Structure of Words: Morphology 75

Issues for further thought and exercises

1 Divide the following passage into morphs, list the morphs, and label each according to
whether it is free or bound, lexical or grammatical. You should encounter some problems in
identifying morphs: dubious cases where the status of a form as a meaningful element is not
entirely certain, and where it is difficult to decide precisely where the morpheme division
occurs. Identify and discuss these difficulties.
The city wasn’t pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been
successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy
mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess. The result was
an ugly city of forty thousand people set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that
had been all dirtied up by mining. Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had
come out of the smelters’ stacks. (Hammett 2003/1929: 1–2)

2 What are the conditioning factors for the three allomorphs of the possessive enclitic in
English? Are they identical with the conditioning factors for the regular plural morpheme?
What grammatical differences can you find between the two morphemes? (Use the properties
of the various morpheme types mentioned in the text to help you find differences. You could
also think about their ordering.) What happens when the enclitic is attached to plural nouns
(regular and irregular)?

3 The past tense suffix for regular verbs in English has three allomorphs the shapes of which
are analogous to the shapes of the plural noun suffix and the possessive enclitic. What are
they? Are they phonological allomorphs? Are the conditioning factors for the past tense
allomorphs the same as the conditioning factors for the plural noun suffix and possessive
clitic? If not, can you identify anything common between them?

4 Based on the following data from Gumbaynggirr, what are the allomorphs of the lexical and
grammatical (case) morphemes? (Note that ergative is the name for the case that marks the
subject of a transitive clause (like John sees Mary) but not intransitive (like John ran).) Are
they phonological or suppletive allomorphs? What are their conditioning factors? For the
phonological allomorphs can you suggest a morphophonemic representation, and rules of
phonological realization?

Ergative Locative Dative Ablative

‘man’ /niːgadu/ /niːgada/ /niːgargu/ /niːgana/

‘small’ /ɟunujɟu/ /ɟunujɟa/ /ɟunujgu/ /ɟunujɲar/

‘father’ /baːbagu/ /baːbaŋumbala/ /baːbaŋu/ /baːbaŋumbajŋa/

‘flood’ /duːlgambu/ /duːlgamba/ /duːlgamgu/ /duːlgamɲar/

‘tail’ /ɟuːndu/ /ɟuːnda/ /ɟuːngu/ /ɟuːnɲar/

‘pademelon’ /gulɟuːdu/ /gulɟuːda/ /gulɟuːgu/ /gulɟuːɲar/

76 Linguistics

‘mother’ /miːmigu/ /miːmiŋumbala/ /miːmiŋu/ /miːmiŋumbajŋa/

‘mosquito’ /guɹaːdu/ /guɹaːda/ /guɹaːgu/ /guɹaːɲar/

‘brother-in-law’ /ŋaɟiːgu/ /ŋaɟiːŋumbala/ /ŋaɟiːŋu/ /ŋaɟiːŋumbajŋa/

‘cattle’ /bulaŋgu/ /bulaŋga/ /bulaŋgu/ /bulaŋɲar/

‘brother’ /gagugu/ /gaguŋumbala/ /gaguŋu/ /gaguŋumbajŋa/

‘magpie’ /ŋaːmbulu/ /ŋaːmbula/ /ŋaːmbulgu/ /ŋaːmbulɲar/

‘whiting’ /ɟuruwiɲɟu/ /ɟuruwiɲɟa/ /ɟuruwiɲgu/ /ɟuruwiɲɲar/

5 Below are some verb forms in Saliba (Austronesian, Sariba and Rogeia Islands). Describe
the morphology of the verb, and identify the lexical and grammatical morphemes; suggest a
meaning for each morpheme.
/selaoko/ ‘they went already’ /jeseseko/ ‘it is already swollen’
/jelaoma/ ‘he came this way’ /sekeno/ ‘they slept’
/sedeuli/ ‘they washed it’ /jalaowako/ ‘I already went away’
/jeligadi/ ‘she cooked them’ /jeligako/ ‘she cooked it already’
/jadeuli/ ‘I washed it’ /jakitadiko/ ‘I saw them already’
/jeheloiwa/ ‘he ran away’ /selageko/ ‘they arrived already’
/sekitagau/ ‘they saw me’ /sepesama/ ‘they came out here’

6 It was mentioned that English have has, according to some linguists, both grammatical and
lexical uses. Do you think it is preferable to consider these to represent different uses of a
single lexical word, or two homophonous words, one lexical, one grammatical? Explain your
reasoning.

7 Examine the following sentences in Northern Sotho (Niger-Congo, South Africa), written
phonemically. Identify the morphemes, stating their phonological form and their meanings,
as revealed by these examples. Describe the morphological structure of words.

a. /mpʃa elomilɛ ŋwana/ ‘The dog bit a child’

b. /basadi barɛka diaparɔ/ ‘The women buy clothes’
c. /bana batla/ ‘The children come’
d. /mosadi orɛkilɛ nama/ ‘The woman bought meat’
e. /dimpʃa dilomilɛ bana/ ‘The dogs bit the children’
f. /monaŋ olomilɛ mmutla/ ‘The mosquito bit a hare’
g. /ŋkwe ebɔna dintlo/ ‘The leopard sees the huts’
h. /ŋwana otlilɛ/ ‘The child came’
i. /banna barɔbilɛ selɛpɛ ntlɔng/ ‘The men broke an axe by the hut’
j. /monna obona setimɛla/ ‘The man sees a train’
8 English nouns mark plural regularly by the morpheme /s/ ~ /z/ ~ /əz/, and irregularly by
a variety of means. The singular never has any phonological marking. Is there sufficient
 Structure of Words: Morphology 77

evidence to suppose that there is a zero suffix marking the singular? Discuss the pros and
cons of identifying a zero morpheme. (In answering this question, consider the conse-
quences of this analysis for nouns like fish and sheep.)

9 Analyse the following Warrwa verb forms and identify the morphemes that correspond to
the English pronouns; what are the allomorphs and their conditioning factors? How is infor-
mation about the time of the event expressed? (Note that there is no direct representation of
‘it’ as object.) How would you describe the structure of the verb?
‘looked’ ‘pierced (it)’ ‘was cooking (it)’
a. /ŋamuɹuŋuɲ/ /ŋanaɹaɲ/ /ŋanamaɹana/ ‘I’
b. /mimuɹuŋuɲ/ /minaɹaɲ/ /minamaɹana/ ‘you’
c. /jamuɹuŋuɲ/ /janaɹaɲ/ /janamaɹana/ ‘we two (me and you)’
d. /muɹuŋuɲ/ /naɹaɲ/ /namaɹana/ ‘he’
e. /jarmuɹuŋuɲ/ /jaraɹaɲ/ /jaramaɹana/ ‘we all’
f. /gurmuɹuŋuɲ/ /guraɹaɲ/ /guramaɹana/ ‘you plural’
g. /ŋimuɹuŋuɲ/ /ŋiraɹaɲ/ /ŋiramaɹana/ ‘they’

10 Compare the root and progressive (indicating that the event is in progress) forms of Babungo
(Niger-Congo, Cameroon) verbs below. How is the progressive formed? (Tone is not shown.)

a. /faʔ/ ‘work’ /fɨfaʔ/ ‘be working’

b. /təə/ ‘dig’ /tɨtəə/ ‘be digging’
c. /baj/ ‘be red’ /bɨbaj/ ‘be becoming red’
d. /zasə/ ‘sick’ /zɨzasə/ ‘be sick’
e. /fesə/ ‘frighten’ /fɨfesə/ ‘be frightening’
f. /bʷəj/ ‘live’ /bɨbʷəj/ ‘be living’
g. /kuːnə/ ‘return’ /kɨkuːnə/ ‘be returning’

11 Examine the following noun forms in Kuot, which inflect regularly for number, which can
be singular or non-singular (one or more than one) for inanimates, or singular, non-singular
and dual for animates and some inanimates. Describe number formation and identify the
number markers; account for the distribution of allomorphs.
singular non-singular dual (2)
a. /ie/ /iep/ ‘knife’
b. /ŋof/ /ŋofup/ ‘nostril’
c. /alaŋ/ /alaŋip/ /alaŋipien/ ‘road’
d. /nur/ /nurup/ ‘coconut’
e. /kuala/ /kualap/ /kualapien/ ‘wife’
f. /kobeŋ/ /kobeŋip/ /kobeŋipien/ ‘bird’
g. /iakur/ /iakurup/ /iakurupien/ ‘vine’
h. /nəp/ /nəpup/ ‘part’
i. /pas/ /pasip/ ‘stick’
j. /kakok/ /kakokup/ ‘snake’
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Not all nouns in Kuot form numbers in this way. How are the following inflected forms
constructed? How would you account for the two different patterns?
k. /irəma/ /irəp/ /irəpien/ ‘eye’
l. /dədema/ /dədep/ /dədepien/ ‘word’
m. /karaima/ /karaip/ ‘nail, claw’
n. /muana/ /muap/ /muapien/ ‘reason’
o. /tabuna/ /tabup/ ‘door’

Notes
1 Note that we are restricting ourselves to the particular sentence. Farmer is a minimal free form,
since here farm cannot be separated from it; in other sentences (e.g. The farm is the site of
numerous killings of ducklings) farm is a minimal free form.
2 However, there is a word ducked (as in He ducked to avoid the javelin) that is phonologically
identical with duct and which can be divided into two morphemes, /dʌk/ ‘move rapidly
downwards to evade something’ and /t/ ‘past time’. This example also illustrates that two distinct
morphemes duck (the bird) and duck (the movement) can share the same phonological form. Such
words are called homophones (see §6.2).
3 The three corpora were: Australian Corpus of English (written), The Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus
of British English (written) and The Machine-Readable Corpus of Spoken English (spoken). The
counts were made for lexical items in their various forms (so be includes was, were and so on).
If instead the counts are made over free morphs, one gets slightly different results. The ten most
frequent morphs are all grammatical: the, of, and, to, a, in, is, that, was and for.
4 The tilde ~ is conventionally used to separate alternating allomorphs.