Morphology and Tagalog

This chapter discusses terms in Morphology and Tagalog Morphology along with its proper definition. Most of the literature surrounding the topic of Tagalog or Philippine morphology have inconsistent terms and interchanged definitions.

Morphology

When it comes to studying natural language or linguistics, morphology is the study of the form and structure of words (Aronoff, 2005). Morphology involves studying how words are formed and their internal structure.

Morphemes

A morpheme is the smallest piece in a language that has a grammatical function such as root words (e.g. "dog") and affixes (e.g. "-s") and is an important term in morphology and systems that analyze morphology. It is considered the smallest, in a sense, that a morpheme cannot anymore be broken down as the divided parts do not serve any grammatical purpose. A morpheme with a same meaning and function can also have varying pronunciation or spelling such as the suffix /-ed/ in fished and spotted wherein both words used /-ed/ to signify past tense but are pronounced differently. These variations of morphemes are called allomorphs or variants bad are common in languages such as English and are usually dictated by the ends of a base word. As with the previous example, variations of the suffix /-ed/ are dictated by the last letter of the base words "fish" and "spot". Morphemes can be classified into two, namely: free morphemes and bound morphemes. On one hand, free morphemes are morphemes that have its own unique meaning that is syntactically correct. An example of a free morpheme would be the entire set of root words of a language that can be used without modification. On the other hand, bound morphemes are morphemes that require being attached to a free morpheme. Bound morphemes are attached to a free morpheme to convey ideas such as timed action, plurality, occupation, comparative degree, and so on. Examples of bound morphemes are the suffixes /-er/, /-s/, and /-ing/.

Base, Root, and Stem

Words are made up of derivational affixes, inflectional affixes, and the word forms wherein these affixes are attached to (DeArmond, 2004). These word forms can be referred to as roots, bases, or stems. A word form can only be considered as a root word if there are no other morpholigical reductions, such as removing affixes, can be done to arrive at its most basic definition such as in the Tagalog word takbo (v. 'run') wherein takbo can no longer be reduced further because there are no present affixes. When an affix is attached to a root word, that root word can now be called base word. A base form of is any form of word that can have affixes of any kind attached to it. Using the definition of what a base word or form is, a root word or a word stem can also be considered as a base form. Given the word takbuhan (n. 'a run'), /-han/ is the affix attached to the base word takbo which is also a root word. Takbuhan can also be considered a base form for the word magtakbuhan (v. 'to run a race'). A stem is similar to a base form except a stem is only concerned with dealing with inflectional morphology. In the word tumakbo (v. 'ran'), the infix /-um-/ was added to modify the stem takbo's tense.

A stem is the base morpheme where other morphemes are attached to. Given the Tagalog word "pabalikin" and broken down into /pa-/, /balik/, and /-in/, "balik" is called a stem wherein the affixes /pa-/ and /-in/ are attached to. Stems are usually concerned only with inflected words in the case a compound word is present.

Classes of Morphology

1. Inflectional - Where affixes and other morphological changes are applied to a word in order to modify the root word's tense, case, plurality, or voice. A word "tapos" ("finish can have its tense modified into past-tense by adding /na-/_ as a prefix and forming the word "natapos".
2. Derivational - Where affixes and other morphological changes are applied to a word in order to change its syntactic category from which the root belongs. An affix such as /taga-/ can transform "tapos" into "taga-tapos".
3. Compounding - Where two entirely different words (which have no syntactic similarity) are concatenated to form an entirely new word with its own meaning.

Adding Morphemes

Types of Affixes

Circumfixation

• Tagalog Circumfixation
  • ex: pinag + kain + an = pinagkainan (a place / object that was used to eat food)
  • When an independent prefix and an independent suffix are added to the stem to transform/modify the original meaning of the root word.
    • These affixes are not dependent on one another (exp. pinag + kain and kain+an are both valid inflected words).
• Indonesian (Malay) Circumfixation
  • "ke+ <stem> +an"
    • appended to an adjective to form nouns that mean "the state of/quality of/measure of <adjective>"
      • kebaratan = westness
  • Indonesian/Malay circumfixation are to be treated like parenthesis such that "ke" + adj (e.g. kebarat) is not considered a valid inflected wird without the +an (or vice versa).

Special References:

Bauer, Laurie (1983:20-21): English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aronoff (2005), What is morphology.

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology - Department of Linguistics. (2008) Source: https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php with PDF Version

DeArmond, Richard (2004). Roots, Bases, and Stem. Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University. Retrieved from: http://www.sfu.ca/person/dearmond/323/323 /323-Roots-Bases-Stems.fm6.pdf PDF Version