Study of Words

Lewis Gebhardt is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, USA. As well as teaching morphology for the past decade, his main research interests are syntax, morphology and semantics.

'The Study of Words is an excellent introduction to the field of Morphology. Specifically designed for students with little or no background in linguistics, it is clear and concise in its prose while providing a wide array of examples from a diverse range of languages.'John Boyle, California State University, Fresno, USA'Using a wide array of examples from English and diverse languages around the world, Professor Gebhardt lures the reader into an understanding of major principles of morphology as related to other areas of linguistics. Recommended as an introductory textbook or general resource.'Fred E. Anderson, Professor Emeritus, Kansai University, Japan

• ContentsAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsGlossary of Terms1 Introduction 1.1 Preliminaries 1.2 Words and Grammar and What We Know About Them 1.3 Knowledge of Language 1.4 Spelling Conventions and the International Phonetic Alphabet 1.5 Presentation of Language Data 1.6 Summary 1.7 Exercises 1.8 Arguable Answers to Exercises2 The Lexicon 2.1 Preliminaries 2.2 Morphemes and the Lexicon 2.3 Kinds of Morphemes2.3.1 Free and Bound 2.3.2 Lexical and Functional 2.3.3 Productive and Nonproductive Morphemes2.3.4 Roots, Stems and Affixes 2.3.5 A Few Other Kinds of Morphemes 2.4 Summary2.5 Exercises 2.6 Arguable Answers to Exercises3 Words: What They Are and Where They Come From 3.1 Preliminaries3.2 What’s a Word? 3.3 So, How Many Words? 3.4 Source of the Lexicon 3.4.1 Early and Later Acquisition 3.4.2 Transmission Across Generations 3.5 What’s in the Lexicon? 3.6 Summary 3.7 Exercises3.8 Arguable Answers to Exercises 4 Inflectional Morphology 4.1 Preliminaries 4.2 Formation of Wordforms4.3 Noun Inflections 4.3.1 Number 4.3.2 Gender4.3.3 Definiteness/Indefiniteness4.3.4 Case 4.3.5 Pronouns 4.3.6 Portmanteau Inflections4.3.7 Nonconcatenative Inflection4.4 Verb Inflections 4.4.1 Agreement 4.4.2 A Few Other Verbal Affixes 4.5 Crosslinguistic Generalizations in Inflectional Morphology 4.6 Summary4.7 Exercises4.8 Arguable Answers to Exercises5 Derivation5.1 Preliminaries5.2 Creating Lexemes With Affixes: Case Study With -ness5.3 Derivational Affixes5.3.1 Zero Derivation 5.3.2 Other Kinds of Derivation 5.3.3 Iterative Derivation 5.3.4 Derivation in Other Languages5.4 Compounds5.4.1 Compound or Phrase 5.5 Incorporation 5.6 Putting Together Derivation and Inflection 5.7 Derivation v. Inflection 5.8 Clitics5.9 Summary 5.10 Exercises 5.11 Arguable Answers to Exercises 6 Final Comments BibliographyIndex