Essential Linguistic Concepts: Morphology & Word Formation
Morphology: Study of Word Structure
Lexeme
An abstract vocabulary item listed in the lexicon with a common core of meaning.
Word Form
The physical realization of a lexeme.
Paradigm
The various grammatical forms of a given lexeme (e.g., play: plays, played, playing).
Suppletive Forms
Words belonging to the same lexeme but not phonetically related (e.g., go/went).
Syncretism
When the same word-form of a lexeme is used to realize two or more distinct grammatical words (e.g., walk: verb/noun).
Morph
The physical form representing a morpheme in a language.
Morpheme
The smallest unit of meaning in a language.
Etymology
The study of the origin and historical development of words.
Synchronic Linguistics
The study of language at a particular point in time, focusing on how it works.
Umlaut
A phonological process in which the vowel of the base is fronted or raised under the influence of a high vowel in the following syllable (e.g., goose-geese, foot-feet).
Ablaut
An internal vowel change that indicates a change in grammatical function (e.g., sing/sang).
Allomorphs
Several morphs that realize the same morpheme (e.g., past tense: /-t/, /-d/, /-ɪd/).
Portmanteau Morph
A morph that simultaneously represents several morphemes (e.g., the suffix -s in English verbs can represent 3rd person, singular, and present tense).
Zero Morph
A morpheme that is not physically represented by a morph. This occurs when there is a meaning change but no change in form (e.g., “I cut the grass yesterday” where cut is past tense but identical to the present tense form).
Types of Language Structure
Analytical Languages
In analytical languages, each morph is isolated as an independent word and realizes one morpheme. Words tend to stand alone without affixes and are usually shorter.
Agglutinative Languages
In agglutinative languages, morphs and morphemes correlate closely. Multiple morphemes are attached together as bound morphs, with each morpheme typically realizing one distinct meaning.
Inflecting Languages
Words in inflecting languages change their form (inflect) to show tense, case, number, and other grammatical categories. Affixes often convey multiple meanings at once, making portmanteau morphs very common.
Polysynthetic Languages
Polysynthetic languages combine multiple morphemes, including entire nouns and verbs, to form long, complex words. This often involves an excessive amount of agglutination.
Infixing Languages
In infixing languages, a root consisting of consonants carries grammatical meaning, while infixed vowels carry lexical meaning to create new words.
Phonological & Morphological Processes
Trisyllabic Rule
This rule shortens three-syllable words. If an affix is attached to a word, forming a word of three or more syllables, the tense vowel of the root is often laxed or shortened (e.g., /seɪn/ → /sænɪti/). The stress typically falls before the suffix (e.g., ‘sane, sa’nity).
Percolation
Percolation describes how the head of a compound passes its grammatical qualities (e.g., number, plurality) to the non-head base, assigning its properties to the entire compound.
Endocentric Compounds
An endocentric compound is a hyponym of its grammatical head (e.g., icy cold, sky blue, armchair).
Exocentric Compounds
An exocentric compound’s meaning is not directly found in its parts. It doesn’t describe the word itself but refers to something else (e.g., pickpocket, highbrow).
Copulative Compounds
In copulative compounds, both elements have equal weight and refer to something that possesses both qualities (e.g., producer-director, blue-green).
Verbal Compounds
Verbal compounds are based on verbs and often have a clear, logical relationship between their parts (e.g., hand-written, time-worn).
Word Formation Processes
Conversion
Conversion is a type of word formation where the grammatical category of a base word is changed with no corresponding change in its form (e.g., the verb “to chair” is formed by conversion from the noun “chair”).
Loanshift
Loanshift involves borrowing only the meaning of a word and translating it into the borrowing language (e.g., English skyscraper → German Wolkenkratzer “cloud-scraper”).
Loanword
A loanword is when both the word form and the concept are borrowed from another language (e.g., kangaroo, spaghetti).
Clipping
Clipping is the formation of a new word by lopping off a portion of an existing word, reducing it to a monosyllabic or disyllabic form while retaining the original meaning.
- Pub: from Public House
- Fan: from Fanatic
- Pet: from Petite
- Condo: from Condominium
Back-formation
Back-formation is a morphological process in which a word is formed by removing a piece, usually an affix, from a word that is or appears to be complex (e.g., peddler → peddle, typewriter → typewrite).
Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Blends
Acronyms
- Laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
- Yuppie: Young Urban Professional Person / Young Upwardly Mobile Professional Person
- AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
- UNICEF: United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
- UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Abbreviations
- LA: Los Angeles
- OD: Overdose
- REM: Rapid Eye Movement
Blends (Portmanteau Words)
- Smog: Smoke + Fog
- Brunch: Breakfast + Lunch