Morphology is the study of how words are constructed, just as syntax is the study of how sentences are constructed. Morphology has an obvious connection to phonology, since words are made up of phonemes as well as of morphemes, and the phonological shape of a morpheme may depend on its phonological environment; it also has a connection to syntax, since the internal structure of a word may depend in part on its syntactic environment; and it has a connection to semantics, since the meaning of a complex word is a function (sometimes a very interesting function) of the meanings of its parts. This course has two main goals: (i) to provide an introduction to some of the basic theoretical problems in morphology, and (ii) to go through a series of problems in order to see morphological processes at work and develop the ability to do morphological analysis. For a term project, each student will adopt a language and be responsible for developing a morphological description of it. The work will consist of a number of analytical problems, some readings, and a term paper on the morphology of some language.
Prerequisites: Syntax 1 (Ling 52) or Syntactic Structures (Ling 55); Phonology 1 (Ling 101)
General Education Code: none
Return to Jaye Padgett's Teaching.
Last modified December 23, 2008.