Sentence

Phrase

Words

Morphemes

            Believe me or not? In my whole life of learning Mathematics, I thought tree diagram is specially designed only to learn probability. But, English proved me wrong and make me realized something. I was quite shocked that tree diagram can identify and analyze sentence (noun phrase, verb phrase). I looked carefully at the tree diagram presented in the power point and I was very curious to know how is analyze been carried out. That’s why when we first time analyze noun phrase by using tree diagram, I made many mistakes. But then, when I asked my friend the correct way of analyzing it, I understand it right away. I was so glad.

It has head, premodifier + head, head + postmodifier, premodifier + head + postmodifier. As for verb phrase, it contains verb and the phrase is describing the verb. The branches of the tree show the relationship between the levels of structure (with the phrases at each head). In a tree diagram, determiner is article ( the, that, those, these, a, an).

            After several times of analyzing sentences by using tree diagram, I started to like the process and it helps me enhancing my understanding. I realized that using tree diagram can show a clearer picture of the sentence.

            As we play the game, I found out there are many ways of attracting pupils to learn English. The other groups also came out with interesting game like application of morpheme that is monomorphemic, dimorphemic and polymorphemic words. It was interesting! I felt like we were gambling. But actually it was not. It encourages us to understand morpheme better.

            Words are classified according to their functional possibilities with other words in a sentence and the possibilities of tabular relations with other words.

(i)                 Paradigmatic relations (vertical list)

For example :       She                  to school.

                                  He        walked        the dog.

                                They                           together.

(ii)               Syntagmatic relations (horizontal list)

For example   :     “She walked to school.”  is ordered horizontally

   where each of the words must be in the correct

   sequence. It cannot be “She to school walked”.

(iii)             Variable words

For example :      Sleep       Sleeps      Sleeping        Slept  

                              Words that can be added with affixes that are vary.               

(iv)             Invariable words

For example :  So, thus, if, then and so on. These are the words that

   has no possibility of inflectional or derivational.

(v)               Major words (Open Class Items)

Words that remain open to new additions .

(vi)             Minor words (Closed Class Items)

Words that do not easily accept new additions, not productive, fixed and limited in expansion possibilities.

For example : “ a + car”, the phrase cannot be “ a + the + car”.

            There are 6 processes of word formation which are (1) Affixation (2) Compunding (3) Reduplication (4) Clipping (5) Acronym (6) Others minor processes (blending, onomatopoeia, antonomasia). Among that word formation, I think I already quite familiar about all the processes except for the minor processes. Therefore, I don’t need a period of time to understand the term like I used to understand morpheme earlier on. But, the new processes I heard about are onomatopoeia. I used to hear about the word in analyzing poems but I never know it is one of the word formations. Onomatopoeia is like we know that particular something by just one common name. For example, every toothpaste we used, the name for it would be popularly known as colgate. Well, everything is going quite fine now but I hope that I can cope with syntax in the next lesson.

            Inflectional morphemes are morpheme which gives further information about the grammatical functions they carry with no change in grammatical or vocabulary meaning. Thus, inflections are an affix used to change form and function only from the grammatical point with no change in part of speech of the word. For example,  love

                                    love ( s )

                                    love ( d )

                                    lov   ( ing ) .

Those morphemes in the brackets are all bound morphemes which have separate grammatical functions but which do not change the meaning of the original morpheme (the root).

            Derivational morphemes are morphemes that combined with the root word to make further new words and it changes the meaning too. Thus, derivational morpheme is an affix used to change form and meaning from a lexical point with a change in part of speech. For example, verb to noun: hope + ful. Other examples are, mis – misjudge, misunderstanding

                          un – unreal, undo, undergoing

            Meanwhile for allomorph, this is the first time I heard of this word. It refers to a variant of a morpheme. It occurs due to the phonological and lexical conditioning. Phonological conditioning is of the surrounding sounds in the voiced and voiceless feature of the phoneme before the morpheme. Voiceless morpheme will produce voiceless allomorph and vice versa. The example of allomorphs is /s/, /t/ and /d/. As for the lexical conditioning, it includes all the past tense. For example, “take”   – “took”

                                                                                                                              “make” – “made”

                                                                                                                              “break” – “broke”

            The other one is the zero allomorphs which has no addition or subtraction of its part although the meaning has change. For example “sheep” (singular), “sheep” (plural). Besides, zero allomorph also happens indicating masculine or feminine gender. For example, lawyer.

            Actually, I don’t understand allomorph quite well yet. But, I plan to read it slowly as to gain better understanding about it.  But, i really enjoy English lecture.

            In morpheme itself, it consists of free and bound morpheme, allomorphs, inflectional and derivational morphology. This week, we look more into free and bound morpheme. Free morphemes are morphemes which can stand on their own have their own grammatical function like adjective, verb and noun. For instance, like which the grammatical function is as verb. As for bound morphemes, they are morphemes which cannot stand on their own because it needs to be combined with other morpheme to form a word with new meaning. For example, “unlikely”. The original word is “like” where “un” and “ly” are the bound morpheme which is attached to it to form a new word with new meaning. But, bound morphemes do have grammatical function. For example, ‘un’ which shows negation.

            Our lecturer has posted new information about morpheme on her blog. After I read it, it really addend my knowledge about morpheme. It was simple therefore it can be easily understood. The examples of free and bound morpheme are as following

            I admit that learning phonetics is difficult and it requires lots of attention in learning it. I haven’t recognized the sounds made by some of the words. Actually, all the consonants are categorized in different types. For instance, /p/ is plosives voiceless bilabial. According to our lecturer we must know the category of each consonant. It sounds scary.

            Well, we finally have our minimal pairs. But, at first we made mistake for we thought that only the sound must similar but we did not really look at the spelling. So, many of the words we found are not considered as minimal pairs. Then, we have to do correction before we present it. There was a group which was highly recommended to do correction and so they did it. Until the last fifth chance, they manage get it corrects. I’m proud of them for they willing to learn and did not feel embarrassed to do all over again although they have tried for 5 times. Good! When we looked at that group, we felt that we need to do some small modification. At first, we thought only the sound quite similar but the spelling does not matter. But after we saw Annie’s group presentation, we realized our mistakes and we still have the time and chance to correct it.

As for our group, we have little mistakes. The minimal pair we have is as following:

i.                    Home

ii.                  Page

iii.                Pear

iv.                Now

I love to learn diphthong for it really teaches me the correct way of saying some words. After I know the correct pronunciation of some of the diphthong, I realized that I made many mistakes in pronouncing some words. Again, I learned something new and valuable. I really like the session when the computer software produce the sound. It sounds funny but we must pronounce the diphthong according to the sound made. We all enjoyed the moment. Some of us really put on effort in pronouncing the diphthong which makes me realized that any slight mistakes made in pronouncing the word, it may run a little bit from its meaning.

            According to Loga Mahesan Baskaran, vowels are sounds where there is an escape of the airstream centrally through the mouth. Vowels are “a”, “e”, “I”, “o”, and “u”. The production of the vowel sounds depends on the movement of the tongue and lip-shape. Tongue position may be (a) High, mid or low (b) front, central or back. Lips are rounded or unrounded / spread. Therefore, the vertical and horizontal tongue position and lip rounding are used to describe vowels. In learning vowels better, we have also studied the vowels chart. I was quite confused when looking at the chart. But, I will try my best to understand it.

             As for our activity, we are asked to prepare one type of tongue twister. It was fun for all of us were so busy to find the related information. I think my sentence got grammatical error. My sentence was “The chained cat chased after the chick in the church”. But still I want to present later in order to let Mdm Ira corrects it for me. I know there’s mistake in the sentence but I just do not know where. Some of our friends look for tongue twister in the net. I can see that everyone is enjoying in doing the task. Some of them even say the tongue twister phrase in the toilet! It was fun! I really love this tongue twister which I downloaded from the internet:

There was a fisherman named Fisher
who fished for some fish in a fissure.
Till a fish with a grin,
pulled the fisherman in.
Now they’re fishing the fissure for Fisher.
 

http://www.1stIntern_Collection of Tongue Twisters

I cannot read it fast for I would pronounce the some as if the “s” becomes “sh”. See! Tongue twister really set you up which was really interesting. I’m looking forward for another activity like this in English lecture. It can releases my tense.

Figure 1.2: Diagram of the speech organs http://images.google.com.my/imgres?imgurl=http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/organs.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/phonation.htm&usg=__21trvNGkiGTvPe8FgJ4rKXeUTYk=&h=591&w=555&sz=115&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=B8rn2FV2KrCe1M:&tbnh=135&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dspeech%2Borgans%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1

There are 3 sound (auditory) production processes which are initiation, phonation and articulation. In initiation, it requires the creation of an air stream in the vocal tract where it is initiated by the lungs. Meanwhile for phonation, this is the speech production which is responsible for voiced and voiceless sound. When the vocal cords are brought together, air passing out of the lungs causes them to vibrate and voice is produced. If the vocal cords are pulled back, they cannot vibrate which is called voiceless. As for articulation, the airstream passes through the vocal tract may be modified by the movement of the lips and tongue (active articulators) obstructing its passage through the vocal tract to varying degrees. Actually, I don’t quite understand the topic. But I think after several times reading through the notes, I think I can understand it. Sometimes, when I look at the glottis, I’m confused whether the sound made is voices or voiceless. I still cannot differentiate whether the glottis is open or close. I got quite stress when our lecturer told us that the coming topic would be more difficult than this week’s lesson. Our activity for this week is preparing some words for minimal pairs. At first, I thought it was a game and got blurry. But, after Mdm Ira explained to us, I understand it better. My first understanding about minimal pairs is the words which have the same sound but differ in spelling. I’m sure it’s going to be fun!

count on,

 rely on,

a shoulder to cry on,

good problem listener,

somebody who sees the real you inside,

somebody who dares to critic you for good,

not jealous of you,

be there for you…

A FRIEND’S EXISTENCE

© 1996, Wayne Lee

Will you remember all the days
when I was there with you,
remembering my smile and my laughter?

Or will you forget
and dwell in the lost instead,
mourning for your friend’s farewell?

A portrait of my existence
lies deep within your heart,
cherishing the memories we once shared.

Or will you decide
nothing is worth keeping,
losing the special dream you once held?

Love will never die.
Love is deep inside.
Friendships are forever.
Remember my love for you.

I am always there,
watching over you.
To give inspiration
and strength when you may fail
in a world of fears.

Will you continue to dream
and breathe the wonders of life,
striving to be who you want to be?

Or will you succumb
to the defeats in life,
failing to never overcome?
Dreams will never die.
Strength is deep inside.
Friendships are forever.
Remember my faith in you.

I am always there,
believing in you.
To give encouragement
and love when you may fail
in a world of fears.

            Living in Malaysia where we can meet all sorts of races and religion, we need to use one common language to communicate with each other. So, it is when the multicultural society exists in our society. We have mixed marriage, code mixing and code switching. When facing this situation, we may need to adapt to it so that we can communicate with others. But how it affects English language? For example, code mixing. Code mixing is a language where it combined two languages together. I think that, it may not help one’s much in learning English for one may use Bahasa Melayu to cover any word in English which he does not know. As a result, one may not know the correct term to be used in future. For example, “Who knows about the berita terbaru?”

            Then, it is the code switching. I think it is interesting for we need to be very sensible in order to use the correct forms of language when we talk to different people. For example, we would use very simple English when we teach Year 1 student’s numbers so that they can absorb the new knowledge easily.

            There are actually other factors but I am interested more in rural and urban settings and multicultural society on how it affects English Language in Malaysia.