This video lecture is a part of the course 'An Introduction to English Linguistics' at the University of Neuchâtel. This is session 3, in which I talk about words and their parts, i.e. morphemes.
Recently found this channel, and I was immediately amazed by it! The videos are really well made! Everything is explained well and easy to understand, you have examples for everything which is really good! And the videos feel really casual because of the facecam. Very, very good!
Would just like to repeat my earlier comment about how good these videos are. The presentation is excellent: there are visual aids in the forms of texts and pictures; also you have a face to watch as well as a voice to listen to. The structure is very clear and easy to follow, but clarity is not bought at the expense of rendering the subject-matter uninteresting. An excellent example of on-line teaching. Thank you so much.
You are the most charming professor I have ever seen:) Sometimes it is a distraction when I am trying to listen to what you say but mostly it is a great motivation for me to study Linguistics. Btw, “unappealing” does exist, you were just too appealing to realize that ^^
Thank you. Great lecture. Grazing cows cannot be happier than the happiest clam, otherwise the clam is not the happiest (the cows are happier than him).
Hello! Very interestingly structured lecture, as always! I would like to ask one question though: you've mentioned that =o= in 'speedometer' is an infix (morpheme). There is a ton of words like this in Russian (вод=о=пад 'waterfall', =вод= 'water', =пад= 'fall' and =o= in between). Russian linguists (me included) don't call these morphemes though, as these units are meaningless and serve only phonological function (speakers are believed to avoid consonant clusters with the help of those meaningless bits, like /dp/ in водпад). So, do English linguists have a different outlook on this problem? I'm sadly very poorly familiar with English studies of derivation, so your answer would be very helpful!
Hi. First of all, thanks for the videos. They're awesome! I guess you probably won't even get to read this, since this video is from 5 years ago, but, just in case you actually read it, then I have a question: you said that the "o" in speedometer is an infix and, thus, a morpheme. However, morphemes are the smallest linguistic units that carry meaning. What meaning does the "o" carry? Moreover, shouldn't infixes go between a single morpheme? The "o" in speedometer goes between two different morphemes "speed" and "meter". Anyway, I don't think you'll ever even get to read it, but I love the videos!
The term "interfix" is used more to describe such thing in English and other languages (www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Interfix). It is important to point out that interfix is not a morpheme, according to the strict definition, it's just a phoneme or a group of phonemes inserted between some actual morphemes. In other words, interfixes do not carry any meaning, therefore they can not be described as a morpheme (affix) type if we use the most common definition of a morpheme ("the smallest part of a word (linguistic unit) that carries meaning"). Your understanding of an infix is fine, that's just a misleading term in the presentation that could be a result of a mistype (words "infix" and "interfix" are very similar). I hope, my answer would be helpful for you.
Dear Martin I love your lessons just wanted to point out of something you might have not been aware of the word player is a noun not a verb. I'm sure it's a mistake. Just wanted you to be aware of it and maybe be able to correct it. Keep up the wonderful work that you do.
Regarding inflectional morphemes: the lecture says that the inflection to pluralize nouns as one of the eight inflectional morphemes. But consider the words "cat," "bed," and "process." Make them plural. "Cats." "beds, "processes." Don''t we have three different morphemes, not one?
The o in speed-o-meter is not an infix, it's an interfix. I haven't watched the whole thing, but please get your terminology right when you teach your students. The only infix English arguably has is something like "abso-fucking-lutely" (or your kangaroo example), although this could also be understood as a tmesis because an entire word is inserted into the root. Anyway, an infix goes INTO a root (or base, as you call it), while an interfix is BETWEEN two roots/bases/morphemes. Infixes are very rare in the languages of Europe (although Latin has an -n- infix), but they are common in other parts of the world, probably most notably in the Austronesian languages of the Philippines and Taiwan.
