Morphology
- LAST REVIEWED: 19 September 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0001
- LAST REVIEWED: 19 September 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0001
Introduction
Morphology, the study of forms, is the branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of complex words. The term was first used in linguistics by August Schleicher in 1859. Linguists distinguish between simple words, such as soon, which have no internal structure apart from sound, and complex words, such as sooner, which can be analyzed into meaningful parts (in this case soon and the English comparative suffix –er). Morphology addresses the latter. The world’s languages differ greatly in the complexity of their morphology. At one extreme, such languages as Vietnamese have very few ways to form complex words, while at the other, languages such as Chukchi (spoken in Siberia) may have very long words, constructed by adding many affixes one after another, that are equivalent in meaning to entire sentences. Languages also differ in the devices that are used to form complex words and the functions that this complexity serves. The study of morphology is one of the oldest branches of linguistics. The oldest known linguistic work, Panini’s grammar of Sanskrit, consisted entirely of morphology, and the classical Greek, Latin, and Semitic grammarians also concerned themselves largely with morphology. In modern-day linguistics, which began in the 19th century, morphology is one of the core areas of grammar, along with phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics.
Foundational Works
The tradition of research and theory in morphology is different from that of many other areas of linguistics in its continuity. Works that were written a century or more ago raised issues that remain relevant to this day. The modern study of linguistic morphology dates to the early 1970s, but the beginnings of linguistic morphology lie much earlier. Important foundational works throughout the past century are still available and are important reading for understanding how the field has evolved. There was a gap in the early period of generative grammar during which morphology was not regarded as a separate field of inquiry. Accordingly, the references below are divided into two distinct subsections surrounding this gap: the Early 20th Century and Late 20th Century.
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Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Athabaskan Languages
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
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- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
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- Honorifics
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- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
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- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
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- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
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- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
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- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Salish Languages
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Visual Word Recognition
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages