Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology (from Greek μορφή morphé 'shape', 'form', and λόγος lógos, word ',' teaching ',' reason '), also: Morphematik or Morphemik, is understood in linguistics a branch of grammar. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words and is dedicated to researching the smallest meaningless and / or function-bearing elements of a language, the morphemes. The morphology is also referred to as " word grammar " in reference to the term " sentence grammar " for the syntax.

In the traditional school grammar, the morphology is called morphology. They treated the word starting the analysis of the inflectional forms and parts of speech and can also include the word education, which of course is concerned not just with word forms, but with strains.

Term origin

The term " morphology " has been adopted in the 19th century by the linguists from another scientific discipline in order to describe typical word-formation patterns. Originally the term of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who introduced him to the study of the forms, especially in botany. August Schleicher took it over in 1860 for linguistics, but used it only in a headline, and the term was initially received little attention. The term " morpheme " used Leonard Bloomfield already in his essay A set of postulate for the science of language (1926 ): "A minimum form is a morpheme; its meaning a sememe ".

Research fields and research topics

The morphology is very much influenced by their methods of analysis and concepts by the American structuralism; Bloomfield (1933 ) and Zellig S. Harris (1951 ) devote their own chapter in their fundamental works.

Demarcation problems

The state of the morphology has changed again and again, both on the question of which areas of language description are attributed to it, and as regards their integration into the control systems of the various grammar models. In order to delineate the morphology of the syntax, see the article on syntax. The boundary between morphology and syntax is the morphosyntax and explores the mutual influences of morphological and syntactic processes. The interdependencies between morphological and phonological processes, ie processes relating to speech sounds, treated the morphonology.

Morphology as the study of word structure in general usually includes word formation and inflection. Some schools consider word formation but as a discipline.

The difference between inflection and word formation consists essentially in the fact that through word formation of new words arise during the flexion expresses the grammatical functions of words in the sentence. Thus, from the noun " ( the ) fact " by word formation, for example, by derivation with the prefix "un - ", the new word " crime ". By flexion but arises from " fact " in a sentence like " The acts must be punished " not a new word, but " fact " is the verb " must " just means the form " deeds" in accordance ( agreement) to bring, where simultaneously plural is displayed. " Fact " and " crime " are two different words, therefore, during constitute " fact " and " deeds" two forms of the same word. The same case is about "writing" and " describe " or " write " and " write" before. At the same time the flexion but also contributes to the meaning of words. Thus, about " deeds" another, another connotation as " fact ".

Demarcation problems between word formation and inflection can occur when the same grammatical / semantic functions expressed in inflection and word formation. In German, the grammatical gender ( genus ) is such a category one hand, there is a Genusflexion with articles, adjectives and pronouns, that is, words are inflected differently depending on their grammatical gender, or " the ", "an" and "the" are inflected forms of the definite article; On the other hand there is also a genus of nouns Derivation: from "Lion " is by word formation with the suffix " -in" the feminine " lioness ". The difference between inflection and word formation is located in the far-reaching nature of flexion: An article must always be flexed when it is used in a sentence; rule, but you can only change a few nouns by gender derivation, and only those who represent the people and some of our related animals. Exceptions to this - such as in the case of " The Rat ", the name of a novel by Günter Grass - are understandable, but marked in different ways.

The name of the basic unit of " morpheme " as the smallest meaningless or function-bearing unit of the language also provides a further breakdown of possibility within the territory of the morphology and has led to research debates ( see for instance the discussion of the rules of the use and importance of the content of joint elements and the resulting variety of names).

Morph, allomorph and morpheme

The terms " Morph ", " allomorph " and " morpheme " are names for the smallest meaningless or function-bearing components of a word. As a morph is called the not yet classified in terms of their type units. For example, in the words " teaching it ", " child - he " and " greatest he " three - he morphs before. Only after Eruierung their function and meaning they can be assigned to specific morphemes: He -in " teacher " is used to form the masculine " agent nouns " he -in " children " to form the plural, and he in "bigger" to formation of comparatives.

Have morphs with different form the same function, there are so-called allomorphs of a given morpheme. For example, the affixes -er encoding in " children " -e " dogs", - (e ) n in questions ,-s in "Cars ", but also the Nullmorphem as German in " the / the car," to noun each appended plural; thus they are allomorphs of the plural morpheme. Have different morphemes have the same shape, so it is a case of syncretism.

Rules of inflection and word formation

It is possible to distinguish between different processes or rules that are observed at the inflection and word formation.

Flexion (bending )

→ Main article: flexion

For flexion include conjugation and declension. Many authors also include the increase, Komparation to flexion.

At the Grundmorphem e - sumption is attached as Flexionsmorphem for 1st person singular present indicative active.

In more recent analyzes, the flexion is however no longer associated with the morphology, as it plays a role only at the syntactic level. Contrast can be argued that almost always plural and gender often play a role on the semantic level.

Derivation (word derivation )

→ Main article: Derivation (linguistics)

Derivation called word formation by combination of Grundmorphemen and affixes.

At the Grundmorphem health is appended unit, a derivational, in order to convert adjectives into nouns.

Composition ( compound word )

→ Main article: Composition ( grammar)

Composition means the formation of words from at least two Grundmorphemen ( simple words or Konfixen ); but they can contain any number of derivative elements.

By combining the Grundmorphems language (s) with the resulting Derivation of word science (derivation of knowledge, it is formed from wiss s) results in a compound. In the case of Dreifachkompositums shipping company is the linking element -s- inserted between the compound and the simplex shipping company. Another joint element is about -e- as in pig -e -fry (mainly in Germany, whereas pig -s- fry mainly in Austria ). In the cases Linguistics and schoolyard of the final sound will be redeemed at the first Grundmorphemen language and school.

Cuts

Here a distinction is made:

- The abbreviation where we, individually, the first letter of the individual morphemes that make up the word pronounce

- The acronym that follows the same rules as the abbreviation, but in this case a new phonetic word originates

- The reduction, is deleted when the verbal material to create a less complicated word

Conversion

→ Main article: Conversion (linguistics)

Not all scientists also include the conversion to word formation. Conversions are eg verbs that are transferred without morpheme only by using and ( in German ) by capitalization in nouns.

Another example of conversion is the plural form of ( the ) pillows ( the ) pillows. Here no shape change is visible. This conversion can be used as an application not affected with form morpheme in the word ( the ) pillows are considered. This morpheme is called " Nullmorphem " or " zero- morpheme " and often written in the form " Ø - morpheme ". Many authors distinguish conversion as a process of word formation of plural formation as a process of inflection.

Another definition of conversion stating that this is a slight change of the morpheme and therefore excludes the flexion with a. The aforementioned form of the conversion is referred to in this context, "zero discharge".

Contamination

In this merge two existing words into a new one. The output words are no longer fully visible.

Many morphological phenomena can be formally described by regular expressions, especially if they are made of pure Affigierungen without further changes in the material. Some phenomena, however, the Arabic derivational, are not to be recorded with regular languages ​​.