Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2

What even is a word? Well… linguists don’t really know! But that’s ok! When linguists want to get super specific, we don’t even talk about words, we talk about morphemes instead. In this episode of Crash Course Linguistics, we’re diving into the topic of morphology and what makes up these things we call words.

Acknowledgements: Daniela Diedrich, William Forshaw, Hannah Gibson, Diane Lillo-Martin

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[Marco_Onyxheart]

I'm rather whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed. Just casually whelmed.

[brinlov]

Video: What is a word?
Linguists: * starts sweating profusely *

[soundlyawake]

I’m just...so happy this series now exists

[challalla]

The majority of linguistics students must know just one triliteral root in Arabic: k-t-b. I swear this is the only example ever used in introductory materials.

[stefanie]

When she said without any problem. I honestly was super surprised! Well done, fellow linguist.
Greetings from Germany

[mrrobinson]

Sign language often gets overlooked when talking about languages, so I really enjoy that this series talks about it :)

[zoeedmiston]

Ambiguity is one of my favorite features of language, it’s what leads to music, art, and poetry.

[Curlzyness]

For the example in Arabic, this is how the words change:
Kataba (he wrote) كَتَبَ
Katabat (she wrote) كَتَبَتْ
Kotoob (books) كُتُب
Kitaab (book) كِتاب
Kaatib (male-writer) كاتِب
Kaatiba (female-writer) كاتِبة
Kottaab (writers) كُتَّاب
Kitaaba (writing) كِتابَة
Mektoob (written) مَكْتوب
Mektaba (library) مَكْتبة
Maktabi (librarian) مَكْتبيّ

All of this from 3 letters ktb ك ت ب or كتب + vowels that sometimes work as normal letters ا و ي and El harakat tashkiliya (i don't know the translation) which are like short vowels and are added on top(or below) a letter: َ short a ا, ِ short i ي, ُ short o ْضمّة damma, ْ stop sokoon.
Then there is a small laying three (3):
ّ shedda or stress.
El hemza, this little ء that is like a glotal stop which is added only to the letter ا to make a َأ or e إِ...

I can go on but my comment will turn into a grammar book. Just to show how Arabic is cool (in a complicated) way.

[afc]

One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way. I wish everybody good luck with opening new doors in their life 🍀

[JonIvy]

My mind was blown just from the untwistable (not twistable) vs untwistable (able to be untwisted).

I'm loving the series so far! Excited to see more. Thanks!

[kennystoneman]

Merriam-Webster has three requirements to add a word to the dictionary:
1) Part of speech (noun, verb, etc.)
2) Clear definition
3) Widespread, sustained use
'Hangry' meets all those requirements, so although it's listed as 'informal', it *is* in there.

[ericBorja]

I love love LOVE that you include signed languages in your teaching. It's so important.

[EonStormcrow]

6:15 reminded me of Robin from Young Justice, "You're overwhelmed. Freeze was underwhelmed. Why isn't anyone just whelmed?"

[jessicadecuir]

It’s interesting how English has so many negative prefixes (anti-, dis-, mis-, just to name a few) and only one commonly used positive prefix, pro-.

[chillsahoy]

My favorite bound root is the one in underwhelmed and overwhelmed. I found it funny that you can find something overwhelming (too much to handle) or underwhelming (unimpressive) which work quite well as opposites. But you can't be merely "whelmed".

[Zanibasa]

Very cool that you're including sign language in your list of examples! Really interested to see how it ties into the different fields!

[marctelfer]

"-ceive" is an example of my favourite kind of bound morphemes, i.e. a cranberry morpheme, where the bound morpheme (in this case "-ceive") doesn't have any independent meaning but is still used in word-formation. Same thing with "-mit", as in "permit", "transmit", etc. where the "-mit" now no longer has any independent meaning, or, the titular "cran-" in "cranberry".

Typically these did used to be morphemes with independent meaning (like "cob" in "cobweb", although some English dialects do still use "cob" to mean spider, but not the "standard" language), but because the independent roots now only survive in compound roots, or because they only came into the language as part of compound root, they lost their independent meaning.

[Aeturnalis]

Wait until you start breaking apart the lexemes of highly agglutinating languages like Finnish lol they get pretty wild

For example: aasiankeisarikalastaja = aasia "Asia" + n (genitive marker) + keisari "kaiser" + kala "fish" + staa (forms verbs meaning "to catch") + ja (forms agent nouns) = Asian king fish catch er = crested kingfisher (bird from Asia). It gets even more complicated with some of the Native American languages that exhibit full polysynthetic constructions where packs of morphemes and lexemes are stacked onto either end of the verb and you end up with entire sentences that are one word. That's actually the part of linguistics I find most interesting.

[maurice]

I'm studying English and I just failed a Linguistics exam that included topics like morphology, so this video helps a lot to understand it!! ☺️

[steevemartial]

I'm glad you decided to make this series.This episode has already exceeded my expectations.