Analysing the structure of English - Mon 10th Oct. Mike Jones
Check moodle for the reading material.
● 2 assignments and 1 in class test
● find the ‘tree kit’ on moodle for tree diagrams
● Quizzes on moodle
LG212 - What’s in a word?
● A word is a conventioanl association between FORM and MEANING/FUNCTION.
Has a functional meaning - different classes (nouns, verbs adjs)
● Lexeme = association between set of word and meaning (take (verb) - has many
forms)
● Inflectional morphology - defines the differetn word forms of lexemes according to
features (number,person, gender, case (pronouns), tense, aspect)
● Derivational morphology - creates new words out of old ones (i.e suffixation -
change in syntactic class, prefixation - does not change class, conversion - no
change in form like verb to noun)
● Compounds - words that have more than one lexeme. Sometimes spelled as single
word, the meaning is often specialised/idiosyncratic (i.e ice cold, boathouse)
Synthetic compounds ‘bus-driver’.... N+N, adj +N, N+adj, adj+adj
○ Endocractic compounds - the head determines the category/meaning
‘houseboat’
○ Éxocentric compounds-neither word is the head çleverclogs’
○ Recursion - [[houseboat] dweller]
○ Compounding can be a derivational process - new forms out of old
● Words are identified by stress patterns in speech - must have a stressed sylable.
Potencial mismatch between syntactic and phonological words. ‘The cats sleeping’
● Clitic - comes from Greek meaning to join. Don’t function alone. Like the possessive,
apostrophe s. Same for is, has which is attached. There can be ambiguities.
○ ‘d and ‘ll can only attach to subject pronouns
● Clitics vs affixes: clitics are seperate words, affixes are parts of words
○ Affixes (derivational, inflectional) -
■ only attach to words of specific categories
■ Typically show morphological irregularities
○ Clitics
■ Typically attach to words of any category
○ Contracted negation - n’t - can’t attach to all auxiliaries. Many irregular forms
(won’t not willn’t)
● Relationships between words - synonymy/antonymy
○ Synonymy - same meaning/ semantically interchangable
○ Antonymy - opposite in meaning. Can be partially defined in terms of negation
to each other (black is not white but it’s not red either)
○ Hyponymy - meaning of one word contained in another (animal is the
superordinate of cat, dog etc)
Check moodle for the reading material.
● 2 assignments and 1 in class test
● find the ‘tree kit’ on moodle for tree diagrams
● Quizzes on moodle
LG212 - What’s in a word?
● A word is a conventioanl association between FORM and MEANING/FUNCTION.
Has a functional meaning - different classes (nouns, verbs adjs)
● Lexeme = association between set of word and meaning (take (verb) - has many
forms)
● Inflectional morphology - defines the differetn word forms of lexemes according to
features (number,person, gender, case (pronouns), tense, aspect)
● Derivational morphology - creates new words out of old ones (i.e suffixation -
change in syntactic class, prefixation - does not change class, conversion - no
change in form like verb to noun)
● Compounds - words that have more than one lexeme. Sometimes spelled as single
word, the meaning is often specialised/idiosyncratic (i.e ice cold, boathouse)
Synthetic compounds ‘bus-driver’.... N+N, adj +N, N+adj, adj+adj
○ Endocractic compounds - the head determines the category/meaning
‘houseboat’
○ Éxocentric compounds-neither word is the head çleverclogs’
○ Recursion - [[houseboat] dweller]
○ Compounding can be a derivational process - new forms out of old
● Words are identified by stress patterns in speech - must have a stressed sylable.
Potencial mismatch between syntactic and phonological words. ‘The cats sleeping’
● Clitic - comes from Greek meaning to join. Don’t function alone. Like the possessive,
apostrophe s. Same for is, has which is attached. There can be ambiguities.
○ ‘d and ‘ll can only attach to subject pronouns
● Clitics vs affixes: clitics are seperate words, affixes are parts of words
○ Affixes (derivational, inflectional) -
■ only attach to words of specific categories
■ Typically show morphological irregularities
○ Clitics
■ Typically attach to words of any category
○ Contracted negation - n’t - can’t attach to all auxiliaries. Many irregular forms
(won’t not willn’t)
● Relationships between words - synonymy/antonymy
○ Synonymy - same meaning/ semantically interchangable
○ Antonymy - opposite in meaning. Can be partially defined in terms of negation
to each other (black is not white but it’s not red either)
○ Hyponymy - meaning of one word contained in another (animal is the
superordinate of cat, dog etc)
