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English Structures

Morphology

Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Moodle TESL 551: Crowley   Houts-Smith
 

 

 

 

 
Word Analysis & Affixation

Let’s describe and analyze the structure of these English words:

Hospital
Hospitalize
Hospitals
Hospitalizes
  • hospital - simple word, free morpheme, root base
  • hospitals = root + -s affix
  • hospitalize - complex word, free base hospital (root) + -ize derivational suffix
  • hospitalizes = stem [hospital (root) + -ize affix] + -s
This analysis shows that words are not formed all at once. There seems to be an order that is followed. To capture the step-by-step process of word formation, linguists have developed methods of diagramming. One method is labeled bracketing; the other method involves tree structures.

Labeled Bracketing uses square brackets with labels in subscript. An example here is the word unkind:
[A [Af un] [A kind]]

  • The label A means adjective.
  • The label Af means affix.
  • So this shows that the affix un- attaches to an adjective, kind, to make a new adjective.
Look at this example of a word with a suffix

[A [N home] [Afly]]

This shows that an affix, –ly, attaches to a noun, home, to make a new adjective.

Activity: Labled Bracketing

Now you try making labeled brackets for the words below. Write them out on a sheet of paper, using the form and structure above to analyze each word.
Teacher
Civility
Incredible

Here's what you should have written.

Now let’s analyze rehospitalizes with labeled brackets:

[V [Af re] [V [V [N hospital] [Af ize]] [Af s]]]

That’s incredibly helpful, isn’t it?

And so Tree Structure Diagrams were invented.
They look like this:
unkind tree

Notice the labels in trees are the same as the labels in bracketing. Labels are placed at the nodes of the trees.

Activity: Tree Structures

Trees can be drawn from the top-down or from the bottom-up.

Using the top down method: start with the base word label, in this case A for adjective, then split off each major division. In this case there is just one affix, Af, and an adjective, A. Once the parts are labeled, the word parts can be filled in underneath.

Using the bottom up method: start with the word written out with spaces between each morpheme. "Branch" up and label each part. In this case, Af and A. Then join the two parts together by drawing connecting lines. Finally label the top node to show the syntactic category of the whole word.

Now try making tree diagrams of these words.

Homely
Teacher
Civility
Incredible

Once you have tried it, here are examples of the tree diagrams.

Now try rehospitalizes.
After you've attempted it, click here for Solution.
Both approaches to diagramming are challenging for novices, but once one becomes familiar with the processes, one can see the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.
  • Tree Structures are better able to show the ordering process in word formation than labeled bracketing, but they require a lot of space on the page.
  • Labeled bracketing is useful for slightly complex words, but not for very complex words.

One note about the way I have drawn trees compared to the way the book draws them:

I include the labels at the nodes, but the book does not. I want you to include the labels to show that you can identify affixes from other word elements. Another way to draw trees is to bring all the branches (lines) down to the same level. This allows you to see the final whole word on one horizontal line. Like this:
 
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