The Morpheme An Approach To Its Meaning And Function

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: English Morphology, language: English, abstract: When studying linguistics, students are confronted with a high degree of terminology right on from the beginning of their studies. One might assume that understanding it should not really be a problem if one considers a standard dictionary or inquires other scholars in order to find an answer to one’s lack of knowledge. However, in some cases it is simply not that easy. In the following we will take a look at the notion of the morpheme. The problem is that several different definitions exist and scholars have to be 100% aware of the meaning when confronted with linguistic literature. The Oxford Concise English Dictionary (OCED) claims the morpheme to be: “A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided” (OCED 1999:926) But is this a sufficient definition of the term? Are morphemes really always meaningful units? In order to understand the different opinions scholars have when referring to the morpheme, one has to have a good look at their different point of views of the field of morphology. Some scholars consider a morpheme-based approach to be the correct way of dealing with morphemes, in which they either emphasize meaning or grammatical function of morphemes, whereas others rather identify themselves with the word-form based approach, by which they entirely reject the significance of morphemes for the meaning of the sign, while concentrating on word-forms. In the following we will take a closer look at several definitions of themorpheme,established by scholars of different diachronical environments in order to find a solution to this problem and a more or less concrete definition. In the second part, the importance of the morpheme with reference to the concept of allomorphy will be examined to understand how they function and how they are realized.

Text readability is at the core of successful reading instruction and language learning. To counteract the challenges of complex reading content, text leveling is a vital necessity for readers with limited language access. A transdisciplinary analysis of reading development and linguistic interrelations builds the theoretical foundation of the base-1 method. This method focuses solely on structural and functional text elements on the word, sentence and cohesion level. But this book also discusses the significance of other prevalent readability factors, such as the reader ́s language knowledge or socio-cultural background. The base-1 method is designed to level early reading texts in German and other alphabetic languages. Experimental tests with a German immersion population has led to a preliminary calibration to demonstrate the validity of this approach. Bernd Nuss ist erfahrener Immersionslehrer in verschiedenen Programmen, die sich über Nord-, Zentral- und Südamerika erstrecken. An der E. E. Waddell Language Academy wirkt er schulintern als Immersion Facilitator, kooperiert mit Bildungsorganisationen und betreut die Praktika von Gaststudierenden an der Schule. Bernd Nuss has worked as an educator and facilitator in English and German language immersion programs all over the Americas and in Europe. In this capacity, he has also been collaborating as a researcher with universities and other educational institutions in Europe, Asia, and the USA.

This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.

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