Provides a critical introduction to the central ideas and perennial problems of morphology, fully revised and updated in a new edition

What is Morphology? is a concise, student-friendly introduction to the fundamentals of contemporary morphological theory and practice. Requiring only a basic knowledge of linguistics, this popular textbook describes morphological phenomena and their interactions with phonology, syntax, and semantics while familiarizing students with the importance of linguistic morphology as a subject of research. Each chapter contains engaging examples and student-friendly explanations to support the development of the skills necessary to analyze a wealth of classic morphological problems.

The third edition is fully updated to reflect the current state of the field, featuring a new chapter on morphology's intersections with typology and computational linguistics. Expanded coverage of morphological productivity and processing is supported by additional exercises, examples, and further reading suggestions. Thoroughly revised chapters cover essential topics including morphemes, the lexicon, phonology, inflection, syncretism, and derived lexemes. This accessible textbook:

• Introduces fundamental phenomena with a descriptive theme and minimal theory


• Uses cross-linguistic data to explain and clarify new concepts


• Provides new and revised chapters written by prominent experts in their respective areas


• Includes answers to all exercises via a companion instructor's website

The latest edition of What is Morphology? remains the ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate linguistics students, researchers and scholars unfamiliar with linguistic morphology, and professionals involved in industrial applications of linguistics such as speech recognition, natural language understanding, machine translation, text-to-speech, and natural language generation.

Mark Aronoff is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Stony Brook University, USA. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and previously served as Editor of Language, the Journal of the Linguistic Society of America and as President of the Linguistic Society of America. For Wiley Blackwell he co-edited The Handbook of Linguistics, now in its second edition, with Janie Rees-Miller.

Kirsten Fudeman is former Professor of French at University of Pittsburgh, USA, where she taught medieval French language and literature. She is the author of Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities.

Preface viii

Acknowledgments xiii

Abbreviations xiv

Remarks on Transcription xvii

The International Phonetic Alphabet xix

About the Companion Website xx

1 Thinking about Morphology and Morphological Analysis 1

1.1 What is Morphology? 1

1.2 Morphemes 2

1.3 Morphology in Action 4

1.4 Background and Beliefs 9

1.5 Introduction to Morphological Analysis 11

1.6 Summary 20

Introduction to Kujamaat Jóola 22

2 Words and Lexemes 32

2.1 What is a Word? 33

2.2 Empirical Tests for Wordhood 36

2.3 Types of Words 38

2.4 Inflection vs. Derivation 45

2.5 Two Approaches to Morphology: Item-and-Arrangement, Item-and-Process 47

2.6 The Lexicon 52

2.7 Summary 54

Kujamaat Jóola Noun Classes 55

3 Morphology and Phonology 69

3.1 Allomorphs 70

3.2 Prosodic Morphology 74

3.3 Primary and Secondary Affixes 77

3.4 Linguistic Exaptation, Leveling, and Analogy 81

3.5 Morphophonology and Secret Languages 87

3.6 Summary 89

Kujamaat Jóola Morphophonology 91

4 Derivation and the Lexicon 103

4.1 The Saussurean Sign 103

4.2 Motivation and Compositionality 104

4.3 Derivation and Structure 116

4.4 Lexicalization 122

4.5 Summary 125

Derivation in Kujamaat Jóola 126

5 Derivation and Semantics 131

5.1 The Polysemy Problem 132

5.2 The Semantics of Derived Lexemes 134

5.3 Summary 141

Derivation and Verbs in Kujamaat Jóola 142

6 Inflection 150

6.1 What is Inflection? 152

6.2 Inflection vs. Derivation 160

6.3 Inventory of Inflectional Morphology Types 163

6.4 Syncretism 170

6.5 Typology 171

6.6 Summary 173

Agreement in Kujamaat Jóola 174

7 Morphology and Syntax 187

7.1 Morphological vs. Syntactic Inflection 188

7.2 Structural Constraints on Morphological Inflection 189

7.3 Inflection and Universal Grammar 191

7.4 Grammatical Function Change 193

7.5 Summary 200

Kujamaat Jóola Verb Morphology 201

8 Morphological Productivity and the Mental Lexicon 217

8.1 What is Morphological Productivity? 218

8.2 Productivity and Structure: Negative Prefixes in English 220

8.3 Degrees of Productivity 221

8.4 Salience and Productivity 226

8.5 Testing Productivity 228

8.6 The Mental Lexicon, Psycholinguistics, and Neurolinguistics 235

8.7 Conclusion 240

9 Computational Morphology 246

9.1 Introduction 247

9.2 Early Work 247

9.3 Problem Specification 249

9.4 Knowledge-based Methods 252

9.5 Data-Driven Methods 260

9.6 Hybrid Models 266

9.7 Resources for Computational Morphology 267

Acknowledgments 268

Further Reading 269

Exercises 270

Glossary 274

References 289

Index 299