O american english has developed a new intensifier

o American English has developed a new “intensifier” -ass, which is somewhat vulgar and
colloquial
o that is a big-ass chimichanga = that is a very big chimichanga
o native speakers know intensive -ass is a bound morpheme
 ex:
 question: are you cold?
 Answer: very
 Answer: ass – WRONG
 This suffix has subtle properties that native speakers now:
 Ex:
o He is a very ignorant man = he is an ignorant ass man
o He is very ignorant = he is ignorant ass , CANT SAY THAT
 INFIXATION
o INFIXES: AN AFFIX THAT ATTACHES INSIDE THE ROOT
 In phillipines
 Fikas – strong, fumikas – to be strong
 Fusul – enemy, fumusul – to be an enemy
 The ‘verbifying morphemes are -mi or -mu
 This is an example of infixation
o English has this too
 “explitive” infxation:
 In-fuckin’-credible
 “iz” infixation
 House = h-iz-ouse
 “Homeric” infixation:
 Education – edu-ma-cation
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 CIRCUMFIX
o Affixes that surround the root both initially and finally
 German:
 Lieb = love
 Ge + lieb + t = loved
 English doesn’t really have this
 MORPHOLOGY, OVERVIEW:
o Smallest linguistic unit with a meaning is a morpheme
o A morpheme is distinct from a word:
 Mississippi-LESS-LY = 1 word, 3 morphemes
o Morphemes come in different types
 Free, bound, lexical, functional, inflectional, derivational
o Affixes (bound morphemes) also have different types
 Prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix
o Words have internal structure
 Word trees
 MORPHOLOGY PART 2: MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
o Look for recurring morphemes
o Compare and contrast partially similar forms
o Look at the meanings for consistently meaningful forms
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When you reduplicate once, to do something a little bit, but twice, means continuous action
- Impt to look at this bc one of the ways in which dialects differ has to do with morphemes and
repetition
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