MORPHOLOGICAL

PROCESSES

Dr. Monira I. AL-Mohizea

 morphological processes
 there are a set of important (inflectional) morphological
processes involving mainly (phonological) changes that
must be taken into perspective:
 Zero morph
 Internal change
 Exponence
 Suppletion
 Syncretism
 Haplology
 Reduplication
 Stress placement
 Consider the following:

a. Put it in the bin (n.) b. Bin (v.) it!

Take a fast (adj.) train The train goes very fast (adv.)
He has short legs (n.) We legged (v.) it
 (1) Conversion
 Conversion is a very productive method of deriving words,
especially verbs from nouns and nouns, from verbs.
 Definition: (also called 'zero-derivation') when conversion is
used, a new word is formed by assigning an existing word
a new syntactic category (part of speech) without changing
its form in any way.
 The word class of the derived word can be detected by
looking at the context in which it appears.
 Examples??
 (2) Affixation
 Affixation is word-building involving the use of affixes.
 It is extremely common.
 Affixes can be classified as prefixes and suffixes depending
on whether they precede or follow the root.
 Another type of affixation is the infixation which is very
marginal in English.
 Expletive infixation is used commonly for expressive
purposes, as of McCarthy (1982) but it has no grammatical
role.
 Consider the following: Fan-bloody-tastic
Consider the following:

 A sheep was walking along the river.

vs.
 20 sheep were walking along the river.
 (3) Zero morph
 In this process, the word sheep unlike other nouns, has no
overt marking of number even when its meaning is plural.
 (Twenty) clearly indicates plurality as well as the auxiliary
verb (were) which indicates that.
 English syntax recognizes the plurality of this noun and
requires the verb agreeing with it to be plural.
 Likewise many monosyllabic verbs, as let, cut, hit, are not
marked overtly when they occur in a context where the
syntax requires past tense inflection on the verb.
 E.g. I cut it yesterday.
Consider the following:
Nouns
Singular Plural
foot [fot] feet /fi:t/
Mouse [maus] mice [maIs]
Verbs
Present Past Past participle
ride rode ridden
sing sang sung
(4) Internal change
 Definition: Sometimes inflection is done by
changing a vowel in the root. This is called
internal change or (apophony).
 In some cases, apophony may be accompanied
by affixation as in the case of (Ridden).
 Think of other examples??
Consider the following:
 In sweets [s] realizes ??
 In parked (the actual pronunciation of -ed) is ??
it realizes:
?? Or ??, or ??
 (5) Exponence
 Definition: Exponence is the realization of morpho-
syntactic features via inflection.
 The morpheme [s] in (sweets) is the exponent of the
morpho-syntactic feature plural, and [t] (the actual
pronunciation of –ed in parked) realizes past tense or
past participle.
 The relationship between morphs and morpho-syntactic
features such as plural, past tense, present tense, etc. is
one of realization (or representation) rather than
composition.
 Simple vs. Cumulative exponence

 Simple exponence: one morpheme for one

morphosyntactic feature.
 E.g. [s] in (sweets) realizes plural.
 Cumulative exponence: more than one
morphological feature maps onto a single
morpheme.
 E.g. [s] in (she thinks), realizes third person,
present tense, and singular.
Consider the following:

A. Parked B. Lived
Missed Ruled
Watched Spied
 Normally allomorphs of a morpheme are
phonologically related.
 The regular past tense ending in English is realized
as [t] after a verb whose last sound is voiceless.
(e.g. parked (pa:kt).
 If the verb’s last sound is voiced (e.g. lived [livd], it
is realized as [d].
 The sounds [t] and [d] are similar, both are alveolar
stops.
 (6) Suppletion
 Occasionally we find allomorphs of the same
morpheme whose phonological shapes are unrelated.
 If a phonological relationship is totally non existent, we
speak of total suppletion (E.g. good & better, go &
went).
 The term partial suppletion is used to describe
situations where residual phonetic similarity between
allomorphs can be detected (e.g. seek – sought, bring -
brought, etc).
Consider the following:
A. Past Past participle
gave given
sang sung

Vs.
B. Past Past participle
Cooked Cooked
Brought Brought
 (7) Syncretism
 Definition: Syncretism refers to a situation where morpho-syntactic
categories that are represented by distinct forms elsewhere are
mapped on to the same form in some contexts.
 In many regular verbs, and some irregular ones, the morph-syntactic
properties of past and past participle are mapped onto different
forms (e.g. gave– given) No syncretism.
 Without syncretism there is internal change and suffixation of -en,
to signal past participle.
 With syncretism, the same form, i.e., -ed is suffixed, and only the
context can help distinguish between past participle and past tense.
Consider the following:
 Probably
 *probly
 Jones's house
 Jones' house
 (7) Haplology
 Avoidance of sequences of identical linguistic forms is a phenomenon
found in many languages.
 Definition: Haplology is a type of dissimilation, when two identical or
very similar syllables or sounds occur next to each other and one is be
deleted.
 It can happen internally within a word or root morpheme of at least three
syllables (e.g. probably).
 If a weakly stressed syllable is next to an adjacent syllable that is
identical as in (probably) haplology occurs.
 The genitive suffix is spelled <s> and is phonologically realized as [s] -
[z]. If it is too similar to the final sound of the base it is merged in many
people's pronunciation and normally omitted in writing (e.g. Jones's house
=> Jones' house).
 The genitive in this situations is indicated merely by the presence of the
apostrophe.
Consider the following:
 night-night
 go-go
 bye-bye
 airy-fairy
 hoity-toity
 razzle-dazzle
 (8) Reduplication
 Reduplication is the creation of a new word by repetition of
an existing word in its entirety, or in part.
 Repetition of the entire word is called full reduplication (e.g.
bang-bang, bye-bye).
 In partial reduplication, only part of a word is repeated it
has traditionally involved rhyming (e.g. airy-fairy, hoity-toity,
razzle-dazzle, and nitty-gritty.
 Partial reduplication can also be ablaut (vowel change) as in
tip-top, shilly-shally, zigzag, pitter-patter.
 The process affects a monosyllabic word. The vowel of the
rhyme is changed, leaving the rest of the word intact.
Consider the following:
Stress placement
 In some cases, derivation is effected by changing
stress placement.
 Nouns can be derived from verbs and verbs from
nouns by certain rules.
Thank you 