
element.
 Morphemes
That piece is the (root) morpheme
Words are made of morphemes

teacher
teaching
teachable
reteach
 Morphemes
That piece is the (root) morpheme
Words are made of morphemes

kicked
kicking
kicker
rekick
 Classification of Free
Morphemes
Free morphemes can be divided by content
and functional morphemes.

Content morphemes always bear a clear

concept. Most morphemes are content
morphemes.

Functional morphemes do not bear a clear

concept. Their function is to express some
grammatical meaning.
 Examples of content
morphemes
nouns (e.g. dog, cat, man)
verbs (e.g. go, walk, swim)
adjectives (e.g. good, bad, big, small)
adverbs (e.g. quickly, very, boldly)
prepositions (e.g. to, from, above, after)
[note: there are not many prepositions in
any language. Some linguists may not
agree they are content morphemes]
 Examples of functional
morphemes
determiners (e.g. the, this, that, a,
etc)
pronouns (e.g. he, she, it, etc)
conjunctions (e.g. and, but, or, etc)
complementizer (e.g. I think that.,
I wonder if.)
 Bound morpheme
A bound morpheme can be a prefix,
a suffix, or an infix.
Un-happy [prefix]
Dis-continue [prefix]
Cat-s [suffix]
Work-er [suffix]
 English infixes?
English infixes exist as an uneducated/slangy
form of English.

That is just abso-blooming-lutely wonderful!

Look at the sky! The weather is abso-blooming-

lutely lovely!

Un-freaking-believable. You wont even show me

where the kayaks are? Carl Hiaasen, Nature
Girl, p. 208, 2006
 US Hip-Hop slang
house-> [h-iz-ouse]
day-> [d-iz-ay]
earth -> [iz-earth]
 Typical case of an infix:
Tagalog
Base Infixed form
bili buy b-in-ili bought
basa read b-in-asa read (past)
sulat write s-in-ulat wrote

What is the meaning of the infix in-

in Tagalog?
A more complex case of infix:
Arabic
What is the relation between these
words?
 Summary
We learn that morphology concerns with
the knowledge of words and word formation.
The basic unit of morphology is morphemes.
Morphemes can be free or bound.
A bound morpheme can be a prefix, a suffix
or an infix.
We know how infixes are formed in other
languages (e.g. Tagalog and Arabic)