A good part of the art of human communication involves figuring out how our individual categorization scheme compares with the schemes of people we are trying to communicate
Native English speakers who learn Spanish are often perplexed by the fact that Spanish has two " Past tenses". it seems at first that there are two ways to translate a sentence like the following into Spanish.
Derivational Categories
Prototypical derivational categories create new stems. often the new stems created by a derivational category belong to a different word class than the stem that is the basis of the derivation.
Sometimes the derivational category just significantly changes the meanings of the base stem.
Derivational vs Inflectional categories
Inflectional Categories
Inflectional Categories don't change word classes, and don't adjust the meanings of roots in major ways, they simply add some important information that may be required by the syntactic or situational context.
Prefixation
Involves the addition of morpheme (a prefix) to the beginning of a root.
It is a change is shape that doesn't involve consonants and vowels. Rather, it consists of adjustments in features such as stress tone, and nasalization.
Involves the repetition of part or all of a root. Plurality in Ilokano is expressed by reduplicating the first syllable of the root.
*Oh, we’re not living together- living together *Out-of-her-mind-out-of-her-mind *Over-the-hill-over-the-hill
-English sentence: I knew Aileron when she was a child. -Spanish translation #1 : yo conocia a Aileron cuando ella era niña . -Spanish translation # 2: yo conoci a Aileron cuando ella era niña.
Examples
Examples
Non- Concatenative Morphology
It is common in semitic languages, it involves superimposing a pattern of vowels, and possibly other morphological pieces, on a root that consists only of consonants.
Root-------No meaning on its own Imperative-------write Infinitive----------to write Present participle----- writing Past participle---------written Perfective--------------Wrote
PROSE: written language in its ordinary form rather than poetry
_In languages that express many of their conceptual categories morphologically, there are typically several "layers" of prefixes and suffixes, as a described above.
_for example:, here are some data from sierra Natualt.
atanipenda 'he will like me' atakupenda 'he will like you' atampenda 'he will like him' atatupenda 'he will like us' atawapenda 'he will like them' nitakupenda 'I will like you'
the process of constructing a position-class diagram for data such as these will be given belowin step-by-step fashion though the steps are more a descriptive tool than a "PROGRAM" for analizing morphology.
ROOT
Consider the following nouns, adjectives and verbs in English:
STEP 2: Estimate the affix positions. Since in the Nahuatl examples there is material to the left and the right of the roots, we suspect there arre prefixes and suffixes.
Example
STEP 3: Begin to analyze prefixes. Since in this problem the first examples seem to contain just prefixes, we will start by trying to analyze the prefixes. Usually expresses similary in meaning.
Example
STEP 4: Analyze suffixes. This step will be very similar to the previous one, comparing 23g and h, we see that the difference in the forms of the suffixes is related to the difference between 'most honored sir', and ' most very honored sir'.
Example
STEP 5: Label the columns. Positions in complex morphological structures tend to be associate with particular sets of conceptual categories. For example, verbs in a highly morphological language might have one position for tense, another position for ASPECT, another for PERSON and NUMBER of the SUBJECT, ect.
PROCESS RULES: a process rule is a additional schemes can be described relationship among tthe various shapes of words as though they were changes that the words undergo. be represented in a simple position-class diagram as follows:.
In a process rule, the formation of the plural (and perhaps the singular as well) would be treated as a "process" that changes a root the appropiate INFLECTED form.
Root Number cat 0 SG dog -S PL mat tree
For example:, one could say: Singular noun + -S = Plural noun
These can be abbreviated as: CC: Comceptual Category SD: Structural Description (starting form) SC: Structural Change (ending form)
The rules temselves will always have the following pathern
CC:SD--->SD
Subtractive Morphology
It is another quite rare process, whereby one or more segments are omitted from a word in order to express a particular conceptual category.
example
Compounding
Involves combining roots to form new stems.
-Lipstick -Basketball -Mailbox -Mother-in-law
STEP 1: Isolate the roots. As we look over the free translations of the Sierra Nahuatl data, we see that there seem to be two basic verbs invoved: one meaning "see" and another meaning "give".
Example
POSITION- CLASS DIAGRAMS: This method is a variation on a general approach to morphological structure that is called the ITEM AND ARRANGEMENT model. -Useful describing languages that tend to have lost morphemes.
Affixes ni-, Af, [AGR(su):lsg] u-, Af, [AGR(su):2sg]
a-, Af, [AGR(su):3sg]
tu-, Af, [AGR(su):lpl]
wa-, Af, [AGR(su):3pl]
na-, Af, [TNS:definite]
ta-, Af, [TNS:future]
ii. Verb roots
-lipa, V ('pay')
-penda, V ('like')
Prefix Meaning Example
dis- opposite defrost in-, im-, il-, ir- not injustice impossible re- again return un- not unfriendly
Suffix Meaning Example
-ed past-tense verbs hopped -ing verb form/present participle running -ly characteristic of quickly -s, -es more than one books, boxes -able, -ible able to be manageable, defensible -ful full of wishful
Example
dog + s
cf. hand+s, cat+s, book+s
walk + ing
cf. talk+ing, runn+ing, sing+ing
redd + en
cf. black+en, whit+en, short+en
Each of these independent elements is a morpheme. The definition includes "minimal" because reddens breaks down into not just redden + s, but into redd + en + s -- and no further.
The plural noun is generally formed by adding -s to the singular.
Cow (singular), cows (plural) Boy, boys Girl, girls Book, books Tree, trees Dog, dogs Pen, pens
