II. Issues for individual tasks:
Look in a dictionary up for five examples (lexical units) to fill in each branch of the following table.
The Table
According to distribution approach:
Morpheme
contrastive complementary non-contrastive
According to traditional and descriptive approach:
Morpheme
Free Bound
On the basis of formal presentation:
Morpheme
Overt Covert or Zero
On the basis of segmental relation:
Morpheme
Supra-segmental Additives Replacives
(Nb! Read up Block m.Y. Attentively!) Topics for the reports:
Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes.
Types of Morphemes in Modern English.
(NB! Other topics are at the readers’ choice)
II. Glossary to be learned and used during the activity:
1. A linguist is a scientist who investigates human anguage in all its facets: its structure, its use, its history, its place in society.
2. Polyglot is someone who speaks many languages.
3. The Theory of Grammar- the mental representation of grammatical knowledge- is what is the program is about.
4. Grammar- The entire system of a knowledge, including
a) Its syntax and morphology, but excluding vocabulary (the semantic system).
b) A book containing rules and examples of grammar.
c) An individual’s application of the rules. As in this novel is full of bad grammar.
5. Markedness- the condition, quality, or state of being marked.
The concept of markedness can be applied in many areas of language. Thus a simple declarative sentence (e.g.: I love Morphology) is unmarked, whereas I don’t love Morphology is marked with nouns, verbs, adjectives and other words the base forms are said to be unmarked (e.g.: table, book, horse sing but tables, books, horses are marked etc. As well child- unmarked boy, girl-marked for sex. This type is Semantic Marking. E.g.: widow-widower, actor- actress etc.)
6. Morphology- the study of word structure and word formation.
7. Morpheme- the smallest meaningful unit of grammar.
8. Allomorph- an alternant of a morpheme; Any form in which a (meaningful)
Morpheme (in sense) is actually realized.
9. Morph- the actual (physical) realization of an (abstract) morpheme when that morpheme only has on realization.
e.g.: the present participle always has- ing, morph- ing
10. Haplology- the omission of a sound or sound fifth-sequence when followed by another similar sound.
References:
Absolute Must
Blokh M.Y. “ Course in Theoretical English Grammar” Moscow, 1994 p.p. 18-37
Ilyish b.A. “The Structure of Modern English” Leningrad, 1971 p.P.21-26
Smirnitsky A.U. “Morphology of the English Language” Moscow,1959 p.p.11-100. (the book is in Russian)