Crash Course, Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2

Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2

Hi, I'm Taylor and welcome to Crash Course Linguistics!

According to the word count feature in a document, a word is a thing with spaces around it.

That's a useful definition if we're just trying to figure out how long an essay should be, but it's not a very good guide to defining what “counts” as a word.

For example, "doghouse" is generally written without a space, while "rabbit hole" is written with one.

But they feel like they should both be words.

After all, sometimes people write "dog house" with the space, and we could totally start writing "rabbit-hole" or even "rabbithole" completely smushed together.

Also, just because a word like “hangry” isn't in your dictionary doesn't mean it's not a word, or that I'm not feeling it right now.

Man, I should've eaten a snack before this shoot.

Anyway, today, we're going to talk about how a linguist would answer the question,

“What even is a word?”

[THEME MUSIC]

To a linguist, the word "word" has a big meaning and a small meaning.

The big meaning of "word" is what we expect when we're looking something up in a dictionary.

We'd expect to find a dictionary entry for "rabbit hole" because this phrase has a meaning that we can't figure out from the definitions of its individual parts.

After looking up “rabbit” and “hole,” we wouldn't guess that “rabbit hole” means a place where a rabbit lives, or a complicated or absorbing situation

like finding yourself down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2am after Googling what languages are spoken on the International Space Station.

Its meaning is relatively unpredictable from its parts.

Dictionary-makers define one entry or unit as the largest unpredictable combinations of form and meaning.

They call each of these units lexemes or lexical items, because they're the parts of a lexicon, which is another word for dictionary.

In contrast, we wouldn't expect to find a dictionary entry for "deep hole" because if we look up “deep” and “hole,” we can figure out the meaning of the two combined.

It's predictable.

So "deep" and "hole" are both lexemes, while “deep hole” is not.

When we think about a phrase like "falling down rabbit holes", this is where the small meaning of “word” comes in.

Here, we can break the sentence into parts: fall, -ing, down, rabbit, hole, and -s — even though we don't say "ing" or "-s" by themselves, they have distinct meanings.

For example, -s indicates that there's more than one rabbit hole, and we can predict this from the meaning of "rabbit hole" and "-s" together.

But we can't separate "rabbit" into rabb and it, even though "it" is a word, because “rabb” doesn't mean anything on its own.

"Rabb" and "it" don't each have their own meanings that they're contributing to "rabbit"

The meaning of "rabbit" is unpredictable.

Rabbit and -s are examples of the smallest unpredictable combinations of form and meaning.

Linguists call these units morphemes, and the study of them is morphology.

That's morph as in “metamorphosis” or “Animorphs.”

It's from a Greek word meaning shape or form, because morphemes can stick to each other to change the shape of a word.

One reason it's helpful to divide language into morphemes is because it helps us see patterns across languages.

A separate word in one language might be a part of a word in another language.

For example, the phrase “I washed my feet” is a sentence with several words in Mandarin.

The same idea is a single word with many morphemes in Murrinhpatha and lots of other Australian languages.

If we just think of words, rather than the morphemes that build words, we miss this and a lot of other interesting potential patterns.

If we look at morphemes instead, we can see differences and similarities between languages in the information they convey, not just the number of words they use!

There are a couple different kinds of relationships that morphemes can have with each other.

When we have a morpheme that can stand by itself, that's a free morpheme, like "rabbit" or "hole."

When we have two or more free morphemes combined together, that's a compound, whether it's written with a space, a hyphen,

or all joined together, such as doghouse, rabbit hole or even rabbit hole fence sign.

In American Sign Language, there are signs like “teacher” and “student” that are compounds, composed of “teach” and “learn” plus a variant of the sign “person”.

Recognizing compounds allows us to see similarities between languages that we might have missed.

In other languages, nouns might be linked by other words, like “the sign of the fence of the hole of the rabbit,”

but English and German just put them all together into long compound nouns.

The only difference is that English keeps spaces when writing long strings of nouns, while German doesn't write the spaces.

So while it looks like English and German have very different ways of creating words, they actually often use the same compound nouns!

Perhaps we could call this the Deutschewörterübersetzungsproblem or “Word in German translation problem”.

Meanwhile, when we have a morpheme that can't stand by itself, like the “-s” in “rabbits, that's a bound morpheme.

Let's head over to the Thought Bubble to see more about how morphemes fit together.

We can visualize morphemes as fitting together like the parts of a plant.

In this metaphor, the most central part of a word is the root, and the other morphemes that are stuck (or fixed) onto it are affixes.

So “rabbits” is made from the root “rabbit” and the affix “-s.”

Since the “-s” affix in “rabbits” comes after the root, we call it a suffix.

If a word has an affix stuck on before the root, it's called a prefix.

To extend our plant metaphor, when we add a morpheme to a root, this new unit becomes the stem for the next morpheme.

And here's where it gets interesting:

We can also have a word with several affixes at once, like untwistable, which has the prefix "un-," the root "twist," and the suffix "-able."

It sounds simple enough, but this word's meaning depends on whether "untwist" is a stem for "-able" or whether "twistable" is a stem for "un-."

It could mean: able to be untwisted.

That's untwist plus able.

Or, it could mean: not able to be twisted.

That's un plus twistable.

Not every word with multiple affixes has more than one meaning, though.

It all depends on how the word builds.

At each stage, the stem has to work as a word by itself.

So untwistable is ambiguous because "untwist" is a word but "twistable" is also a word.

In contrast, with a word like "un-rabbit-y", rabbit-y is a word , but "un-rabbit"?

That's not a word, so un-rabbit-y only has one meaning.

Rabbit, rabbity, unrabbity, unrabbitiness…

This can go all the way up to lots and lots of affixes.

That was the most thought-bubble-y of Thought Bubbles!

The root is often a free morpheme, like rabbit.

But the root isn't always free -- think of words like: receive, deceive, perceive, and conceive.

You can receive.

And you can deceive.

But can you just...ceive?

It's the same part in all these words, but it doesn't have its own independent meaning.

It's a bound morpheme, just like -s, but it's also the root.

It's one of a handful of examples of bound roots in English.

And in addition to prefixes and suffixes, there are some other kinds of affixes that can be attached to a root.

Affixes can sometimes go inside a word.

This is called an infix, and in English, it primarily happens with swear words or pseudo-swears:

fan-hecking-tastic.

And for the completionists out there, there's also circumfixes, which have information attached to both the beginning and end of a word.

English doesn't really do circumfixes, but Malay has eight different ones.

The meaning of the word changes only with the addition of both parts of the circumfix.

So far, morphology is looking very neat and defined — you can make words by stacking morphemes on roots to make longer stems.

But morphology isn't always neat little packages of affixes.

Sometimes one affix can hold more than one piece of information.

This is known as fusional morphology, because it's hard to tease out how each morpheme relates to a specific part of the meaning.

It's all fused together.

For example, as languages change over time, they often smush smaller words together, making free morphemes into bound morphemes.

The English words "not" "none" "never" and "nothing" all contained "ne", the Old English word for "not".

And "not" itself gets smushed together in Modern English into words like "didn't" or "dunno".

In French, when a word ends in -al, like animal or journal, the suffix -al indicates that it's masculine and that it's singular.

You may not be familiar with the idea of words being masculine, but don't worry!

For now, just focus on how this suffix tells us two things about the word.

To make it plural, you need to change the whole ending into -aux like "animaux" or "journaux" to indicate both of these things.

There were once two suffixes, one for masculine and one for plural — which we can still kind of see in the spelling.

But -aux is now simply pronounced “o” and indicates both.

To further broaden our idea of morphology, we should mention, there are ways of building meaning in words that go beyond adding affixes all in a single row.

For example, some words in English change their vowels instead of adding an affix, such as foot and feet or sing, sang and sung.

In Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic languages, the root of a word is just the consonants, and then vowels are added in different configurations to create different related words.

For example, this Arabic root means things having to do with books or writing, and from it we get "kitaab" meaning "book", "kutub" meaning "books",

"kaatib" meaning "writer", "maktab," meaning “office" and more.

In American Sign Language, nouns and their related verbs sometimes have the same handshape and location, but different movement.

For example: “chair” and “sit”

And occasionally, a language will change the word completely, rather than adding a morpheme.

Think about the English verb ‘go', which is ‘went' in the past tense, rather than "goed", which would follow the regular patterns of English morphology.

This process of completely replacing a word is called suppletion, and languages mostly use it with a handful of common words rather than as a systematic process.

Thank goodness for that!

If you thought conjugating verbs with different suffixes was hard - imagine having to learn a completely different word each time!

So, to get back to this tricky question of what a word is...

linguists don't really know, and that's actually fine.

There are so many edge cases and exceptions about the word "word" that when linguists need to be really precise, we use completely different terminology instead

We talk about morphemes.

But when we're not zoomed in quite so closely, it's still totally okay to talk in terms of words

Like when we're talking about combining words into longer phrases and sentences, like in our next video!

See you next time!

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Linguistics, which is produced by Complexly & PBS.

So 2020 has been... bad.

PBS has a new show called Self-Evident that explores how we've been persevering in this supremely weird year.

It's hosted by historian Danielle Bainbridge from Origin of Everything and therapist Ali Mattu, who you might know from The Psych Show.

Because who better than a historian and a therapist to help guide us through ALL of this.

Self-Evident is part of PBS American Portrait, a massive storytelling project involving thousands of people around the country.

Subscribe to PBS Voices for Self-Evident and other great shows, and tell them Crash Course sent you.

Morphology: Crash Course Linguistics #2 Morphologie: Crashkurs Linguistik #2 Morfología: Curso acelerado de lingüística nº 2 Morphologie : Cours accélérés de linguistique #2 Morfologia: Corso accelerato di linguistica #2 形態論クラッシュコース言語学第2回 형태론: 단기 코스 언어학 #2 Morfologia: Przyspieszony kurs językoznawstwa #2 Morfologia: Curso Rápido de Linguística #2 Морфология: Краткий курс лингвистики #2 Morfoloji: Crash Course Dilbilim #2 Морфологія: Прискорений лінгвістичний курс #2 形态学：语言学速成课程#2 形態學：語言學速成課程#2

Hi, I'm Taylor and welcome to Crash Course Linguistics! مرحبًا، أنا تايلور ومرحبًا بكم في Crash Course Linguistics!

According to the word count feature in a document, a word is a thing with spaces around it. وفقًا لميزة عدد الكلمات في المستند، فإن الكلمة هي شيء به مسافات حوله. Згідно з функцією підрахунку слів у документі, слово - це об'єкт з пробілами навколо нього.

That's a useful definition if we're just trying to figure out how long an essay should be, but it's not a very good guide to defining what “counts” as a word. |||||||||||||||||||||||||establishing criteria||||| |||визначення||||||||||||||||||||||||||| يعد هذا تعريفًا مفيدًا إذا كنا نحاول فقط معرفة المدة التي يجب أن يبلغها المقال، ولكنه ليس دليلًا جيدًا لتحديد ما "يعتبر" ككلمة. Це корисне визначення, якщо ми просто намагаємося з'ясувати, якого обсягу має бути есе, але воно не дуже добре підходить для визначення того, що "рахується" як слово.

For example, "doghouse" is generally written without a space, while "rabbit hole" is written with one. ||Hundehütte||||||||||||| ||doghouse||||||||rabbit||||| ||casinha de cachorro||||||||||||| على سبيل المثال، تتم كتابة "بيت الكلب" بشكل عام بدون مسافة، بينما تتم كتابة "جحر الأرنب" بمسافة واحدة. Наприклад, "собача будка" зазвичай пишеться без пробілу, а "кроляча нора" - з пробілом.

But they feel like they should both be words. لكنهم يشعرون أنهما يجب أن يكونا كلمات. Але їм здається, що вони обидва мають бути словами.

After all, sometimes people write "dog house" with the space, and we could totally start writing "rabbit-hole" or even "rabbithole" completely smushed together. ||||||||||||||||||||rabbithole||сжато| ||||||||||||||||||||||collé| ||||||||||||||||||||Rabbithole||zusammengedrückt| ||||||||||||||||||||rabbit hole|totally|squished|together ||||||||||||||||||||||juntas| بعد كل شيء، في بعض الأحيان يكتب الناس "بيت الكلب" مع المساحة، ويمكننا أن نبدأ تمامًا في كتابة "جحر أرنب" أو حتى "جحر أرنب" ممزوجين معًا تمامًا. Immers, soms schrijven mensen "hondenhok" met de ruimte, en we zouden helemaal kunnen beginnen met het schrijven van "konijnenhol" of zelfs "konijnenhol" volledig in elkaar geslagen.

Also, just because a word like “hangry” isn't in your dictionary doesn't mean it's not a word, or that I'm not feeling it right now. ||||||голодный|||||||||||||||||| ||||||hangry|||||||||||||||||| ||||||hungry and angry|||||||||||||||||| ||||||irritado pela fome|||||||||||||||||| وأيضًا، لمجرد عدم وجود كلمة مثل "hangry" في قاموسك، لا يعني أنها ليست كلمة، أو أنني لا أشعر بها الآن.

Man, I should've eaten a snack before this shoot. |||||light meal|||filming session يا رجل، كان يجب أن أتناول وجبة خفيفة قبل جلسة التصوير هذه.

Anyway, today, we're going to talk about how a linguist would answer the question, على أية حال، اليوم، سنتحدث عن كيفية إجابة عالم اللغويات على هذا السؤال،

“What even is a word?” |até||| "ما هي الكلمة؟"

[THEME MUSIC]

To a linguist, the word "word" has a big meaning and a small meaning. بالنسبة لعالم اللغة، كلمة "كلمة" لها معنى كبير ومعنى صغير.

The big meaning of "word" is what we expect when we're looking something up in a dictionary. المعنى الكبير لكلمة "كلمة" هو ما نتوقعه عندما نبحث عن شيء ما في القاموس.

We'd expect to find a dictionary entry for "rabbit hole" because this phrase has a meaning that we can't figure out from the definitions of its individual parts. نتوقع العثور على إدخال في القاموس لعبارة "جحر الأرنب" لأن هذه العبارة لها معنى لا يمكننا فهمه من تعريفات أجزائها الفردية. We zouden een woordenboekvermelding voor "konijnenhol" verwachten, omdat deze uitdrukking een betekenis heeft die we niet kunnen achterhalen uit de definities van de afzonderlijke delen.

After looking up “rabbit” and “hole,” we wouldn't guess that “rabbit hole” means a place where a rabbit lives, or a complicated or absorbing situation |||||||||||||||||||||||engaging| بعد البحث عن كلمتي "أرنب" و"جحر"، لن نخمن أن عبارة "جحر أرنب" تعني مكانًا يعيش فيه الأرنب، أو موقفًا معقدًا أو مشوقًا

like finding yourself down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2am after Googling what languages are spoken on the International Space Station. |||||||||||поиске||||||||Космической| such as|finding|yourself|||Wikipedia||||||searching online|what languages|||||||| مثل أن تجد نفسك في حفرة أرنب ويكيبيديا في الساعة الثانية صباحًا بعد البحث عبر Google عن اللغات التي يتم التحدث بها في محطة الفضاء الدولية. как будто вы оказались в кроличьей норе Википедии в 2 часа ночи, после того как загуглили, какие языки говорят на Международной космической станции.

Its meaning is relatively unpredictable from its parts. ||||непредсказуемое||| ||||unvorhersehbar||| ||||not easily determined||| معناها لا يمكن التنبؤ به نسبيا من أجزائه. Его значение относительно непредсказуемо из его частей.

Dictionary-makers define one entry or unit as the largest unpredictable combinations of form and meaning. يعرّف صانعو القاموس الإدخال أو الوحدة الواحدة بأنها أكبر مجموعات غير متوقعة من الشكل والمعنى. Woordenboekmakers definiëren één item of eenheid als de grootste onvoorspelbare combinaties van vorm en betekenis. Создатели словарей определяют одну запись или единицу как самые большие непредсказуемые комбинации формы и значения.

They call each of these units lexemes or lexical items, because they're the parts of a lexicon, which is another word for dictionary. ||||||лексемы||лексические|||||||||||||| ||||||lexèmes|||||||||||||||| ||||||Lexeme||||||||||Lexikon|||||| ||||||lexical items||related to words||||||||dictionary|||||| ||||||lexemas||léxicas||||||||léxico|||||| يسمون كل وحدة من هذه الوحدات المعجمية أو العناصر المعجمية، لأنها أجزاء من المعجم، وهي كلمة أخرى للقاموس. Ze noemen elk van deze eenheden lexemen of lexicale items, omdat ze de delen zijn van een lexicon, wat een ander woord is voor woordenboek.

In contrast, we wouldn't expect to find a dictionary entry for "deep hole" because if we look up “deep” and “hole,” we can figure out the meaning of the two combined. في المقابل، لا نتوقع العثور على مدخل في القاموس لـ "الحفرة العميقة" لأننا إذا بحثنا عن "عميق" و"الحفرة"، فيمكننا معرفة معنى الاثنين معًا.

It's predictable. |предсказуемо |vorhersehbar |previsível

So "deep" and "hole" are both lexemes, while “deep hole” is not. ||||||лексемы||||| Therefore||||||||||| ||||||lexemas||||| لذا فإن "العميق" و"الحفرة" كلاهما معجمان، في حين أن "الحفرة العميقة" ليست كذلك.

When we think about a phrase like "falling down rabbit holes", this is where the small meaning of “word” comes in. ||||||||||rabbit holes|||||||||| عندما نفكر في عبارة مثل "السقوط في جحور الأرانب"، هنا يأتي المعنى الصغير لكلمة "كلمة".

Here, we can break the sentence into parts: fall, -ing, down, rabbit, hole, and -s — even though we don't say "ing" or "-s" by themselves, they have distinct meanings. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||unterschiedliche| |||||||||gerund suffix||||||||||||||||||distinct| هنا، يمكننا تقسيم الجملة إلى أجزاء: تقع، -ing، أسفل، أرنب، ثقب، و -s - على الرغم من أننا لا نقول "ing" أو "-s" في حد ذاتها، إلا أن لها معاني مختلفة.

For example, -s indicates that there's more than one rabbit hole, and we can predict this from the meaning of "rabbit hole" and "-s" together. على سبيل المثال، يشير -s إلى وجود أكثر من جحر أرنب واحد، ويمكننا التنبؤ بذلك من معنى "جحر أرنب" و"-s" معًا.

But we can't separate "rabbit" into rabb and it, even though "it" is a word, because “rabb” doesn't mean anything on its own. ||||||rabb|||||||||||||||| ||||||root||||||||||rabbit suffix|||||| لكن لا يمكننا فصل "أرنب" إلى "راب" وهو، على الرغم من أن "هو" كلمة، لأن كلمة "راب" لا تعني شيئًا في حد ذاتها.

"Rabb" and "it" don't each have their own meanings that they're contributing to "rabbit" ليس لكل من "Rabb" و"it" معنيان خاصان بهما يساهمان به في "rabbit"

The meaning of "rabbit" is unpredictable. معنى "الأرنب" لا يمكن التنبؤ به.

Rabbit and -s are examples of the smallest unpredictable combinations of form and meaning. يعتبر Rabbit و -s أمثلة على أصغر مجموعات غير متوقعة من الشكل والمعنى.

Linguists call these units morphemes, and the study of them is morphology. ||||smallest meaning units||||||| ||||morfemas|||||||morfologia يسمي اللغويون هذه الوحدات مورفيمات، ودراستها هي علم الصرف.

That's morph as in “metamorphosis” or “Animorphs.” ||||Metamorphose||Animorphs |change|||change form||shape-shifters هذا يتحول كما في "التحول" أو "الرسوم المتحركة".

It's from a Greek word meaning shape or form, because morphemes can stick to each other to change the shape of a word. ||||||||||morphemes||stick|||||||||| ||||||||||||aderem-se|||||||||| إنها من كلمة يونانية تعني الشكل أو الشكل، لأن المقاطع يمكن أن تلتصق ببعضها البعض لتغيير شكل الكلمة.

One reason it's helpful to divide language into morphemes is because it helps us see patterns across languages. ||||||language||||||||||| أحد الأسباب وراء أهمية تقسيم اللغة إلى مورفيمات هو أنه يساعدنا على رؤية الأنماط عبر اللغات.

A separate word in one language might be a part of a word in another language. قد تكون الكلمة المنفصلة في لغة ما جزءًا من كلمة في لغة أخرى.

For example, the phrase “I washed my feet” is a sentence with several words in Mandarin. |||||||||||||||Mandarin على سبيل المثال، عبارة "لقد غسلت قدمي" هي جملة مكونة من عدة كلمات باللغة الصينية.

The same idea is a single word with many morphemes in Murrinhpatha and lots of other Australian languages. |||||||||||Murrinhpatha|||||| ||||||||||in|Australian language|||||| |||||||||||Murrinhpatha|||||| نفس الفكرة هي كلمة واحدة بها العديد من المقاطع في Murrinhpatha والكثير من اللغات الأسترالية الأخرى. Hetzelfde idee is een enkel woord met veel morfemen in Murrinhpatha en tal van andere Australische talen.

If we just think of words, rather than the morphemes that build words, we miss this and a lot of other interesting potential patterns. |||||||||morphemes|||||||||||||| إذا فكرنا فقط في الكلمات، بدلًا من المورفيمات التي تبني الكلمات، فإننا نفتقد هذا والعديد من الأنماط المحتملة الأخرى المثيرة للاهتمام.

If we look at morphemes instead, we can see differences and similarities between languages in the information they convey, not just the number of words they use! ||||||||||||||||||vermitteln|||||||| ||||||||||||||||||transmitem|||||||| إذا نظرنا إلى الصرف بدلا من ذلك، يمكننا أن نرى الاختلافات والتشابه بين اللغات في المعلومات التي تنقلها، وليس فقط عدد الكلمات التي تستخدمها!

There are a couple different kinds of relationships that morphemes can have with each other. هناك نوعان مختلفان من العلاقات التي يمكن أن تقيمها المورفيمات مع بعضها البعض.

When we have a morpheme that can stand by itself, that's a free morpheme, like "rabbit" or "hole." ||||word unit||||||||||||| |||||||verbo intransitivo|||||||||| عندما يكون لدينا مقطع يمكن أن يقف بمفرده، فهذا شكل حر، مثل "أرنب" أو "ثقب".

When we have two or more free morphemes combined together, that's a compound, whether it's written with a space, a hyphen, ||||||||||||compound word||||||||hyphen عندما يكون لدينا اثنين أو أكثر من المقاطع الحرة مجتمعة معًا، فهذا مركب، سواء كان مكتوبًا بمسافة، أو واصلة،

or all joined together, such as doghouse, rabbit hole or even rabbit hole fence sign. |||||||||||||placa da cerca|

In American Sign Language, there are signs like “teacher” and “student” that are compounds, composed of “teach” and “learn” plus a variant of the sign “person”. |||||||||||||compound signs|made up|||||||version||||

Recognizing compounds allows us to see similarities between languages that we might have missed.

In other languages, nouns might be linked by other words, like “the sign of the fence of the hole of the rabbit,” ||||||connected|||||||||||||||

but English and German just put them all together into long compound nouns.

The only difference is that English keeps spaces when writing long strings of nouns, while German doesn't write the spaces. The|||||||||||of nouns|||||||| |||||||||||as strings||||||||

So while it looks like English and German have very different ways of creating words, they actually often use the same compound nouns!

Perhaps we could call this the Deutschewörterübersetzungsproblem or “Word in German translation problem”. ||||||Deutschewörterübersetzungsproblem|||||| ||||||German word translation|||||| ||||||problema de tradução||||||

Meanwhile, when we have a morpheme that can't stand by itself, like the “-s” in “rabbits, that's a bound morpheme. ||||||||||||||||||lié| ||||||||||||||||||bound morpheme| ||||||||||||||||||ligado|

Let's head over to the Thought Bubble to see more about how morphemes fit together. ||over||||||||||||

We can visualize morphemes as fitting together like the parts of a plant. |||||fitting together|||||||

In this metaphor, the most central part of a word is the root, and the other morphemes that are stuck (or fixed) onto it are affixes. |||||||||||||||||||||||||Affixe |||||||||||||||||||attached|||attached to|||attached elements |||||||||||||||||||||||||afixos In deze metafoor is het meest centrale deel van een woord de wortel, en de andere morfemen die erop zijn geplakt (of vastgemaakt) zijn affixen.

So “rabbits” is made from the root “rabbit” and the affix “-s.” ||||||||||Suffix| ||||||||||suffix| ||||||||||afixo|

Since the “-s” affix in “rabbits” comes after the root, we call it a suffix. ||||||||||||||word ending |||sufixo|||||||||||

If a word has an affix stuck on before the root, it's called a prefix. |||||affix|||||||||prefix

To extend our plant metaphor, when we add a morpheme to a root, this new unit becomes the stem for the next morpheme. |expand|||||||||||||||||base word form|||| ||||||||||||||||||verboide||||

And here's where it gets interesting:

We can also have a word with several affixes at once, like untwistable, which has the prefix "un-," the root "twist," and the suffix "-able." ||||||||||||unentwirrbar|||||||||||| ||||||||||||not able to twist|||||not|||twist|||| ||||||||||||inversível||||||||||||

It sounds simple enough, but this word's meaning depends on whether "untwist" is a stem for "-able" or whether "twistable" is a stem for "un-." |||||||||||untwist||||||||drehbar||||| |||||||||||verb||||||||twist + able||||| Elég egyszerűen hangzik, de ennek a szónak a jelentése attól függ, hogy az "untwist" a "-ozható", vagy a "twistable" az "un-" törzse.

It could mean: able to be untwisted. ||||||entwirrt ||||||not twisted ||||||desenrolado Het zou kunnen betekenen: ontwricht kunnen worden.

That's untwist plus able. Ez az untwist plusz képes.

Or, it could mean: not able to be twisted. Vagy azt is jelentheti: nem lehet csavarni.

That's un plus twistable. Ez un plusz csavarható.

Not every word with multiple affixes has more than one meaning, though. |||||||||||However

It all depends on how the word builds. |||||||is constructed

At each stage, the stem has to work as a word by itself.

So untwistable is ambiguous because "untwist" is a word but "twistable" is also a word. |||adjective|||||||||||

In contrast, with a word like "un-rabbit-y", rabbit-y is a word , but "un-rabbit"? ||||||||adjective||||||||

That's not a word, so un-rabbit-y only has one meaning.

This can go all the way up to lots and lots of affixes. ||||||to||||||affixes

That was the most thought-bubble-y of Thought Bubbles!

The root is often a free morpheme, like rabbit.

But the root isn't always free -- think of words like: receive, deceive, perceive, and conceive. |||||||||||mislead|understand||formulate an idea ||||||||||receber|deceber|perceber||conceber

You can receive.

And you can deceive. |||mislead or trick |||enganar

But can you just...ceive? ||||verstehen ||||receive ||||receber Maar kun je gewoon... bevallen?

It's the same part in all these words, but it doesn't have its own independent meaning.

It's a bound morpheme, just like -s, but it's also the root.

It's one of a handful of examples of bound roots in English. ||||small number||||||| ||||um punhado||||ligados|||

And in addition to prefixes and suffixes, there are some other kinds of affixes that can be attached to a root. ||||prefixes||suffixes|||||||||||||| ||||prefixos||||||||||||||||

Affixes can sometimes go inside a word.

This is called an infix, and in English, it primarily happens with swear words or pseudo-swears: ||||||||||||||||jurons ||||Infix|||||||||||| ||||word insertion|||||mostly|||swear|||fake|expletives or curses ||||infixo||||||||||||palavrões Ezt hívják infixumnak, és az angolban ez elsősorban a káromkodó szavakkal vagy álkáromkodásokkal fordul elő: Dit wordt een tussenvoegsel genoemd en in het Engels gebeurt het voornamelijk met scheldwoorden of pseudo-zweren:

And for the completionists out there, there's also circumfixes, which have information attached to both the beginning and end of a word. |||Vervollständiger|||||Zirkumfixe||||||||||||| |||those who complete|||||affixes on both ends||||||||||||| |||os completistas|||||circunfixos|||informação|||||||||| A kiegészítésre vágyók számára pedig ott vannak a körülírószavak, amelyek a szó elejéhez és végéhez is kapcsolódnak információk. En voor de completisten die er zijn, zijn er ook circumfixen, die informatie bevatten aan zowel het begin als het einde van een woord.

English doesn't really do circumfixes, but Malay has eight different ones. ||||||Malay language|||| ||||||Malaios||||

The meaning of the word changes only with the addition of both parts of the circumfix. |||||||||||||||Zirkumfix |||||||||||||||circumfix |||||||||||||||circunfixo De betekenis van het woord verandert alleen met de toevoeging van beide delen van de circumfix.

So far, morphology is looking very neat and defined — you can make words by stacking morphemes on roots to make longer stems. ||||||propre||||||||||||||| up to this point||||||organized and clear||||||||combining|||||||word forms ||||||||||||||stapeln||||||| ||||||organizada e definida||||||||empilhando|||||||

But morphology isn't always neat little packages of affixes. ||||||units|| ||||organizadas de forma clara||||

Sometimes one affix can hold more than one piece of information.

This is known as fusional morphology, because it's hard to tease out how each morpheme relates to a specific part of the meaning. ||||||||||distinguer|||||||||||| ||||fusions-|||||||||||sich verhält||||||| ||||combining forms|word structure analysis|||||distinguish|||||||||||| ||||fusional|||||||||||||||||| Dit staat bekend als fusiemorfologie, omdat het moeilijk te achterhalen is hoe elk morfeem zich verhoudt tot een specifiek deel van de betekenis.

It's all fused together. ||verschmolzen| ||combined|

For example, as languages change over time, they often smush smaller words together, making free morphemes into bound morphemes. |||||||||zusammenpressen||||||||| |||||||||combine or compress||||||||| |||||||||fundem|||||||||

The English words "not" "none" "never" and "nothing" all contained "ne", the Old English word for "not". ||||||||||not||||||

And "not" itself gets smushed together in Modern English into words like "didn't" or "dunno". ||||||||||||||don't know

In French, when a word ends in -al, like animal or journal, the suffix -al indicates that it's masculine and that it's singular. |||||||masculine singular|||||||||||masculine singular||||

You may not be familiar with the idea of words being masculine, but don't worry!

For now, just focus on how this suffix tells us two things about the word.

To make it plural, you need to change the whole ending into -aux like "animaux" or "journaux" to indicate both of these things. ||||||||||||-aux||Tiere||journale|||||| ||||||||||word ending||plural ending||animals||newspapers|||||| ||||||||||||||os animais||journals||||||

There were once two suffixes, one for masculine and one for plural — which we can still kind of see in the spelling.

But -aux is now simply pronounced “o” and indicates both. ||||||o|||

To further broaden our idea of morphology, we should mention, there are ways of building meaning in words that go beyond adding affixes all in a single row. ||expand||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||ampliar|||||||||||||||||||||||||

For example, some words in English change their vowels instead of adding an affix, such as foot and feet or sing, sang and sung. ||||||||||||||||||||sing present|||past participle |||||||||||||||||||||cantou||cantado

In Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic languages, the root of a word is just the consonants, and then vowels are added in different configurations to create different related words. |||||||||||||||||||||||Konfigurationen||||| |||||language family||||||||||consonants||||||||arrangements|||||

For example, this Arabic root means things having to do with books or writing, and from it we get "kitaab" meaning "book", "kutub" meaning "books", |||||||||||||||||||Buch|||Bücher|| |||||||||||||||||||book|||books||

"kaatib" meaning "writer", "maktab," meaning “office" and more. Kaatib|||Büro|||| writer|||office||||

In American Sign Language, nouns and their related verbs sometimes have the same handshape and location, but different movement.

For example: “chair” and “sit”

And occasionally, a language will change the word completely, rather than adding a morpheme. |sometimes|||||||||||| És néha egy nyelv teljesen megváltoztatja a szót, ahelyett, hogy egy morfémát adna hozzá.

Think about the English verb ‘go', which is ‘went' in the past tense, rather than "goed", which would follow the regular patterns of English morphology. |||||||||||||||goed||||||||| Consider|||||||||||||||incorrect past tense||||||||| |||||||||||||||foi||||||||| Gondoljunk csak az angol "go" igére, amely múlt időben "went", nem pedig "goed", ami az angol morfológia szabályos mintáit követné.

This process of completely replacing a word is called suppletion, and languages mostly use it with a handful of common words rather than as a systematic process. |||||||||||||||||poignée||||||||| |||||||||Suppletion||||||||||||||||| |||||||||word replacement||||||||||||||||| |||||||||supressão lexical||||||||||||||||| A szó teljes helyettesítésének ezt a folyamatát suppletiónak nevezik, és a nyelvek többnyire csak egy maroknyi gyakori szó esetében alkalmazzák, nem pedig szisztematikus eljárásként.

Thank goodness for that! Hála az égnek!

If you thought conjugating verbs with different suffixes was hard - imagine having to learn a completely different word each time! |||verb|||||||||||||||| Ha azt hitted, hogy a különböző utótagokkal rendelkező igék ragozása nehéz - képzeld el, hogy minden alkalommal egy teljesen más szót kell megtanulnod!

So, to get back to this tricky question of what a word is... ||||||difficult||||||

linguists don't really know, and that's actually fine. a nyelvészek nem igazán tudják, és ez tulajdonképpen rendben is van.

There are so many edge cases and exceptions about the word "word" that when linguists need to be really precise, we use completely different terminology instead ||||||||||||||||||||||||terminology| A "szó" szóval kapcsolatban olyan sok szélsőséges eset és kivétel van, hogy amikor a nyelvészeknek igazán pontosnak kell lenniük, akkor teljesen más terminológiát használunk helyette.

We talk about morphemes.

But when we're not zoomed in quite so closely, it's still totally okay to talk in terms of words ||||zoomed|||||||||||||| ||||aproximados||||||||||||||

Like when we're talking about combining words into longer phrases and sentences, like in our next video!

See you next time!

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Linguistics, which is produced by Complexly & PBS. |||||||||||||the production company|Public Broadcasting Service

So 2020 has been... bad.

PBS has a new show called Self-Evident that explores how we've been persevering in this supremely weird year. |||||||self-explanatory||||||persisting|||extremely|| A PBS új műsora, a Self-Evident azt vizsgálja, hogy miként vagyunk kitartóak ebben a rendkívül furcsa évben.

It's hosted by historian Danielle Bainbridge from Origin of Everything and therapist Ali Mattu, who you might know from The Psych Show. ||||Danielle Bainbridge|Bainbridge|||||||therapist Ali Matt|Ali Mattu|||||||Psychology|

Because who better than a historian and a therapist to help guide us through ALL of this. Mert ki lenne jobb egy történésznél és egy terapeutánál, hogy segítsen átvezetni minket mindezen.

Self-Evident is part of PBS American Portrait, a massive storytelling project involving thousands of people around the country. Self-Evident maakt deel uit van PBS American Portrait, een enorm verhalend project waarbij duizenden mensen uit het hele land betrokken zijn.

Subscribe to PBS Voices for Self-Evident and other great shows, and tell them Crash Course sent you. Abonneer u op PBS Voices for Self-Evident en andere geweldige shows en vertel ze dat Crash Course u heeft gestuurd.