Theoretical Grammar of Modern English for the Juniors

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Monolingual Unitary

Monolith Unify

Monogamy Unipolar

Monogenesis Unicellular

Monochrome Unidirectional

a) What is the meaning of the morphemes ‘mono’ and ‘uni’?

b) What bases can these morphemes be attached to normally?

List as many relevant factors that play a role in the selection of these prefixes as you can think of.

c) What is the word- class of ‘mono’ and ‘uni’ according to the data above and why?

d) What is the word- class of the words formed by attaching ‘mono-’ and ‘uni-’?

Exercise: 3.

Compounding is a very important way of adding to the word stock of English. Sometimes it is bare roots that are combined in compounds, and sometimes an input base contains an affixed form as in hairdresser.

[hair] n [dress] v [-er] n > [hairdresser] n

[kind] a [heart] n [-ed] a [kindhearted] a

NB! In greater detail address F. Katamba and J.Stomhan “Morphology” ch.13 pp.:315-316. Read up the cited pages and fulfill the following tasks.

Exercise: 4.

Examine the underlined words. What is the syntactic and semantic relationship between the two words that make up each compound?

a) The boy sat struggling with a knife and a piece of whitewood.

b) The woman put her saucepan on the hob.

c) The spur of the officer caught in tree-root and a sharp-edged tree-base.

d) It was his duty to return with the beer-pot and the bottle.

e) The house was hunted by so much by-gone.

f) She ran out, and saw a long brown snake on the flower-bed.

g) Town-bread, everything seemed to her splendid.

h) He was a tall, well-built man in the prime of life.

Exercise: 5.

Present hierarchical structure of the words below through a ‘Tree Diagram’.

Understatement, telltale, attendance, awake, babyhood, baby moon, headless, beautiful.

Exercise: 6.

Present the hierarchical structure of the words below through ‘Labeled Bracketing’.

Upbringing, unwitnessed, yearlong, wrapper, notwithstanding, comfortable, tuque, malfunction.

Modal answer: unwitnessed.

Un-wit-ness-ed. can be represented with ‘Labeled

Bracketing’:

[A[V[V un-[n wit] ]-ed]

Now answer the question: Do you any difference between the two techniques (ways) of morpheme analysis If so, support your argument with well-formed examples?

II. Issues for individual tasks:

Look in a dictionary up for five examples (lexical units) to fill in each branch of the following table.

The Table

- According to distribution approach:

Morpheme

[pic 1][pic 2][pic 3]

contrastive complementary non-contrastive

- According to traditional and descriptive approach:

Morpheme[pic 4][pic 5]

Free Bound

- On the basis of formal presentation:

Morpheme[pic 6][pic 7]

Overt Covert or Zero

- On the basis of segmental relation:

Morpheme[pic 8][pic 9][pic 10]

Supra-segmental Additives Replacives

(NB! Read up Block M.Y. attentively!)

Topics for the reports:

- Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes.

- Types of Morphemes in Modern English.

(NB! Other topics are at the readers’ choice)

II. Glossary to be learned and used during the activity:

1. A linguist is a scientist who investigates human anguage in all its facets: its structure, its use, its history, its place in society.

2. Polyglot is someone who speaks many languages.

3. The Theory of Grammar- the mental representation of grammatical knowledge- is what is the program is about.

4. Grammar- The entire system of a knowledge, including

a) Its syntax and morphology, but excluding vocabulary (the semantic system).

b) A book containing rules and examples of grammar.

c) An individual’s application of the rules. As in this novel is full of bad grammar.

5. Markedness- the condition, quality, or state of being marked.

The concept of markedness can be applied in many areas of language. Thus a simple declarative sentence (e.g.: I love Morphology) is unmarked, whereas I don’t love Morphology is marked with nouns, verbs, adjectives and other words the base forms are said to be unmarked (e.g.: table, book, horse sing but tables, books, horses are marked etc. As well child- unmarked boy, girl-marked for sex. This type is Semantic Marking. E.g.: widow-widower, actor- actress etc.)