ENG509 Short Notes

Important Note

Every person has his own mentality to conclude any matter. Every person has his own opinion according to his own perception. Here I am going to post some of my experiences regarding VU syllabus for MA ELT because I observed a lot of discrepancies which should be remedied .The handouts of MA ELT are not sufficient to hold a master level knowledge. There is no doubt that most of the lectures are elaborated in video lessons but books have no match. Firstly, there should be proper books of each syllabus. Secondly, if we consider handouts, than handouts are always in bullet form and do not provide explanation. In master classes, due to shortage of time and due to a lengthy syllabus, a skimming technique is applied because main pointes mostly slipped after some period while in video lectures it is not possible. Due to non availability of books we are facing lot of problems. In VU content library there is a multitude of books for additional study material and each book contains more than 500 pages. Firstly many students can’t afford to purchase these books secondly study is impossible if book is in softcopy.

In context to above paragraph, all students are requested to post their proper comments when asked by VU as after exams. Place your solid argument that handouts should be revised and in elaborated form until books are not published from VU.

Notes are always a shortcut to pass the exam but it is not a proper solution to get a degree. All students are requested to go through the handouts and lectures. These notes are only for extreme cases when time is too short or for revising some important points before appearing for paper. Most of the questions were elaborated by taking help from different resources yet some are still copy paste because if original text is totally excluded so student may miss some MCQs. Due to shortage of time I have no time to revise it for vetting or proof study to be errorless. All students are requested that if they found any material suspicious they are to check at their own and also inform to other students to amend it.

Regards

SAJID IQBAL KHAN MA English (UOS) Q Define the term Morphology. The term morphology was first coined by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749– 1832). It is derived from Greek: morphmeans ‘shape, form’, Morphology is the study of form or forms. In linguistics “morphology refers to The mental system involved in word formation Or Branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed.

According to Fabregas& Scalise (2012): Morphology is the part of linguistics that studies grammatical properties of words and how words relate to each other in a language.

Q What are morphemes?

In English grammar and morphology, a morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word such as dog, or a word element, such as the -s at the end of dogs, that can't be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaningin a language. They are commonly classified as either free morphemes, which can occur as separate words or bound morphemes, which can't stand alone as words. Many words in English are made up of a single free morpheme. For example, each word in the following sentence is a distinct morpheme: "I need to go now, but you can stay." Put another way, none of the nine words in that sentence can be divided into smaller parts that are also meaningful. Other definitions. ✓ The smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical function ✓ A morpheme may consist of a word, such as hand ✓ A meaningful piece of a word, such as the -ed of looked ✓ A pairing between sound and meaning

Q Define morph. In linguistics, a morph is a word segment that represents one morpheme (the smallest unit of language that has meaning) in sound or writing. It's a written or pronounced portion of a word, such as an affix (a prefix or suffix). For example, the word infamous is made up of three morphs—in-, fam(e), -eous—each of which represents one morpheme. The word has two affixes, both a prefix (in-) and a suffix (-eous) attached to a root word.

Q What is stem?

‘A stem is a base unit to which another morphological piece is attached.

Q What is Root?

A root is like a stem in constituting the core of the word to which other pieces attach, but the term refers only to morphologically simple units. For example, disagree is the stem of disagreement,. Disagree: agree is both the stem the root of the entire word.

Q What are Affixes?

An affix is a morpheme that is attached before, after or within to a word stem to form a new word. Affix is a grammatical part that is combined with a word, stem, or phrase to create copied and modified forms. Most English words are made up of the base word known as root which contains the heart of the meaning of the word. The affix added at the beginning of the root is known as prefix while that at the end of a word is suffix. The process of attaching these affixes is referred to as affixation.

Q What are the Kinds of Affixes?

Affixes are divided into many categories, depending on the position, while Prefix and suffix are extremely common terms. The other terms are uncommon. Such as:

1. Prefix - occurs at the beginning of a root. Ex: Unhappy
2. Suffix - occurs at the end of a root. Ex: Happiness
3. Infix - occurs inside a root
4. Circumfix - occurs in two parts on both outer edges of a root.
5. Simulfix - replaces one or more phonemes in the root. Ex: Man + plural = Men, Tooth becomes Teeth, Eat becomes Ate.
6. Suprafix - Overlap on one or more syllables in the root as a supra-segmental. Ex: stress in the words produce, noun and pro'duce, verb.

Q What are novel words (Morphology in Action)?

If something is so new and original that it's never been seen, used or even thought of before, call it novel. Whereas new is a Germanic word coming from Old English, novel is based on Latin novellus "new, young, fresh." Novel words and word play All human beings have this capacity for generating and understanding novel words. Sometimes someone creates an entirely new word, as J. R. R. Tolkien ‘hobbit’. But more often than not, we build new words from pre-existing pieces, as with unbreak and uncry, or as with hobbitish and hobbit-like, built by adding suffixes to the stem hobbit. We could easily go on to create more words on these patterns. Novel words are all around us.

Q What are the some of our foundational beliefs about linguistics and linguistic methodology? (Background & Beliefs) First, we believe that languages differ from one another. Second, that language, which we can write with a small l, is different from Language; with a capital L. Individual languages have features that are not characteristic of Language in general. Linguists need to pay equal attention to both small-l language and capital-L Language. Morphology is a distinct component of languages or grammars. We also have something that pertains to methodology. The first is that we should take an attitude of skeptical realism. Albert Einstein said that a physicist must be both a realist and a nominalist. Our other methodological belief can be summed up as a motto: anything goes ( Paul Feyerabend, a twentieth-century philosopher ).

Q What is Morphological Analysis?

Morphological Analysis (MA) can also be referred to as ‘problem solving’. It is visually recorded in a morphological overview, often called a ‘Morphological Chart’. The method was developed in the 1960s by Fritz Zwicky, an astronomer from Switzerland.