Problem Set 3 morphology PDF

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assignment for morphology (no answers provided)...

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EL1101E Semester 1, AY 2021/2022 Problem Set 3: Morphology General instructions •

Every group member should attempt the problem set individually before the group meeting.

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Please inform the tutor if any group member is uncontactable or does not attend the group meeting.

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Create a new word document in your group’s private channel and type your group’s solution in there. o

You can do this together online as a group, or you can assign rotating scribe duties, where the scribe does it after the online group discussion. Up to you.

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Your solution should not just contain the final answers, but also any relevant explanation or discussion.

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Due: Friday of week 6, 23:59.

Part 1 For each of the sentences, determine whether the underlined words contain affixes, and provide an approximate meaning for the affix. For each affix, state whether it is an inflectional or derivational affix. An example is provided below: I wanted to fling the duckling over, but he was already wrestling with the mother duck while carefully handling her eggs. •

There is no affix in ‘fling’ – it is a simple/monomorphemic word.

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‘handling’ and ‘wrestling’ contain the same inflectional suffix, which expresses the progressive.

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‘Duckling’ contains a different, derivational, suffix meaning ‘baby …’.

a) My father is a smoker and drinker, but he runs faster than me! b) The boy who wears the monocle lens reads many books. c) You should put on the woolen earmuffs that Uncle Sam had given to you to dampen the noise so that it doesn’t deafen you. d) She jogged five hundred meters before she realized that she had headed in the wrong direction. e) He is an alcohol intolerant individual – any amount of alcohol will not just intoxicate him, but may even cause injury to his organs.

Part 2 For each of the complex words below, i.

identify its hierarchical structure,

ii.

label each of the ‘building blocks’ as either ‘stem’ or ‘affix’,

iii.

name the word-formation process involved in each step of its formation history.

If you think a word is structurally ambiguous, identify both structures and their associated meanings. Here are some examples: salesman [[[sale][s]][man]] [sale]stem [s]suffix (affixation) [sales]stem [man]stem (compounding) unlockable ‘able to be unlocked’ 1

unlockable ‘not able to be locked’

[[un][[lock][able]]]

[[[un][lock]][able]]

[lock]stem [able]suffix (affixation)

[un]prefix [lock]stem (affixation)

[un]prefix [lockable]stem (affixation)

[unlock]stem [able]suffix (affixation)

a) nationalization b) unidirectional c) reconditioned d) undomesticated e) oversimplification

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You may be wondering why I have classified -able in unlockable as a suffix, rather than a stem, given

that able is able to stand as a free stem. Recall, however, that we are paying attention to sound rather than spelling. The two are in fact pronounced differently: [əbəl] vs. [ebəl]. Moreover, note that the [ebəl] form can only appear as a free stem, while the [əbəl] form can only occur as part of a word (i.e. as an affix). This is an instance, therefore, of allomorphy: two allomorphs of the same morpheme that are in complementary distribution....