Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: English Morphology, language: English, abstract: What is morphology? An easy answer would be: "It is a field of linguistics!" But it is far more complex then this reply reveals. The field of morphology studies and analyses the form of words by factorizing them into morphemes. These morphemes are the smallest units the word can be divided in. But what is the smallest unit of a word? This could also be a letter. There is one word missing, which makes the definition complete, namely 'meaning'. A proper definition of the term can be found in the OALD: "Morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning that a word can be divided into (827)." Words and morphemes are linguistic signs but even though the morpheme is considered a meaningful unit does not mean that every morpheme can be a word...

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2.0, , course: Introduction to Morphology, language: English, abstract: My term paper contains first of a section about Inflectional Morphology in which I would like to explain how it is used with nouns, verbs and adjectives and what exceptions and special cases there are. Secondly I want to do the same for Derivational Morphology and then compare both to underline the differences between the two. At the end in my conclusion I would like to sum up the comparison and show why I think Derivational Morphology produces a wider range of new words then Inflectional Morphology does.

The three volumes of Language typology and syntactic description offer a unique survey of syntactic and morphological structure in the languages of the world. Topics covered include parts of speech; passives; complementation; relative clauses; adverbial clauses; inflectional morphology; tense; aspect and mood; and deixis. The major ways these notions are realized u=in the languages of the world are explored, and the contributors provide brief sketches of relevant aspects of representative languages. Each volume is written in an accessible style with new concepts explained and exemplified as they are introduced. Although each volume can be read independently, together they provide a major work of reference that will serve as a manual for field workers and anyone interested in cross-linguistic generalizations.

A lively introduction to the study of how words are put together.

No ordinary dictionary, David Crystal's Dictionary of Language includes not only descriptions of hundreds of languages literally from A to Z (Abkhaz to Zyryan) and definitions of literary and grammatical concepts, but also explanations of terms used in linguistics, language teaching, and speech pathology. If you are wondering how many people speak Macedonian, Malay, or Makua, or if you're curious about various theories of the origins of language, or if you were always unsure of the difference between structuralism, semiotics, and sociolinguistics, this superbly authoritative dictionary will answer all of your questions and hundred of others.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Heidelberg (Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen), language: English, abstract: Generally, Kortmann defines Contrastive Linguistics as the parallel comparison of two languages concerning their language parameters. According to him, it is especially important to identify separate bundles with structural differences and find the relation between them, the so-called “Kontrastbündel” (contrast bundles). Each one of these bundles can be deduced from the construction plan of the contrastive language. In this regard, Kortmann starts his analysis by comparing his purpose of Contrastive Linguistics to its original use. He refers to the fact that in the early 40s till 60s these language differences were considered the reason for the problems occurring when learning a foreign language. Hence, Contrastive Linguistics was primarily important for pedagogical use. The systematic comparison of two languages was supposed to improve the learner’s and teacher’s understanding of the foreign language by for example predicting mistakes often made. In this context, Kortmann sees the previously mentioned Contrastive Hypothesis from Lado as a good explanation for the main factors which trigger contrasts. The Contrastive Hypothesis indicates that similarities between the native language (L1) and the foreign language (L2) lead to an easy and fast learning process whereas differences lead to difficulties and are the main reason for making mistakes. Thus, the basic idea of the Contrastive Hypothesis is the transfer of the characteristics of the native language to the foreign language. Depending on whether this transfer promotes or represses the learning process, it is considered a positive or negative transfer. A negative transfer is also referred to as interference. The most important types of interference are substitution (1), over-differentiation, under-differentiation, over-representation and under-representation (2). Here, Kortmann comments that according to this basic assumption of Contrastive Linguistics only substitution, over-differentiation and under-differentiation can trigger mistakes.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Englisches Seminar), language: English, abstract: Inflection and derivation are traditional concepts in the field of morphology, the subdiscipline of linguistics that concentrates on the internal structures of words. Despite the ascribed central role in linguistics, the distinction between inflection and derivation is far from clear-cut. Linguistic textbooks or publications used to treat the fields of inflectional and derivational morphology as two clearly distinguishable categories but on closer examination the boundaries between both processes turn out to be a lot fuzzier. “The question of how inflection can be distinguished from derivation is one of the classical problems addressed by structuralist linguistics.” . During the last decades many linguists have already focussed on this lack of clear distinctions with the aim to find a universally valid definition for both categories, but the concepts of inflectional and derivational morphology “are notoriously easier to illustrate than to define.”2 We will first turn towards a broad selection of criteria that have been argued to distinguish inflection and derivation. These criteria have been proposed to put the dichotomy on a firmer theoretical footing which is important since much morphological theorising is based on the assumption that morphological processes fall into these two broad categories – inflection and derivation.

A new contribution to linguistic theory, this book presents a formal framework for the analysis of word structure in human language. It sets forth the network of hypotheses constituting Paradigm Function Morphology, a theory of inflectional form whose central insight is that paradigms play an essential role in the definition of a language's system of word structure. The theory comprises several unprecedented claims, chief among which is the claim that a language's realization rules serve as clauses in the definition of a paradigm function, an overarching construct which is indispensable for capturing certain kinds of generalizations about inflectional form. This book differs from other recent works on the same subject in that it treats inflectional morphology as an autonomous system of principles rather than as a subsystem of syntax or phonology and it draws upon evidence from a diverse range of languages in motivating the proposed conception of word structure.

This new edition of Understanding Morphology has been fully revised in line with the latest research. It now includes 'big picture' questions to highlight central themes in morphology, as well as research exercises for each chapter. Understanding Morphology presents an introduction to the study of word structure that starts at the very beginning. Assuming no knowledge of the field of morphology on the part of the reader, the book presents a broad range of morphological phenomena from a wide variety of languages. Starting with the core areas of inflection and derivation, the book presents the interfaces between morphology and syntax and between morphology and phonology. The synchronic study of word structure is covered, as are the phenomena of diachronic change, such as analogy and grammaticalization. Theories are presented clearly in accessible language with the main purpose of shedding light on the data, rather than as a goal in themselves. The authors consistently draw on the best research available, thus utilizing and discussing both functionalist and generative theoretical approaches. Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and exercises. As such this is the ideal book for both beginning students of linguistics, or anyone in a related discipline looking for a first introduction to morphology.

Most recent research in generative morphology has avoided the treatment of purely morphological phenomena and has focused instead on interface questions, such as the relation between morphology and syntax or between morphology and phonology. In this monograph Mark Aronoff argues that linguists must consider morphology by itself, not merely as an appendage of syntax and phonology, and that linguistic theory must allow for a separate and autonomous morphological component. Following a general introductory chapter, Aronoff examines two narrow classes of morphological phenomena to make his case: stems and inflectional classes. Concentrating first on Latin verb morphology, he argues that morphological stems are neither syntactic nor phonological units. Next, using data from a number of languages, he underscores the traditional point that the inflectional class of a word is not reducible to its syntactic gender. He then explores in detail the phonologically motivated nominal inflectional class system of two languages of Papua New Guinea (Arapeshand Yimas) and the precise nature of the relation between this system and the corresponding gender system. Finally, drawing on a number of Semitic languages, Aronoff argues that the verb classes of these languages are purely inflectional although they are partly motivated by derivational and syntactic considerations.