Morphology for Memers

LIGN 42 - Will Styler

In this exercise, you’ll get experience finding morphemes, that is, individual chunks of linguistic form (e.g. speech or letters) which correspond to specific linguistic meanings.

Finnish (spoken in Finland)

Finnish	English Gloss	Finnish	English Gloss
laulan	‘I sing’	yuon	‘I drink’
laulat	‘You sing’	yuot	‘You drink’
laulavi	‘He sings’	yuovi	‘He drinks’
laulamme	‘We sing’	yuomme	‘We drink’
laulatte	‘You all sing’	yuotte	‘You all drink’
laulavat	‘They sing’	yuovat	‘They drink’

How can we tell who’s doing what in Finnish? How can we tell if they’re singing or drinking? What pieces of the words above give us this information?

Mezquital Otomí (spoken in Mexico)

A mark like ´ over a vowel marks a high tone (i.e. It’s pronounced with a higher pitch) and a ˇ over a vowel marks rising tone (i.e. It’s pronounced with a rising pitch). Unmarked vowels have low tone.

Otomí	English	Otomí	English
dímpení	‘I launder’	bíntǐhi	‘He hurries’
dántǐhi	‘I hurried’	gimpení	‘You will launder’
dampení	‘He will launder’	gántǐhi	‘You hurried’
díntǐhi	‘I hurry’	bímpení	‘He launders’
bimpení	‘He laundered’	gantǐhi	‘I will hurry’
bintǐhi	‘He hurried’	gampení	‘I will launder’
gintǐhi	‘You will hurry’	dantǐhi	‘He will hurry’
dámpení	‘I laundered’	gámpení	‘You laundered’
gímpení	‘You launder’	gíntǐhi	‘You hurry’

How does Otomí mark who’s doing what? How can we tell if they did it in the past, present, or future?

English

For each of the below words, consisting of English words with a variety of affixes (e.g. prefixes and suffixes), consider:

Which components are present in the word
The meaning of the word, with relation to the forms you see
The word’s part of speech, that is, whether the word is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb
Whether there’s a correspondence between a word’s part of speech and the affix(es) attached

It might be helpful to use each in a sentence as you do so, and to make a list of morphemes with their meanings.

loveably	break	towable	love
lock	unbreakable	unlock	unlockably
tows	locks	sees	loveability
unlockable	hittable	lovable	unseeably
untowability	lockable	hittable	unlovability
unbreak	breaks	unbreakably	untowable
tow	unloveable	loves	unhittable
hit	unlockables	hits	unbreakability
lockability	hittably	towability	unloveables

Once you’ve finished with these questions, with your group, try and answer the below questions:

Give a few examples of perfectly acceptable forms using these morphemes that I’ve left out
- e.g. I don’t have ‘unlocks’, but most people are fine with it
Which of these morphemes can combine, but it’s weird?
- For most English speakers, ‘unseeability’ isn’t used even if it’s understandable, and instead, ‘invisibility’ is used.
Which of these morphemes cannot combine?
- For most English speakers, ‘unlockly’ is not a functional and understandable word.
- Is there a pattern in terms of parts of speech? Can some morphemes only attach to some parts of speech?