About Morphology

[yun4395]

How many morphemes are there in the sentence, “Our teacher’s wildness shocked the girls’ parents immediately?”

This question is from my quiz last time. I thought the there are sixteen morphemes in that sentence, but it was wrong. I hope somebody can help me get the correct answer. By the way, what does morpheme mean?

[jutfrank]

I'm afraid we don't help with homework.

[Raymott]

By the way, what does morpheme mean?

You can count 16 morphemes in that sentence, but you don't know what morpheme means?

[Tdol]

How did you come to the total of sixteen?

[yun4395]

Our teach er ’s wild ness shock ed the girl s ’s parent s immediate ly

[Piscean]

the girl s ’s parent s

You appear to have turned one morpheme into two.

[Raymott]

I see girls' as {girl} + {s = plural} + {' = possessive}, where {} is a morpheme. That's three.

"Nothing at all is missing in the possessive apostrophe of words ending in /s/ like <the Smiths' car>. There has never been a sound after the /s/. However, there is a zero morpheme: <Smith+s+0> 'Smith + plural + possessive'."
https://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-1566.html

[Tdol]

Some would argue that immediate has more than one morpheme.

[Raymott]

Yes, I would agree.
"from assimilated form of in- "not, opposite of" (see in- (1)) + mediatus "in the middle" (see mediate)."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/immediate

[jutfrank]

I see girls' as {girl} + {s = plural} + {' = possessive}, where {} is a morpheme. That's three.

Hmm. I don't think I would 'count' a zero morpheme as a morpheme in a task such as this. For me, morphemes and zero/null morphemes are categorically distinct, so I'd say that there are only two morphemes in girls' [girl + s], and one zero morpheme.

From Wikipedia, 'Null morpheme':

The existence of a null morpheme in a word can also be theorized by contrast with other forms of the same word showing alternative morphemes. For example, the singular number of English nouns is shown by a null morpheme that contrasts with the plural morpheme -s.

• cat = cat + -∅ = ROOT ("cat") + SINGULAR
• cats = cat + -s = ROOT ("cat") + PLURAL

If we are to count the possessive marker apostrophe as a morpheme then we should also count cat as having two morphemes, as shown above.

Anyway, yun4395, did your teacher ask you to consider zero morphemes too?