Morphology

Abstract

The words manly, and virile, are both stressed on the first syllable. The noun manliness, retains the stress on the first syllable but in the noun virility, a Latinate as opposed to Germanic word, the stress moves to the second syllable. The possessive form of the lexeme wife, is pronounced /waifs/ while the plural form is pronounced /waivz/. Here we have just two examples of the relationship between phonology on the one hand and the composition of words on the other. Just as there may be arbitrary boundaries between semantic ranges, so, too, ordering knowledge may require us to impose divisions across linkages. Having said that, I shall in this chapter study the composition of words under the usual heading of morphology.