TOPIC 3 : MORPHOLGY

                I learned about morphology for topic 3. I always wondered, how was a new word in English was formed before. When our lecturer told us about this topic, I did some research in the internet about morphology.

According to Dr. C. George Boeree, morphology is the study of morphemes, obviously and morphemes are words, word stems, and affixes, basically the unit of language one up from phonemes. For me, morphology is the studied of the word structure and its rules and also how the word was formed. Morpheme is the minimal unit of grammatical function.

During lecture, I learned about two types of morpheme which are bound and free morpheme. Free morphemes are the same as words and they can stand alone. Examples are cold, cuts, dog's, best, needs and smiles. Bound morphemes cannot stand alone and they always have to be attached to another morpheme. Examples are -s as in cuts, dogs, papers, or coops or -ed as in burned and tried.

MORPHEMES
BOUND				FREE
·         Cannot stand alone and they always have to be attached to another morpheme ·         Examples are -s as in cuts, dogs, papers, or coops or -ed as in burned and tried.				·         the same as words and they can stand alone ·         Examples are cold, cuts, dog's, best, needs and smiles
AFFIX			ROOT	OPEN CLASS (CONTENT OR LEXICAL WORDS)	CLOSED CLASS (FUNCTION OR GRAMMATICAL WORDS)
·         A morpheme that comes at the beginning (prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a base morpheme. ·         An affix usually is a morpheme that cannot stand alone ·         Examples: -ful, -ly, -ity, -ness, mis-, un-, etc.			·         A unit of meaning (morpheme) ·         Examples : Cats, Fish	·         Nouns ·         Verbs ·         Adverbs ·         Adjectives	·         Conjunctions ·         Prepositions ·         Articles ·         Pronouns ·         Auxiliary verbs
DERIVATIONAL		INFLECTIONAL
·         Changes the meaning of the word or the part of speech or both. ·         Often create new words. ·         Example: the prefix and derivational morpheme un added to invited changes the meaning of the word.		·         This morpheme can only be a suffix. ·         The s in cats is an inflectional morpheme. ·         An  inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of the word. ·         Example: the d in invited indicates past tense. ·         English has only seven inflectional morphemes:  -s (plural) and -s (possessive) are noun inflections; -s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense), -en (past participle), and -ing ( present participle) are verb inflections;  -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections.
PREFIX	SUFFIX	SUFFIX
·         An affix that comes before a base morpheme. ·         The in in the word inspect is a prefix	·         An affix that comes after a base morpheme. ·         The s in cats is a suffix.	·         An affix that comes after a base morpheme. ·         The s in cats is a suffix.

Source : http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/caneng/morpheme.htm

                I also learned about allomorphs. Allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of morpheme. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, an allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically) without changing meaning. It is used in linguistics to explain the comprehension of variations in sound for a specific morpheme. The Plural morpheme in English has different sound-form for example

1.       Dogs - /dogz/

2.       Cats - /kaets/

3.       Churches - / tʃərtʃəz/

In English, a past tense morpheme is -ed. It occurs in several allomorphs depending on its phonological environment, assimilating voicing of the previous segment or inserting a schwa when following an alveolar stop:

1.       as /əd/ or /ɪd/ in verbs whose stem ends with the alveolar stops /t/ or /d/, such as 'hunted' /hʌntəd/ or 'banded' /bændəd/

2.       as /t/ in verbs whose stem ends with voiceless phonemes other than /t/, such as 'fished' /fɪʃt/

3.       as /d/ in verbs whose stem ends voiced phonemes other than /d/, such as 'buzzed' /bʌzd/

Other types of allomorphs are also the result of lexical conditioning such as:

1.       drink – drunk

2.       run – ran

3.       eat – ate

4.       sing – sang

5.       stand – stood

6.       sleep – slept

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, in morpheme-based morphology, a null allomorph or zero allomorph is a special kind of allomorph which has the form of a null morpheme. Because there are contexts in which the underlying morpheme still appears in the surface structure, a "real" null morpheme could be re-defined as a morpheme which never occurs in the surface representation of words. The phenomenon itself is known as null allomorphy or total morpheme blocking. An example of null allomorphy in English is the phrase two fish-Ø which can also be two fish-es.

For tutorial task 3, we had to prepare language games on word formation. Our group plan a simple games that asked student to form a new word. We showed them a root word such as happy and they added prefix and suffix to the word. The student worked in group and they had to discuss the word. Then, they wrote the word on mini white board. The group that wrote many words and had meaning won the game. The actually can be improved by deducting the marks for the wrong words. I really attracted to Mamora’s group games. The game was simple but fun. The student can build up a new word and they had to think on the sport. Actually word can be formed or expanded by the various morphological processes possible in a language such as affixation, compounding, reduplication, clipping, acronymy and other minor process such as blending, onomatopoeia and antonomasia.

For me, this topic helped me to improve my vocabulary. It prepared me to teach English. As an English teacher, I have to bring dictionary everytime I go to the class. Beside, I also have to know the topic well before I entered the class. If I wanted to use game during lesson, I need to prepare a simple instructions and I also can modified the game during teaching. Actually, word game can attract student t study well.

Topic 2 : Introduction To Phonolgy

                I learned introduction to phonology for topic 2. I already learned on basic phonology during my first year degree. This topic will help me to produce accurate English sounds and I also could explain how sounds are produced in English sound system.

English sound system have many different compared to other language. For example, the word ‘th” can only be found in English. Then, the speech organs used in producing English sounds was not much different from Malay language such as lips and tongue. During the lecture session, it was so funny for us to translate some of the speech organs. Usually people could not produce sounds correctly because of some problems such as teeth. People that did not have any front teeth had difficulty to produce s and f sounds.

During lecture, we have to pronoun all the sounds in English correctly. It is hard for me to pronounce “th” word. When I heard people talked around me, I usually heard that they pronounce “th” as “t’ only. For example, the word three was usually pronounced as tree. I also noticed that I pronounced “love” wrongly.

For tutorial 1 for this topic, we had tongue twister competition. There were 5 groups and each group was represented by 4 people. My group members were Lydia, Mohd Khairizan and Mohd. Khairuddin. It was difficult tasks because we had to pronounce the tongue twister with the same speed and correctly but finally we did it. the competition won by Nazrin’s  group. Our tongue twisters were as below:

1.       I wish to wish the wish you wish to wish but if you wish the wish the witch wishes, I won’t wish the wish you wish to wish.

2.       Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit. Did Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit? If Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit, where’s the buttered biscuit Billy Button bought?

3.       If Freaky Fred found fifty feet of fruit and fed forty feet to his friend Frank, how many feet of fruit did Freaky Fred find

Our next tutorial was on minimal pairs. We had to make sure that we had chosen the correct word and check the symbol at the dictionary. The following is our minimal pairs table:

INITIAL	MEDIAL	FINAL
1.   Park, bark	Simple, symbol	Cop, cob
2.   Sue, zoo	Buses, buzzes	Peace, peas
3.   Kit, bit	Rocker, robber	Tuck, Tub
4.   Train, brain	Later, labour	Nit, nib
5.   Moon, noon	Dimmer, dinner	Loom, loon

INITIAL	MEDIAL	FINAL
1.   /pɑːk/, /bɑːk/	/'sɪmpl/, /'sɪmbl/	/kaːp/, /kaːb/
2.   /su:/, /zu:/	/'bʌsəs/, /'bʌzəs/	/piːs/, /piːz/
3.   /kɪt/, /bɪt/	/'rɒkeə(r)/, /'rɒbeə(r)/	/tʌk/, /tʌb/
4.   /treɪn/, /breɪn/	/'laɪte(r)/, /'laɪbe(r)/	/nɪt/, /nɪb/
5.   /muːn/, /nuːn/	/'dɪmə(r)/, /'dɪnə(r)/	/luːm/, /luːn/

Perhaps that after learned this topic, I will able to produce accurate English sounds.

Topic 1 : Language and Comunication

"Your minor might be English or Bahasa Malaysia," said Mr Khoo during the PISMP briefing. I have to teach English? I could not speak English fluently but I wished to speak correctly and improved grammar before I go to practicum this March. Thank you to God, I learned English for language teacher this year.

For the first topic of this subject, I learned about Language and Comunication. When I read the notes given, I thought that this topic might be boring but my thought was totally wrong. It was such an interesting and fun topic. We used language in our daily life to communicate with others and without language, it is hard to communicate with others. In communication, both sides should understand each language. In Malaysia, there are many languages with different calligraphies and also structures.

During tutorial, I was given a task which asked me to write a sentence and read it in Tamil. What a funny and difficult task. Credit given to Madavan for taught me patiently. I had to practice on writing and pronounce the sentence. I practiced it many times until I can write it. beside Tamil, we also looked at Iban, Chinese, Arab and Jawi language. There are many different in structures and symbols.

During tutorial also, we also discuss how the Malaysian culture affects English in group. There are many factors that affect it. For example is urban and rural setting. We could saw the different between rural and town student. Mostly the town student can speak and write fluently rather than rural area student. The town students are exposed to the technology that could help them in their language. Then, we also wrote a poem and we could choose any language. Through this activity, I could see that language use is creative and not limited.

I also had to call back what I already learned during my second year degree which is about language function. My group did a simple role play. I was attracted on Stefi’s group role play. I could see the language function clearly. They had chosen a role play that relaed to our daily life.

Sometimes, we could not used verbal communication and we have to use non verbal communication. Some of the non verbal communication was easy to understand. I could understand more about non verbal when we were asked to create a mime situation. I was attracted to Mamora’s group activity. They did it clearly and interesting to understand.

Perhaps that all the activity that I did during this topic I can used in my teaching and also in my daily life.