Monday 14 April 2014

OLL 223. MORPHOLGY{ LINGUISTICS } --THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA---- BY. MWL. JAPHET MASATU.

MORPHOLOGY{LINGUISTICS }.

INTRODUCTION.
Morphology is a way of studying language (linguistics). It is about the way words are put together, their internal structure.[1]
Words are accepted as being the smallest units of a sentence (syntax). It is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers know that the words dog, dogs, and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers simply know these relations from their personal experience (tacit knowledge) of the rules of word formation in English. They simply know that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats. They know that dog is to dog-catcher as dish is to dishwasher. These rules come from specific patterns in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units work together in speech. Morphology is the part of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages. Morphology tries to formulate rules that show the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.

Footnotes

  1. Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology