LINA01 lecture 1 4 PDF

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LINA01 lecture 2 4...

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 words - what is a word? for linguists, the smallest free form in language - if it can stand alone -- it is a word a free form: an element that does not have to occur in a fixed position with respect to neighbouring elements - consider the following sentence: 1) elephants are amazing - 3 words, 5 units (elephant/s are amaz/ing) - elephant, are, amaz = free - -s -ing = bound - we have the intuition that the form elephants is a word, and that the element --s is not - --s never occurs in isolation in english and has to be attached to the noun to which it belongs 2) elephant ares amazing / elephant are amazings - the intuition in that elephants is a words because it can occur in isolation, and in different positions in the sentence: 3) i like elephants 4) everyone at the zoo is crazy about elephants 5) many elephants live in africa, but there are no elephants in europe  words and their structure - moreover, the elephants example above demonstrates other important facts about human language: - words are not unstructured - they are not the smallest units of meaning - the addition of --s is not insignificant: (plural)  question! - are words the smallest units of meaning? - the answer is NO. words are formed from more basic units called morphemes morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in language  morphemes - the basic observation is that: words are formed from more basic units the smallest unit of linguistic meaning is called a morpheme - in other words, a morpheme is a grammatical unit in which there is an arbitrary union of sound and meaning that cannot be further analyzed - therefore, words are formed out of morphemes - ex: un- -able -s -ing  morphemes - a single word can be composed of one or more morphemes:

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