Systemic Linguistics Core Linguistics words

Systemic Linguistics: Core Linguistics

• words are signs • signifier = form = morphology (phonology) • signified = meaning = semantics (pragmatics) • combination of words = sentence structure = syntax

Morphology: language types

• analytic languages signal grammatical relationships by word position in the sentence (= word order) • synthetic languages signal grammatical relationships by the shape of the words (=inflectional endings) • 1500 years ago, English was much more synthetic than it is today. It has changed into a more analytic language

Morphology • definition: morphology studies the smallest meaningful units, called 'morphemes' • morpheme ≠ phoneme (pit vs. bit) • morpheme ≠ word (blueberry, autobus) • morpheme ≠ syllable (mo-ther)

• types of morphemes: • a) free morphemes: may occur on their own and are used freely according to the rules of sentence structure, for example 'boy', 'tree', 'church', 'go', 'leave', 'love'. • b) bound morphemes (affixes): cannot usually stand alone but are attached to a free morpheme (= 'base'), e. g 're-', '-ed', 's'.

• types of bound morphemes: • • - prefixes (in-, re-) - suffixes (-dom, -ship) - infixes (heim-ge-kommen) - circumfixes (heim-ge-kehr-t)

• morpheme, morph and allomorph • morphemes are ideal abstract units, whereas the corresponding morphs can show some variation • morphs are concrete manifestations of a morphome • allomorphs are variations of morphemes • /z/ in "dogs, beds" • /s/ in "cats" • /iz/ in "garages"

overview of the discipline

• types of inflection • a) declension of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns • b) conjugation of verbs. • derivational morphemes (affixes) are used for word formation

Word formation • word formation processes • a) derivation • definition: a combination of a free and bound morpheme(s) - by far the most common word formation process in the production of new words

• examples of derivation:

derivation: exceptions • Cranberry morph(eme)s are bound morphemes which occur in only one derivation (or compound) but nowhere else: e. g. cranberry, inane, umpteen • similar words (strawberry, inactive, thirteen) suggest that they are indeed morphemes • cranberry morphs are relics of words which have died out in other uses

• b) compounding • definition: a combination two or more free morphemes • German is notorious for long words (e. g. Weihnachtsbaumschmuckvertriebsorganis ationshandbuchverkäufer), compounds in English do not usually exceed two units

• examples of compounding:

• Endocentric compounds: the compound is an instance of the thing denoted by the last constituent (e. g. houseboat is a type of boat, boathouse is a type of house; a person who is seasick is sick) • Exocentric compounds: the compound does not refer to an entity denoted by either constituent (a paleface is not a type of face, but a person who has a pale face)

• examples of exocentric compounds: paleface, redskin, redneck, skinhead, bigfoot, pickpocket • Copulative compounds: both constituents refer to the entity denoted by the whole compound. An owner-builder is both an owner of a house and its builder. • e. g. singer-songwriter, bittersweet, deafmute

• compounds need to be defined on several linguistic levels • morphology (free morphemes) • phonology (stress on the first element) • semantics (unity)

minor word formation processes • c) coinage: means the invention of totally new terms • the most typical cases are invented trade names for a company’s product which become general terms for any version of that product (without initial capital letters) e. g. 'xerox', 'kleenex' or 'aspirin'

• d) conversion: involves a change in the function of a word, e. g. when a noun comes to be used as a verb (without any reduction or change) • E. g. ‘to paper a wall’ (paper) or ‘a must’ (from the verb ‘must')

• • e) acronymy: acronyms are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words acronyms are pronounced as single words, e. g. 'NATO', 'RADAR', 'LASER' (unlike in the case of 'CD', which is an initialism)

• f) backformation: means a special type of reduction process: a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form another word of a different type (usually a verb) • E. g. ‘donate’ (from donation), ‘babysit’ (from babysitter) and ‘televise’ (from television)

• g) blending: means a combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term. Blending usually involves taking the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word • E. g. ‘smog’, ‘brunch’ and ‘modem’

• h) clipping: means that a word of more than one syllable (facsimile) is reduced to a shorter form • E. g. ‘bus’, ‘ad’ and ‘bra’

• i) borrowing: refers to the taking over of words from other languages • English has adopted a great number of loan-words throughout its history • E. g. ‘yogurt’ (Turkish) and ‘alcohol’ (Arabic)