Morphology I

Mid Semester Task

Ahmad Shadiqi
0810732046

English Department
Faculty of Letters
Andalas University
Padang
2010

INTRODUCTION
Ahmad Shadiqi [0810732046]

Structural Classes

The use of words in many languages demands classifications for the

words themselves. A language can divide words into some classes depend on
its needs. The classes are usually called “the structural classes”. The points are
forms not occurring in determiner-determined series, distributional
arrangements in multiple sequence classes, and system of structural classes.
The structural classes are the distributions of words into sequences. This short
paper will explain about some types of structural classes, examples and the
universality of principal word classes of languages.

STRUCTURAL CLASSES

Forms not Occurring in Determiner-Determined Series

Some certain classes do not show determiner or determined in their

main points. For example, compounds are combination of nuclei.
Terminologically, such sequence classes do not form structural series.
However, they have similarities which make it possible to be described into
classes.

There are two bases of nuclei which can be assumed as immediate

constituent; they are (1) the classes of the resultant contributions (the external
distribution class), and (2) the classes of the immediate constituents (the
internal distribution class). For example, the words “greenhouse” and
“blackbird” belong to the same class because they are both noun and the
compatible nuclei of each words also belong to the same class ([green] and
[black] are adjectives, [house] and [bird] are nouns). The same thing occurs
also in the words “millstone” and “catbird”. On the other hand, the words
“pickpocket“and “greenhouse” are externally in the same class which is noun
but they cannot internally be classified into the same class because the nuclei
that construct the words come from different classes ([pick] is a verb while
[green] is an adjective, although [pocket] and [house] are nouns). The first task
in a descriptive analysis in compounds is to determine the external distribution
class. Then the compounds are classified according to internal structure.

Distributional Arrangements in Multiple Sequence Classes

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Structural Classes

Distributions in related sequence classes tend to be similar which means

describing subclasses of nuclear with one determiner can be attempted to
other distributions of other determiners. If some determiners have similar
distributions, we can set up nuclear classes and describe the various structural
series on the basis of these.

Example (data from Spanish):

I II III IV V VI

sitár ‘to cite’ síta síte sitó sitába sitádo

dudár ‘to dúda dúde dudó dudába dudádo

doubt’

bendér ‘to bénde bénda bendió bendía bendído

sell’

perdér ‘to piérde piérda perdió perdía perdído

lose’

sentír ‘to siénte siénta sintió sintía sentído

feel’

dormír ‘to duérme duérma dermió dormía dormído

sleep’

Supplementary Information:

I : infinitive
II : 3rd person singular present indicative
III : 3rd person singular present subjunctive
IV : 3rd person singular preterite indicative
V : 3rd person singular imperfect indicative
VI : past participle
• These forms include the major classes of the so-called regular and
radical-than verbs
• These sequence classes do not represent all principal variants, but they
are typical
• The final [-o] in the past participle is a separate morpheme

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Structural Classes

From the data above, we can divide the transformations of infinitive as the
structural parallelism as the diagram follows:
I II III IV V VI
form [-a] [-e] [-ó] [- [-ád-]
s ába]
[-ár]
[-ér] [-e] [-a] [-ió] [-ía] [-id-]

[-ír] [-e] [-a] [-ió] [-ía] [-id-]

System of Structural Classes

There are so many languages all around the world. Each of them
formally has different types of structural classes. Some Indo-European
languages accustom to have major structural classes called “parts of speech”
(nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverb, preposition, pronouns, conjunction, and
interjection). These parts of speech are formally distinguishable by their
internal structure such as in Greek and Latin. Nevertheless in English, the parts
of speech are distinguished normally by their external distributions. These
differences also occur in other languages beyond Indo-European.

Voegelin and Ellinghausen describe that Turkish have only two principal
word classes, which are nouns and verbs. There are also certain enclitic
particles which are syntactically pertinent. In Maya there are four principal
word classes; nouns, verbs, attributives, and particles. There are also many
languages which have different kinds of word classes than we normally know.

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Structural Classes

CONCLUSION

Morphologically, languages differ in number and types of structural

classes. Every language has principal word classes which classify words into
some smaller units. This term is known as “parts of speech”. Different
languages have different parts of speech whether in number of classes or the
kind of parts. However there are some classes and morphological characteristic
which are universal and can be applied in every language.

1. Nouns
• Possess able by pronominal affixes
• Singular and plural contrast
• Case relationships, e.g. subject, object
• “Prepositional” relationships, e.g. in, by, for, with etc.

2. Verbs
• Agreement with subject or object or inclusion of a subject or
object pronoun
• Time and aspect of the action
• Voice, e.g. transitive, intransitive, active, passive
• Mode (the psychological background of the action as represented
by the speaker), e.g. indicative, optative, conditional,
interrogative, and potential

3. Particles
• Relatively shorter that other parts of speech
• Uninflected, and hence exhibit no formal categories
• Frequently clitic

4. Pronouns
• Relatively short

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Structural Classes

• Very irregular in derivation and inflection

• Affixal
• Grammatically related to classes of nouns

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