LINGUIS 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Quality Of Life, Doghouse, Washing Machine
Document Summary
Reading: chapter 5: morphology = the structure of words. The morpheme : the smallest unit of meaning. The linguistic sign (ferdinand de saussure), a kind of sign: the abstract link that connects sound and idea (p. 21 of textbook) The linguistic sign is arbitrary: a rose by any other name would still be a rose! Canine" should be expressed as [d g], any more than as [pero], [kane], [h nt] etc. Question: can you think of any sound-meaning relationships that are not arbitrary: words can differ in whether they are Question: how many morphemes are there in antidisestablishmentarianism? existing vs. possible vs. impossible (recall: attested, well-formed) simple vs. complex ( monomorphemic vs. polymorphemic : dog-s, cat-s, bush-es = complex, two morphemes. The most common type of morphemes are roots and affixes (prefixes, suffixes) dog, cat bush = simple, one morpheme adjectives: big, small, good, bad, black, white, old, new, etc.
