Search results for 'tag:Morphemes' matching tag 'Morphemes'

Re: INTRANSITIVE V. TRANSITIVE / EXTENSIVE V. INTENSIVE

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:32:40 GMT

Hi,

The basic morphological form of a verb is the form that hasnÂ´t taken any ends, usually the infinitive form.

E.g.(to) walk

to this basic form you can add different endings, such as -s for third person singular, -ed for past time, -ing for progressive form.

walk/s/ walk/ed/ walk/ing/

Morpheme is the smallest meaningbearing part of a word it can be divided into.

Eg. Unforgivable becomes un/for/give/able

Hope this helps

Sofi

Re: aspiration after s

CalifJim — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:01:29 GMT

Kooyeen
If you said ""mistune" (tune -> mistune), would you aspirate the T? I would, because it's part of a different part (morpheme?)

I would probably aspirate that t at least a little, but not for the reason you give (I think). I think it's the stress pattern, tune being relatively stressed, that pushes me toward aspirating that t. Nevertheless, an unaspirated t in that position (after an s) sounds perfectly fine as well. You may be trying to fine tune your pronunciation below the noise level, if you know what I mean.

Re: aspiration after s

Kooyeen — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:23:02 GMT

CalifJim
No aspiration in any of these cases; disclose, mistreat, Wisconsin

Hi,
that's interesting. It seems everyone pronounces them their own way then. I saw (in a forum) several people aspirate the C in "disclose". As for "mistreat", I learned to produce all my TR as something like "CHR" unless it's STR, so it was probably a bad example. If you said ""mistune" (tune -> mistune), would you aspirate the T? I would, because it's part of a different part (morpheme?)

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

CalifJim — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:21:31 GMT

But in the following definition even s is considered a meaningful unit. What do you say about it?

I say the same as GG did. The s is considered meaningful at the end of a noun. Its meaning is "more than one". Another very short morpheme is n. At the end of some irregular verbs it makes the past participle: show, shown; take, taken. As GG said, sometimes a particular sound like s (or n) is a morpheme; sometimes it isn't; it's only a morpheme when it has a meaning.

CJ

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

Jackson6612 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:24:44 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
what would be a meaningless unit then?
In English, k is a meaningless unit of language. lp is a meaningless unit of language. vop is a meaningless unit of language. An English speaker would not be able to assign any meaning to such units. To an English speaker there is nothing in the real world that is referred to by k or lp or vop.

CJ

But in the following definition even s is considered a meaningful unit. What do you say about it?

morpheme
the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The words 'so', 'the' and 'boy' consist of one morpheme. 'Boys' consists of two morphemes, 'boy' and 's'.

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

Maple — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:09:55 GMT

Jackson6612 wrote:
I was wondering that what would be a meaningless unit then?

One can divide a word into any parts he wants, meaningful or meaningless. And when the part (unit) is meaningless, you cannot call it a morpheme.

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For your reference:

morpheme: A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. (copy from American Heritage Dict. )

A morpheme is the carrier a sememe. (My comprehension)

sememe: the meaning expressed by a morpheme. (copy from American Heritage Dict. )

But if you happen to read linguistic essays, you'll probably find that sometimes (if not often) the authors divide an item of the meanings of a word into several smaller sub-meanings, which are also called sememes. (My observation)

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

Jackson6612 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:10:45 GMT

Noori wrote:
Meaningful. To paraphrase, morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language.

I was wondering that what would be a meaningless unit then?

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

Noori — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:10:30 GMT

Meaningful. To paraphrase, morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language.

the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

Jackson6612 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:54:28 GMT

morpheme
the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The words 'so', 'the' and 'boy' consist of one morpheme. 'Boys' consists of two morphemes, 'boy' and 's'.
[LDOCE]

What does meaning mean in the context of the above definition?

Re: native and classical morphemes

Alienvoord — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:23:34 GMT

Grodan Boll wrote:
how can one see if a morpheme is native or classical?

A good dictionary.