20 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
20 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
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---
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tags:
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- Linguistics
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- morphology
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---
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Morphology is the linguistic study of words.
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We can distinguish two meanings of ‘word’:
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* The big notion (lexemes):
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* notion of something we can look up in a dictionary. Lexicographers describe words as **the largest unpredictable combination of form and meaning.** In this context words are *lexemes* or *lexical items* which comprise a *lexicon* (dictionary)
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* The smaller notion (morphemes):
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* morphemes are the **smallest unpredictable combinations of form and meaning**. Linguists call these units morphemes and the study of them is morphology
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For example *RABBIT HOLE* when viewed as a lexeme is a single word. We have used spaces but we could have used a hyphen to separate the words. In German, compound words are simply squashed together with no space. Viewed morphologically, it actually comprises two morphemes *RABBIT* and *HOLE* (which also have several meanings) which together make up a larger morpheme.
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In contrast DEEP and HOLE are both lexemes but DEEPHOLE is not.
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Consider now FALLING. This is a single lexeme yet it comprises two morphemes. In contrast to RABBIT HOLE both morphemes (FALL and ING) are not lexemes (only FALL is) however ING does have a meaning, denoting the duration of a process or some related modification of a verb.
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