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Chapter 4 - Dissembling words

Morphological typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Edith A. Moravcsik
Edith A. Moravcsik
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

Chapter outline

The chapter discusses morphological patterns that are either very rare or very frequent across languages. Crosslinguistic generalizations regarding the forms, meanings, co-occurrence patterns, and orderings of morphemes will be presented, followed by a discussion of the crosslinguistic validity of some of the key terms of morphological typology,

Introduction

In Chapter 3, we discussed how words come together to form sentences. In the present chapter, we will take the reverse view: how morphemes are joined to form words. Examples of words composed of smaller meaningful units were already given in Chapter 2, but in what follows, we will take a more systematic view of morphological composition. The basic question is: what combinations of morphemes make well-formed words in various languages?

The best way to begin to answer this question is by considering ill-formed words and identifying the sources of their failures. In (1), examples of English words that miss the mark are given with the correct forms on the right.

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Introducing Language Typology , pp. 109 - 148
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • Dissembling words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.006
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  • Dissembling words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dissembling words
  • Edith A. Moravcsik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Book: Introducing Language Typology
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978876.006
Available formats
×