What do you think?
Rate this book
Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics
The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology
This text provides an up-to-date introduction to the morphological analysis of words. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words and how this structure affects their phonological, syntactic and semantic properties. This book covers both inflection (the different forms of a word),
and word formation, the ways in which new words can be added to the vocabulary of a language.
The enormous variety of morphological operations that we find in natural languages is quite intriguing. The first part of the book gives a cross-linguistic survey of these affixation, compounding, reduplication, and several kinds of phonological operation. The specific properties of
word formation and inflection are dealt with in subsequent chapters.
The second part of the book focuses on the ways in which the morphological structure of words determines their phonological, syntactic, and semantic properties. These different 'interfaces' are dealt with systematically, again with illustrations from a number of languages.
In the last part of the book the reader is introduced to present-day research on the acquisition of morphological knowledge, and on the way in which complex words are processed. This will give insight as to how lexical knowledge is structured and how it is stored in memory.
and word formation, the ways in which new words can be added to the vocabulary of a language.
The enormous variety of morphological operations that we find in natural languages is quite intriguing. The first part of the book gives a cross-linguistic survey of these affixation, compounding, reduplication, and several kinds of phonological operation. The specific properties of
word formation and inflection are dealt with in subsequent chapters.
The second part of the book focuses on the ways in which the morphological structure of words determines their phonological, syntactic, and semantic properties. These different 'interfaces' are dealt with systematically, again with illustrations from a number of languages.
In the last part of the book the reader is introduced to present-day research on the acquisition of morphological knowledge, and on the way in which complex words are processed. This will give insight as to how lexical knowledge is structured and how it is stored in memory.
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 24, 2021
2.5 stars
If one is totally new to morphology, it'd be a better idea to check Haspelmath's book first: Understanding morphology.
Otherwise, Booij's book is a thorough one (so many topics in so little pages!), and would be a great help as the quickest reference if someone needs to have only a glance to remember stuff!
این کتاب هرچیزی هست به جز اینتروداکشن
[چشم غره میرود]
If one is totally new to morphology, it'd be a better idea to check Haspelmath's book first: Understanding morphology.
Otherwise, Booij's book is a thorough one (so many topics in so little pages!), and would be a great help as the quickest reference if someone needs to have only a glance to remember stuff!
این کتاب هرچیزی هست به جز اینتروداکشن
[چشم غره میرود]
January 23, 2019
A thorough introduction, although the vast majority of examples come from European languages.
June 23, 2016
This is a fairly thorough introduction to morphology. As a non-linguist, my sense is that there was a fairly definite theoretical bias, and that's fine. The author draws heavily on Dutch for examples, but other languages are used as necessary to illustrate specific phenomena. All in all, I believe it presents a fairly balanced view of morphology from a theoretical standpoint. Related topics, such as psycholinguistics, language change and language acquisition are treated more briefly.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews