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  • So let’s talk about words. Now, you probably think that words are one of the biggest things

  • a linguist could care about. After all, words are the little Lego pieces of language,

  • right? You connect them together, and you suddenly have bigger meanings, whole sentences

  • and conversations. That’s all true, but when it comes to the tiniest

  • meaningful bits, we usually want to aim a little smaller than the word. I’m Moti Lieberman,

  • and this is the Ling Space.

  • So of course, since I’m a linguist, I love words. Theyre amazing and cute, and they

  • often sound really cool. But the thing is, when we want to look at meaning, words can

  • just be too big. A single word can have a whole bunch of different meanings wrapped

  • up inside it. So, just think about a word likerekillable", as inThe Others are rekillable.”

  • It might be one word, but inside, you can see three different pieces that have their

  • own meanings – “re,” or do again; “kill”, so to cause to die; andable,” or can

  • be done. So when we put all the different meanings together, we get something likecan be killed again”.

  • That’s one word, but it’s got three different pieces of meaning inside.

  • So if we really want to talk about meaning, we need to dig down past the word level and look at

  • the different parts inside the word. We need to make it down to where we can’t go any farther

  • without breaking up the raw ore of meaning. When weve removed everything extraneous,

  • and all that we're left with are sets of sounds that are paired up with one individual meaning

  • each, weve hit the bottom.

  • Then weve managed to find the morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest pairing between

  • sound and meaning. So that means if you split off any more of the sound, you

  • wouldn’t keep the same meaning anymore. Something likeStarkis a morpheme

  • by itself, because even if you can see another morpheme likestarinside it, you can’t

  • cut off that [k] without changing meaning. That [k] is an essential

  • part of Starkness; without it, youve ended up with something completely different. Starks

  • aren’t stars.

  • Now, this goes the other way, too. Just because you can put some sounds together doesn’t

  • mean that they make up a morpheme. There has to be a meaning attached to those sounds, too. So

  • in the Stark example from before, another reason you can’t cut off that [k]

  • is that [k] doesn’t even mean anything in English. So you can't just attach

  • it as its own morpheme to something else.

  • Or take something likekhaleesi .” Now, that’s a perfectly fine combination of sounds right

  • there, and any English speaker will tell you that’s an okay word, even if they don’t

  • necessarily know what it means. But it’s not until you pair that sound with a meaning that

  • it becomes a morpheme. If you said khaleesi in 1995, that wouldn’t have been a morpheme,

  • because it didn't mean anything.

  • But now, a lot of people know what that isthe sounds have been paired with a meaning,

  • and voila! A morpheme is born.

  • Not all morphemes are the same, of course. There are a few distinctions between different

  • kinds of morphemes that should just jump out at you. The one well talk about this week

  • is that some morphemes can stand on their own, and other ones can’t. Let’s consider

  • a word likeTickler.” Now this word has two morphemes in it, “tickleander”.

  • The first part, “tickle”, can stand on its own, like “I’ll tickle the information

  • out of him.” But that second part, “er”, can’t be by itself like that. It clearly

  • has a meaning of its own – “someone that doeswhatever thing it’s attached to”,

  • so a tickler tickles and a hunter hunts, etc. But it needs that piece to attach toif

  • someone asks you what your job is, you can’t say “I’m an er.” It can’t be independent.

  • Morphemes liketickleorhoundorredthat can stand on their own like

  • that are known as free morphemes. Theyre free-standing meaning bits, or at least, they

  • can be. But things likeerorunorde”, those aren’t strong enough

  • to stand by themselves. They need to attach to something, and so these are known as bound

  • morphemes.

  • But there’s no fundamental rule that says any morpheme, or even any type of morpheme, has

  • to be free or bound in any given language. We can find free morphemes in English that are bound

  • in other languages. Takethein Englishnow that’s a free morpheme, like inthe

  • cat.” But in Hebrew, thattheis boundit’s the [ha] in [haxatul] - החתול.

  • And we can find things that are bound in English that are free in other languages.

  • So, how about theer we use for comparison in English? Now, that’s bound, as inIt’s

  • colder on the Wall.” But in Japanese, that comparative is its own wordit’s the [motto] in

  • kabe-ga motto samui desu.”

  • Beyond these examples, there are languages where basically every morpheme is free,

  • like Mandarin or Vietnamese. These languages don’t really have bound morphemes at all. Other

  • languages, like Miqmaq or Mohawk, basically have all their morphemes bound. These

  • are languages where an entire sentence gets rolled up together into a single word.

  • So a sentence likeShe made the thing that one puts on one’s body ugly for himis just

  • a single word in Mohawk , like this: wahuwajaʔdawitsherahetkʌ:ʔdʌʔ.

  • Linguistic example sentences can get pretty wacky sometimes!

  • But this is why we can have such a hard time talking about words in linguistics. Something that's just

  • one word in English could turn into a few words in a different language, and something that's a whole sentence

  • in English could be a single word somewhere else. What’s free and what’s bound are

  • different from one language to the next, but no matter what language you look at, morphemes

  • are always there. And that's why that’s where it’s most meaningful to look.

  • So weve reached the end of the Ling Space for this week. If you were able to associate

  • my sounds with meanings, you learned that morphemes are the pairings of sounds and meaning

  • that can’t be broken up further without losing the meaning; that there are free morphemes

  • that can stand on their own, and bound morphemes that need to be attached to something to be

  • used; that languages make up their own minds about what should be bound and free; and that

  • because of the variation, talking about morphemes can be more appropriate than talking about

  • words.

  • The Ling Space is written and produced by me, Moti Lieberman. It’s directed by Adèlelise

  • Prévost, our production assistant is Georges Coulombe, music and sound design is by Shane

  • Turner, and our graphics team is atelierMUSE. Were down in the comments below, or you

  • can bring the discussion back over to our website, where we have some extra material on this

  • topic. Check us out on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, and if you want to keep expanding your own

  • personal Ling Space, please subscribe. And well see you next Wednesday. Huitou jian!

So let’s talk about words. Now, you probably think that words are one of the biggest things

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