This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.

This handbook provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of work on inflection - the expression of grammatical information through changes in word forms. The volume's 24 chapters are written by experts in the field from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, with examples drawn from a wide range of languages.

This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.

This book investigates –s marking in English verbs, specifically its manifestations in main verbs, in the past tense of BE, and in existential constructions. It embraces the many ways in which –s marking varies across the English speaking world, and considers both how it arose in these places historically and the ways in which it has since developed. The authors propose a story which holistically accounts for these different manifestations of –s, drawing upon evidence from a wide range of subdisciplines in linguistics, including sociolinguistics, generative syntax, historical linguistics, dialectology, and discourse-pragmatics. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in these and related fields.

Deepens the understanding of the printed word through the fascinating world of morphology. Systematic, structured lessons explicitly teach students the meanings of the building blocks of language so that they can grasp new words and their meanings with ease and confidence.

This is the first complete theory of the morphology of language, a compendium of information on morphological categories and operations.

Ideal in introductory courses dealing with grammatical structure and linguistic analysis, Introduction to Typology overviews the major grammatical categories and constructions in the world's languages. Framed in a typological perspective, the constant concern of this primary text is to underscore the similarities and differences which underlie the vast array of human languages.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.

Introduces students to the scientific study of language, using the basic principles of complexity theory.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: English Morphology, language: English, abstract: When studying linguistics, students are confronted with a high degree of terminology right on from the beginning of their studies. One might assume that understanding it should not really be a problem if one considers a standard dictionary or inquires other scholars in order to find an answer to one’s lack of knowledge. However, in some cases it is simply not that easy. In the following we will take a look at the notion of the morpheme. The problem is that several different definitions exist and scholars have to be 100% aware of the meaning when confronted with linguistic literature. The Oxford Concise English Dictionary (OCED) claims the morpheme to be: “A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided” (OCED 1999:926) But is this a sufficient definition of the term? Are morphemes really always meaningful units? In order to understand the different opinions scholars have when referring to the morpheme, one has to have a good look at their different point of views of the field of morphology. Some scholars consider a morpheme-based approach to be the correct way of dealing with morphemes, in which they either emphasize meaning or grammatical function of morphemes, whereas others rather identify themselves with the word-form based approach, by which they entirely reject the significance of morphemes for the meaning of the sign, while concentrating on word-forms. In the following we will take a closer look at several definitions of themorpheme,established by scholars of different diachronical environments in order to find a solution to this problem and a more or less concrete definition. In the second part, the importance of the morpheme with reference to the concept of allomorphy will be examined to understand how they function and how they are realized.