Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - Department of Psychological ...

Professor Greg Francis 8/14/12Word rulesMorphologyPart of linguistics identifiesthe rules for working withwords (morphology) Show this page to apreschoolerThe child will say wugseven though he has neverseen a wug before This implies that there mustbe a rule for pluralizing nounsThe rules of word formationIn many respects English has a verylimited morphology nouns have two forms verbs have four formsduckducksquackquacksquackedquackingPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityMorphologyOther languages have many morevariations Italian and Spanish have 50 forms of each verb classical Greek has 350 forms of each verb Turkish has 2 million forms of each verb some languages build entire sentences aroundone complex verbThere are rules for these formsPurdue UniversityMorphologyEnglish can convey this information in as many waysas other languages, but we use grammatical phrasesto do soSimple present tense General truths: Ducks quack. Habitual action: I quack like a duck when I wake up.Present Perfect Progressive To express duration of an action that began in the past, hascontinued into the present, and may continue into the future:The duck has been quacking for two hours, and he hasntfinished yet.Other languages have different verb forms to indicatethese conditionsPurdue UniversityMorphologySuffixesOn the other hand, English morphologyallows one to easily create new wordsfrom old words add suffixes and prefixesteachteachableteacher unteachable teachablenessEnglish has lots of these derivational suffixes-able-age-al-ate-ed-en-ify-ion-ish-ize-an-ant-ance-ary-er-ful-hood-ic-ism-ist-ity-ive-ness-ory-ous-yExamplesof morphemesYou probably donot consciously knowwhat some of thesemean, but yourlanguage system does.Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 2