The Grammar of Words An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology

by Booij, Geert

• ISBN13: 9780199258475
• ISBN10: 0199258473
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This text provides an up-to-date introduction to the morphological analysis of words. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words and how this structure affects their phonological, syntactic and semantic properties. This book covers both inflection (the different forms of a word), and word formation, the ways in which new words can be added to the vocabulary of a language. The enormous variety of morphological operations that we find in natural languages is quite intriguing. The first part of the book gives a cross-linguistic survey of these operations: affixation, compounding, reduplication, and several kinds of phonological operation. The specific properties of word formation and inflection are dealt with in subsequent chapters. The second part of the book focuses on the ways in which the morphological structure of words determines their phonological, syntactic, and semantic properties. These different 'interfaces' are dealt with systematically, again with illustrations from a number of languages. In the last part of the book the reader is introduced to present-day research on the acquisition of morphological knowledge, and on the way in which complex words are processed. This will give insight as to how lexical knowledge is structured and how it is stored in memory.

Author Biography

Geert Booij is Professor of General Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He is also Chairman of the Dutch Research Council for the Humanities and a Consulting Editor for several journals. His books include The Phonology of Dutch, Morphology: An International Handbook of Inflection and Word Formation, and The Morphology of Dutch.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Typographic conventions	viii
Abbreviations and symbols	ix
List of figures	xii
List of tables	xiii
What is Linguistic Morphology?	1	(48)
Morphology: basic notions	3	(24)
Morphological analysis	27	(22)
Word-Formation	49	(48)
Derivation	51	(24)
Compounding	75	(22)
Inflection	97	(54)
Inflection	99	(26)
Inflectional systems	125	(26)
Interfaces	151	(78)
The interface between morphology and phonology	153	(32)
Morphology and syntax: demarcation and interaction	185	(22)
Morphology and semantics	207	(22)
Morphology and Mind	229	(50)
Morphology and psycholinguistics	231	(24)
Morphology and language change	255	(24)
Answers to questions	279	(11)
References	290	(13)
Language index	303	(1)
Index of terms	304