Fundamentals of Linguistics: Assignment 01 / Morphology - David Schlangen
Fundamentals of Linguistics: Assignment 01 / Morphology - David Schlangen
Fundamentals of Linguistics: Assignment 01 / Morphology - David Schlangen
Exercise 1 Divide the following words by placing a + between their morphemes (note that some of
the words may be monomorphemic).
Example: replaces → re + place + s
1. creating
2. unhealthy
3. seaward
4. waiter
5. wastage
6. reconsider
7. poetic
8. keys
9. modernize
10. incompletion
Exercise 2 The examples below show possible wordforms and impossible ones, which are pre-
ceded by an asterisk (*). Divide the words into morphemes, and say which morphological processes
are involved:
1. a. right – rightist – rightists
b. right – rights – *rightsist
2. a. foot – football – footballs
b. foot – feet – *feetball
3. a. sleepwalk – sleepwalked
b. sleepwalk – *sleptwalk
Based on your analysis, what can you conclude about the order of application of morphological
rules?
Exercise 3 There are many asymmetries in English in which a root morpheme combined with a
prefix is a nonword. For example *cognito vs incognito. Provide 5 more examples.
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Exercise 5 Below is a list of words from Turkish. In Turkish, articles and morphemes indicating
location are affixed to the verb.
deniz “an ocean” evden “from a house”
denize “to an ocean” evimdem “from my house”
denizim “of an ocean” denizimde “in my ocean”
eve “to a house” elde “in a hand”
1. What is the Turkish morpheme meaning “to”?
2. What kind of affixes in Turkish correspond to English prepositions?
3. What would the Turkish word for “from an ocean” be?
4. How many morphemes are there in the Turkish word denizimde?
Exercises taken from Sharid Loáiciga’s course, which in turn took some from Tatjana Scheffler’s
course, and some from Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (2003).
References
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams (2003). An Introduction to Language. Boston,
USA: Thomson-Wadsworth.