Mango Languages

Mighty Morphemes

Morphology is the study of the structure of words.

Words can be broken into morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning.

Morphemes can be words; for example giraffe, jump, purple, and quick are all morphemes and also words. However, one word can consist of one or many morphemes. Giraffes, jumped, purplish and quickly are all words but each consists of two morphemes. And, antidisestablishmentarianism is only one word but contains seven morphemes!

A few morphemes like the past tense –ed and plural –s, in English must attach to another morpheme (usually the root word, i.e., jump-ed and giraffe-s). These morphemes are referred to as bound morphemes. Morphemes that are not under this restriction are called free morphemes.

Some languages have a one to one correspondence between word and morpheme. Languages of this type are called isolating languages. For example, Classical Chinese is considered a highly isolating language where each morpheme corresponds to a single syllable and a single character. In contrast to isolating languages, agglutinative languages can form entire sentences by “gluing” affixes to the root word. Turkish is a good example of an agglutinative language. In Turkish, “Cevaplayamadıklarımızdandır” translated, “It must be one of those which we couldn’t answer” has nine morphemes!

What is the word with the highest number of morphemes you can come up with in English?

Poor Linguistics, Always Misunderstood.

The first thing I am asked when I tell people I studied linguistics – aside from “What is that?” – is “So how many languages do you speak?”

Well, one. I could carry on a relatively boring conversation in French if I brushed up on a few grammar points, but that’s not really what they’re asking. What many people don’t understand is that linguistics isn’t about learning to speak multiple languages; it’s about studying the science of language in general. The next question I get after I explain this is, “Okay…like what?”

This is a loaded question.
In keeping with the instruction of Mango’s actual software, I’ll explain a few sub-fields of linguistics in layman’s terms – because what’s the use in explaining it to a non-linguist using linguistic jargon (ling lingo, perhaps)?

Syntax is the way words come together to form sentences. Even something as simple to us as changing a statement (“You are there.”) into a question (“Are you there?”) is actually quite complicated under the surface. Words hop over each other in getting from the meaning of what we say to what we actually utter.

Phonology is the sound system of a language, and how these sounds interact and convey meaning. Have you ever wondered why we don’t pronounce the two t’s in “button”? It sounds more like “buh-in”. That’s because the noise we’re making is actually a sound called a glottal stop – but in English it’s often understood as a “t”.

Morphology is the structure of words. “The structure of words?!” I can imagine you saying. “Words don’t have structure! They’re just…WORDS!” But they do. Words are made up of morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units in language. Think about it – “walk” is different than “walked” because of the –ed. So –ed is a morpheme – it contributes the meaning of the past tense.

Those are just a few of the topics linguists study. If you’re interested in learning more, try looking up semantics, sociolinguistics, cognition, etymology, second-language acquisition, anthropology…the list goes on. And as you can see, linguistics can cross over into studies like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. That’s because language is so important to humans!

So next time you meet a linguist, keep in mind they might speak less languages than you do. And if you still want to know…make it your second question!