WORD FORMATION PROCESS 14-12-2016

Hi dear web-students,

Hope you still remember the new word "smarty" that we created in one of our morphology classes last month. 

smarty = a machine that can read others' mind

Kindly write down its verb, noun, adjective and adverb forms and use them in sentences of your own.

Use your creative mind to be productive and creative.

Good Luck !!!!!!!

MORPHS AND ALLOMORPHS 30-11-2016

Morphs, the actual forms used to realize morphemes. 

A morph is the phonetic realization of a morpheme. The real form of the morpheme, the actual utterance of the morpheme.

Example:
                     cats                           bus
               [cat + (-s)]             [bus + (-es)]

Allomorphs, any of the different forms of a morpheme.

Allomorph is phonologically distinct variants of the same morpheme. 

Different realization, manifestation of the same morpheme. 

They vary in shape or pronunciation according to their condition of use. 

They are a class of morphs which are semantically identical. 

Example:  Plural Formation: desks [-s], cars [-z], buses [-iz]
Morpheme: [-s]
Allomorphs  /-s/ /-z/ /-iz/

Example:    Past Tense: called [-d], talked [-t], glided [-id]
Morpheme: [-d]
Allomorphs  /-d/ /-t/ /-id/

30-11-2016 QUIZ FOR THE WEEK

 Quiz for the week 30-11-2016

What is 'suppletion' in morphology?

 Quote few examples of English suppletive form described in Unit-7 'Morphology'

23-11-2016 PROBLEMS IN MORPHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

QUIZ FOR THE WEEK 23-11-2016

            Q.  Name any five famous linguists                                        with their published books.

......................................................................

16-11-2016 QUIZ FOR THE WEEK

Choose the best answer:

      1.      In English, a few inflectional morphemes can occur as prefixes.         (a) True     (b) False

2.      A word can't be a morpheme. (a) True      (b) False

      3.      Inflectional morphemes are more productive than derivational morphemes.                          (a) True    (b)   False

      4.      Which of the following is the correct division of the word repaired (meaning 'mended,   fixed') into morphemes?                        (a) re-pair-ed       (b) repair-ed        (c) re-paired       (d)  repaired 

16-11-2016 CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES:TREE DIAGRAM

QUIZ FOR THE WEEK: 9-11-2016

Quiz for the week 9-11-2016

Fill in the blanks.

1.     (a)------------------------ deals with the way words combine to form phrases and sentences. Alternatively, one can say that it is concerned with the structure        of  (b)--------------- in terms of  (c) -----------------------.

2.    (a) ------------------------ deals with meaning.

3. (a)------------------------ studies the way morphemes combine to form words. Alternatively, one can say that it studies the structure of  (b) ------------------------ in terms of (c) ----------------------.

  4.          (a) ----------------------- is the study of speech sounds.

 5.  (a)------------------------  deals with the way phonemes combine to form syllables.            Alternatively, one can say that it studies the structure of  (b) ------------------------          in terms of (c) ----------------------.

9-11-2016 DERIVATIONAL & INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Derivational & Inflectional

Derivational morphemes are bound morpheme which are used to create new words or to produce words of different grammatical category (parts of speech) from the stem.

For example the addition of the derivational morpheme 'able' changes verb read to the adjective 'readable'.

Derivational & Inflectional continued…..
Derivational morphemes are realized through prefixes as well as suffixes.

nice + -ly = nicely (suffix)
un- + happy = unhappy (prefix)

prefix: re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, un-……
suffix: -ful, -less, -ly, -ment……..

Derivational & Inflectional continued…..
Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes which are not used to produce new words in the language , but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.

Inflectional morphemes are just used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is a comparative or possessive form .

Derivational & Inflectional continued…..

DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES The basic concept of derivational morphemes is that they derive new words. 

In the following examples, derivational morphemes are added to produce new words which are derived from the „parent word‟ (root).  happy – happiness (adjective) (noun)  beauty – beautiful – beautifully (noun) (adjective) (adverb)  danger – dangerous (noun) (adjective) In all cases, the derived word means something different than the root, and the word class may change with each derivation. 

Derivational & Inflectional continued…..

Derivation does not always cause the change of word class; but in such a case, the meaning of word will usually be significantly different from the root.  Examples: visible – invisible (Adjective) (Adjective) create – recreate Different meaning from the root (different (noun) (noun) category) but still in the same word classes. market – supermarket (noun) (noun) terminate – determinate (verb) (verb) 

Derivational & Inflectional continued…..

English has only eight inflectional morphemes:

Noun
         boys (-s)  plural
         boy’s (-’s) possessive

Adjective  
        brighter (-er) comparative
        brightest (-est) superlative

Verb
walked (-ed) past tense
walking (-ing) present participle
walks (-s) 3rd person singular
written (-en) past participle

QUIZ FOR THE WEEK 2-11-2016

Question for the week 

Who is the father of modern linguistics?

Write and post your answer in comments.

2-11-2016 MORPHOLOGY

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation and the internal structure of words. morphology. This term, which literally means ‘the study of forms’, was originally used in biology, but, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has also been used to describe the type of investigation that analyzes all those basic ‘elements’ used in a language. What we have been describing as ‘elements’ in the form of a linguistic message are technically known as ‘morphemes’.

Morphemes

 The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function”. Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for example. In the sentence The police reopened the investigation, the word reopened consists of three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- (meaning ‘again’) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense). The word tourists also contains three morphemes. There is one minimal unit of meaning tour, another minimal unit of meaning -ist (marking ‘person who does something’), and a minimal unit of grammatical function -s (indicating plural).

Classification of Morphemes

Free and bound morphemes

 There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words, for example, open and tour. There are also bound morphemes,which are those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form, exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s. 

Lexical and functional morphemes

What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that carry the ‘content’ of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, break. We can add new lexical morphemes to the language rather easily, so they are treated as an ‘open’ class of words. 

Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples are and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are described as a ‘closed’ class of words.

SYLLABUS

University of Al-Zaytuna College of Arts and Science, Tarhuna 

Department of English Language 

SYLLABUS FOR B.A ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMME 2016-2017

 COURSE INFORMATION

TITLE – THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS

Subject Code   – TL 401

Credit Hours       – 2 Hours Weekly

Target Audience  – Fourth Year Undergraduates

COURSE MATERIAL

Text book prescribed   -    The Study of Language 

Author                       -      George Yule

Publication                 -      Cambridge University Press

COURSE EVALUATION

Participation & Activities  -5%

Mid-Year Examination    - 35%

Final Examination          - 60%

COURSE OBJECTIVE:

Ø  To understand the nature of language and the scope of linguistics

Ø  To study the sounds of speech in terms of phonetics and phonology

Ø  To understand the study of morphology and morphological processes

Ø  To study restrictions that limit the ways in which sentences are constructed

Ø  To present the differences between formal and functional analysis

COURSE CONTENT

Universal properties of language: Displacement – Discreteness- Cultural transmission - Productivity- Arbitrariness – Duality- Variability

Phonetics and phonology (The sounds of language): Articulatory phonetics- The vocal tract – Place of articulation – Manner of Articulation – Acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics – Phonology – Phonemes and allophones – Alternation and allomorphs – Types of phonological alternations _ Assimilation, dissimilation and elision

Words, word-formation, and morphology

Etymology; Coinage; Borrowing; Compounding; Blending; Clipping; Backformation; Conversion; Acronyms; Derivation; Prefixes and suffixes; Infixes; Multiple processes; Morphemes; Free and bound morphemes: Lexical and functional morphemes; Derivational and inflectional morphemes; Morphological description

Grammar and Syntax

Grammar; Traditional grammar; The prescriptive approach; The descriptive approach; Structural analysis; Immediate constituent analysis; Labeled and bracketed sentences; Generative grammar; Syntactic structures; Deep and surface structures; Structural ambiguity

References:

George Yule, The Study of Language, 3^rd edition, Cambridge University Press (2006)

An Introduction to Linguistics, Postgraduate Certificate Course, CIEFL, Hydrabad, India (2005)

Stuart C. Poole, An Introduction to Linguistics, Palgrave Macmillan, (2000)

Instructor: Shaiju Abraham Panikulam

WELCOME

WELCOME 

Welcome to the Theoretical Linguistics page!  Here you will find an overview of the subject-Theoretical Linguistics - for the academic year 2016-2017. Linguistics gives you a host of valuable intellectual skills including reasoning, and learning how to study language scientifically. 

This blog is a humble attempt for the inquisitive minds just to taste the vast ocean of e-learning. Students are advised to visit the blog regularly to prepare themselves for the weekly lectures as lecture-notes are updated and uploaded on the previous day of the lecture. A prior reading of the lessons and active participation in the discussion would benefit the students for a better understanding of the subject. 

Wish all my students a successful academic year 2016-2017.

Mr.Shaiju Abraham Panikulam

Linguistics Instructor

College of Arts and Science

Tarhuna-Libya