Chapter 4 Morphology: The Study of Word Structure

4.1 Words and word structure

　 The ability to construct and interpret words is part of our linguistic competence. Native speakers of a language know scores of thousands of words. The total number of words stored in the brain is called the lexicon (the Greek word for dictionary), which can be understood as a mental dictionary. What information about words does the mental dictionary contain? What do you know when you know a word?

　 As the smallest free units of language, words unite sounds with meaning. In writing, words must have formal representation, called orthography. Knowledge of the pronunciation, the meaning and the spelling of a word is not adequate for the correct use of it. Words must be classified. That is, the syntactic class or part of speech of a word must be specified when it is used in a sentence. In addition, a speaker knows the meaning relation of one word to other words, and the stylistic characteristics of a word, namely, whether it is formal or informal. Native speakers also know how to break words into their components and how to form new words. The study of this part of their knowledge of words is done in morphology. Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure and the formation of words.