UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM
PARTICIPANTS
NO.
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NAME
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REG NO
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PROGRAM
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SIGN
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1
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MBAYOKI HEZRON JAPHET
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2016-04-01273
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BAED
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2
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AUDAX AVITUS
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2016-04-00858
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BAED
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3
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MISONJE REVANIA
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2016-04-01291
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BAED
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4
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ALLY AMRI JUMA
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2016-04-01354
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BAED
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5
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DALAMA LOYCE
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2016-04-01593
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BAED
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6
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RUMOLI ELIAS EUSTACE
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2016-04-01583
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BAED
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7
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PHILBERT FAUSTA, K
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2016-04-01515
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BAED
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8
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SELEIMAN BENJAMIN
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2016-04-01192
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BAED
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With examples from various languages
briefly what do you understand by the following morphological concepts.
Word, Lexeme, Allomorph, case, mood,
aspect, root, stem, base and stem extender.
Morphology refers to the study of
internal structure of word (Katamba1993). This means that word structure can be
studied by using the concept of morphology as the branch of linguistics.
According to Yule, G. (2010),
morphology is the branch of linguistics which deals with the study of internal
structure of words. In morphology we study the morphemes as the constituents of
the word structure.
Morphology examines meaning
relationship between words and looks at how grammatical relationships between
words are marked. Example meaning relationship is swim-swimmer and grammatical
relationship is think, thinks, thoughts. From the concept of morphology it is
better to understand that the most basic morphological concept is the word.
Thus, morphology studies the
structure and functions of unit in the language system. These units can be
meaningful or they can carry grammatical functions. For stance play and plays,
so “-s” shows grammatical form of tense but play is a meaningful unit.
The following below are the
morphological concepts which are used in the concept of morphology as;
Word is a single distinct
meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (sometime alone) to
form a sentence and is shown with a space on either side when written or
printed(English Oxford Living Dictionary 2018). Examples of words used alone in
various languages are like;
English Swahili Sukuma Fipa Ha
Come njoo nzugu nguna ingo
Sing imba imbaga lunda lilimba
Farm shamba ngunda kuvyaloumulima
Examples of words used with
others to form sentences in various languages are like;
English; I prefer language
subject
Swahili; Napendeleamasomo ya
lugha
Sukuma; Natogilwemasomoga lugha
According to Bloomfield quoted by
Katamba (1993), word is a minimum free form, means that word is the smallest
meaningful linguistic unit that can be used on its own. It is a form that
cannot be divided into any smaller units that can be used independently to
convey meaning. Foristance “child” is a word, we cannot divide it up into
smaller units that can convey meaning when they stand alone, contrast with the
word “childish” which can be divided into “child- and –ish”, here childish is a
word because it provide meaning while –ish is not a word because does not
provide meaning rather is attached to other word. But according to Oxford
English Dictionary “-ish” means something like having the qualities of; this
childish means having qualities of child. For stance in various languages this
can be proved as;
English Swahili Sukuma Haya Masai Ha
Child mtoto ng’wana omwana engerai umwana
Childish utoto bhunegene obwana engeraie ubwana
Therefore words are divided into
major word classes and minor word classes, major word classes include nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Minor word classes have grammatical meaning,
they are functional words sometimes they are called closed word classes whereby
no new words are introduced in. foristance of minor or minor parts of speech in
language. Foristance minor parts of speech in English are preposition auxiliaries,
pronouns, determines, conjunctions, complementizers, article, infinitival to
and others.
The lexeme is to be understood as
an abstract grammatical unit. The term lexeme can be clearly defined as an
abstract morphological unit in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of
forms taken by a single word. Forexample the word forms of run, runs, running,
ran are forms of the same lexeme RUN.
According to Leskowski (2008),
the term lexeme defined as maximal set of lexeme (grammatical words) which fulfills
the following major conditions. First the identity of lexemic meaning, second two
or more lexes (grammatical words which belong to the same lexeme with the same
lexical meaning. The only possible distinction between them is the distinction
of their inflection and lexeme indicated by using capital letters.
The lexeme sometimes can be
defined as a word or key word in the dictionary, is the word that exist in
dictionary before using it in a sentence or other syntactical element, when
lexeme used in a certain syntactical content it become a word form. Forexample;
Verb form tenses
Run runs, ran, running
From that example, the words runs,
ran, running are word forms of the same lexeme RUN. Other examples are from
Kijita as;
Present tense Past tense Future
tense
Abhilima(running) abhilimile (run) kajokubhilima.
These words which are verb form
belong to the same lexeme KUBILIMA (RUN).The important things to note here is
that, lexeme denote the more abstract when is in dictionary which can be
occurred in different inflectional forms according to the syntactical rules
involves in the generation of sentences. It is lexical unit and is entered in
dictionaries as the fundamental element in the lexicon of language.
Another morphological concept is
allomorph. Allomorphs aremorphs which realize the same morpheme or refer to
different realization of same morpheme. Morph is any physical form that
represent a morpheme for example –ish, -less, -er, re-, ex- and un-.Morphological
analysis begins with the identification of morphs, which is a form that carries
some meaning or associated with some grammatical function.
Example; The infinite article has
more than one allomorph in English which are ‘a’ and ‘an’ whereby ‘a’ is used
in words which start with consonant sounds and “an” is used in words start with
vowel sounds like in the following words an egg, an apple, an axe, a cat and a
bullet.




Case is another morphological
concept which refers to the grammatical analysis thatare attached to the noun
in order to mark different grammatical function. The number of cases differs
from one language to another. Example there are languages with two cases like
Esperanto, four cases like Germanic and Icelandic, six cases like Turkish, Latin
and Russia, seven cases like American, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian,
eight cases like Hungarian. English has largely lost its case system, although personal
pronoun still have three cases, that are simplified from the nominative,
accusative and genitive cases that are used with personal pronouns like;
Subjective case objective
case possessive
case
I kicked the ball John kicked
me John’s car
Latin language sentence
Canis hominem mordet – Dog bites
man
Canem homo mordet – man bites dog
It illustrates that different
case ending express different function form of noun in Latin language. Japanese
language in the following sentence case is indicated by the case markers “ga”,
“ni” and “o” like;
Rumoliga Mary nihon O Yatta.
(Rumoli gave Mary a book)
Rumoli - Nominative
Mary- Dative case
Yatta-Accusative.
Therefore, there are different
numbers of cases between languages but the mostly common encounter cases are
nominative, accusative, dative and genitive cases.
Also another morphological
concept is mood. Mood refers to a verb category which indicates how a speaker
feels about what is being said. There are various types of mood including;
Indicative mood, Imperative mood, Subjunctive mood, Conditional mood and
Infinitive mood
Indicative mood express
statements of fact like stating fact, asks a fact and denying a fact. For
exampleJuma is a boy; cat is not an insect, JumaniMvulana “in Swahili”.
Imperative mood is used in giving
commands or instructions in writing sentence with zerosubjects.Example; Tell
him to come!Shut up! And bring me some chalks!
Also subjunctive mood is used to
show something hypothetical or contrary to fact. It might be a wish, a desire,
doubt or an imaginary situation. Example, I wish school were over. A
subjunctive verb form is made from third person present singular without “s”
ending. The sameform used whether the context is past or present. Example,I
suggest he wait till Monday
In most formal English
constructions, the subjunctive is formed with the word “that” and with verbs
such as; suggest, demand, insist, recommend and others, in expressing demand or
recommendation.
Example, It was suggest that
there will be no school the next day
They
demanded that the Prime Minister resign immediately
Subjunctive is often used in
clauses beginning with “if” or “I wish”.
Example, If I were you I wouldn’t
have been born in Tanzania
I wish I were your father.
Something to note about subjunctive
mood is that, the subjunctive mood of the verb “to be” is be in present tense
and “were” in the past tense regardless of what the subject is.
Also conditional mood shows under
what condition something might happen. Conditional mood uses the following
modal verbs to show under what conditions something might happen; “could”,
“might”, “should” and “would”.
Example, I might be able to rich
him if I call his phone
She could pass the exam is she
put some more efforts.
Finally infinitive mood express
an action or state without reference to any subject. Infinitive forms are not the
fully functioning verb.When we speak of the English infinitive, we usually mean
the basic form of the verb with “to” in front like “to sing”, “to read”, “to
cry”.
Example, He likes to read novels
They love to sing
I like to stay alone.
In Swahili language subjunctive
mood is marked in past tense and future tense using affixes such as ‘-nge-,
-ngali-, -ngeli- (in past tense) and –ki-’ (in future tense).
Example, Angekujaangemkuta
Angalisomaangalifaulu
Angelikwendaangelimkuta
Example of future tense
subjunctive –ki-
Akijaatamkuta
Akimfuataatapatahela
Moreover aspect must also be
considered in morphology but it is better to make clear that Speakers of any
language convey a large amount of information about situation and time. They
can represent a given action as ongoing or as completed. They can represent it
as having taken place once or as being repeated or as being habit. We can
locate a situation in past, present or future time.
Whether a situation is going on
or completed, repeated or habitual comes under the heading of “Aspect”.
According to Sidney G &
Nelson G Aspect is a grammatical category referring to the way that the time of
a situation is viewed by the speaker or writer. In English language there are
two aspects. These are the perfective aspect and the progressive aspect.
The Perfective Aspect of a verb
combines a form of the auxilliary have with the “ed” participle of that verb.
The auxiliary has two present form has/have and one past form “had”. Forexample
the present perfect of close is “has closed” or “have closed’ and the past
perfect is “had closed” in Swahili language. Present perfect is expressed by using
“me” example; Amelima, means he/she has cultivated, amecheka means he/she has
laughed andwamelia means they have cried.
The progressive aspect, this
indicates that situation is in progress, it may therefore also imply that it
lasts for only a limited period and that is not ended.
Example, I was reading a novel
last night
They were playing football last
Sunday
You were sleeping in the morning
In Swahili language progressive
aspect is expressed using “Na”
Examples; Analima (He/she is
cultivating)
Wanaimba (They are singing)
Anacheka (He/she is laughing).
Root refers to the one among the
elements of the internal structure of the word which forms the core of the
word.It is the unit to which other morphemes may be added, it is also what
remains when all affixes are pilled away. All roots belong to one of the
lexical categories like Noun, Verb, Adverb, and Adjective. Example, Nouns like Bell,
child and Adjectives like Big, black. The vast majority of root morphemes are
capable of appealing on their own and these called content words.We also have
many morphemes which are always kept in bondage. These are the bound morphemes.
This leads to the formation of bound roots.
Example loc - place tox
– in
loc – al tox – ic
loc-al-ity non-tox-ic
disloc-ate
loc-um
In Swahili language free roots
are like mama, baba, and safari but bound roots from other verb categories like
verbs; pig-piga, lim-lima, chez-cheza.
Another morphological concept is
base, therefore any form to which affixes are appointed in word formative is
called base. Bases to which affixes are added can be bare roots. Example ‘loc-’
from this word we can get words such as loc-al, loc-um, loc-w. Affixes can be
added to the independent words such as govern-governor or government. Also they
can be forms which already contain other affixes such as loc-al - local-ity. Most
of the roots are bases but not all bases are roots. So affix isany morpheme
that appended or attached to the root. Affixes can be attached before or after
the base. Exampleusing root ‘polite’ as our base we can form the new lexical
items by adding ‘-ness’ to give politeness (property of being polite) or –ly-
to get politely (in a polite manner).
The other morphological concept
is stem, Shalua (2014:64), defines stem as it is the form of the word before
any inflectional affixes are added or is the base with lexical meaning. These
inflectional affixes do not change lexical word or word category. In English language
most stems qualifies as a word. The inflectional affixes have different
grammatical functions like marking comparative and superlative degrees as in
word like thinner, thinnest whereby the stem is thin.Showing genitives or
possession -s’ like students’, John’s, marking gender like act-or/act-ress,
lad-ies, and showing participles like play-ing, blacken-ed, un-screwed. So stem
is the form of a word that inflections get added onto. Most of the time this
will be the root, moreover stem must have lexical meaning and sometimes stem
can be as root as base like video, finger, watch.
In Russian language verb and noun
can be used to show different participles which mark the boundary of stem like
Sobak-a (dog barking) and Sobak-u (dog barked).
In Latin numbers are marked by
–s, -e, and –a like Rege-s (Kings), Regina-e (queens), oppid-a
(towns).Generally Katamba (1993:55) argues that inflectional processes assign a
stem certain grammatical properties so as to produce grammatical word that can
fit in a syntactic slot. Example book-s, nation-al, re-view and sometimes which
has two stems that are some and times.
Stem Extender: - According to
morphologycuslinguisticus (2011) whom referred Katamba in his book Modern
Linguistic Morphology, stem refers to the morpheme that is adjoined to a base
and which has no lexical or grammatical meaning. Sometimes these morphemes are
called surplus morpheme which has a function. Some languages have word building
elements that devoid of content as empty formatives/empty morphs.
In English language empty
formatives/ morphs are inserted between the root, bases or stem and an affix.
Foristance the irregular plural allomorph-en can be added to stem ox to form
oxen directly, but other words need a stem to be expanded so that -en can be
attached after attaching -r- to the root, like child-r-en and breth-r-en, hence
concept stem extender occurred. This is not arbitrary but can be proved historically
whereby stem extenders were used before a particular affix. ExampleOld English
use ‘-er’ to form plural nouns, but after a longtime changed into ‘–en’, like
Cild (child) Cild-er then cild-er-en. Even in Modern English there is stem extender
like fact-u-al problem-at-ic, big-g-er, fat-t-estand others.
Generally Morphology as a branch
of phonetics plays great role in any language since it contribute greatly in
the formation of the new words which are new in the language to meet the
variety of changes which are happening in our society.Example through one of
the morphological process called coining new words from scientific discoveries
are given names hence become inserted in the language and other morphological
processes such as clipping, compound are crucial.Also it increases the vocabulary
of any language to a great extent by allowing the users of any language to form
new words which were not there at once.
REFERENCES
http://morphologycuslinguisticus.blogspot.com. 11th April, 2018
01:48pm
Jim, M. (2002).An introduction to English syntax.Edenburgh
University Press.
Katamba, F. (1993).Morphology. London: Macmillan.
Katamba, F. (1994).English words. New york: Routledge.
Leskowski, R. (1987&2008). On the concept of lexeme.Scando-Slavic:
Routledge Publishers.
Oxford University Press (2008). English Oxford Living Dictionary. United
Kingdom: World wide.
Shalua, C.E. (2010). New Advanced Level English; A complete
package course book. Purely paper one.
Sidney, G & Nelson, G.
(2002).An introduction to English Grammar.Longman
Publishers.
Yule, G. (2010). The study of language.(4th
edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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