Introducing Morphology

Citation

Lieber, R. (2021). Introducing Morphology (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book belongs to the Cambridge Introductions to Language and Linguistics series. Its main text has eleven chapters over about 250 pages (pp. 1–248), followed by a short further-reading section, a glossary, references and an index. The front matter keeps the prefaces to all three editions and adds the International Phonetic Alphabet and a chart of the point and manner of articulation of English consonants and vowels. The publisher describes it as a lively introduction for undergraduates with relatively little background in linguistics, built around finding and analysing morphological data.

Chapters 1–2: What Is Morphology?; Words, Dictionaries, and the Mental Lexicon

Chapter 1 is the shortest chapter (about ten pages) and opens the subject. Chapter 2, at about 24 pages, takes up words, dictionaries and the mental lexicon. In this edition it also contains an updated, detailed introduction to using linguistic corpora, which supports the book's emphasis on gathering and analysing data.

Chapters 3–5: Lexeme Formation: The Familiar; Productivity and Creativity; Lexeme Formation: Further Afield

These chapters cover how new lexemes are formed. Chapter 3 is the longest chapter of the book at about 36 pages; Chapter 4 (about 16 pages) turns to productivity and creativity; Chapter 5 (about 18 pages) goes beyond the familiar patterns of Chapter 3. Together they correspond to the publisher's description of derivation and productivity as core topics.

Chapters 6–7: Inflection; Typology

Chapter 6 on inflection (about 32 pages) is the second longest. Chapter 7, "Typology" (about 28 pages), widens the view to morphological typology, the comparison of how languages organise word structure.

Chapters 8–9: Words and Sentences: The Interface between Morphology and Syntax; Sounds and Shapes: The Interface between Morphology and Phonology

The two interface chapters take morphology's boundaries in turn. Chapter 8 (about 16 pages) deals with syntax and Chapter 9 (about 26 pages) with phonology.

Chapters 10–11: Theoretical Challenges; Theories of Morphology

The last two chapters move from description to theory. Chapter 10, "Theoretical Challenges", runs to about 22 pages. Chapter 11, "Theories of Morphology" (about 20 pages), is new in the third edition: the publisher describes it as a final chapter covering several current theoretical frameworks, so that students are ready to understand morphological theory and to support or refute theoretical proposals.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2

• The mental lexicon: the speaker's stored knowledge of words, named by the publisher as one of the book's basic concepts.
• Linguistic corpora: collections of real language data, introduced in Chapter 2 as a source of morphological evidence.

Chapters 3–7

• Lexeme formation and derivation: the processes by which new words are made, treated in Chapters 3 and 5.
• Productivity: how freely a pattern can create new words (Chapter 4).
• Inflection: the grammatical forms of a word (Chapter 6).
• Morphological typology: the cross-linguistic classification of word structure (Chapter 7).

Chapters 8–11

• The morphology–syntax interface and the morphology–phonology interface: the two boundaries that the chapter titles name.
• Morphological theory: the several theoretical frameworks introduced in Chapter 11.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Designed for beginners with data. The publisher says the book is for undergraduates with relatively little background and teaches them how to find and analyse morphological data, with hands-on activities that encourage them to gather their own.
• Many exercises. The publisher lists an abundant range of exercises as a key feature, and the third edition has new examples and exercises.
• Balanced language coverage. The publisher says the book draws on a wide variety of languages and balances English morphology with that of other languages, which gives instructors a choice of examples.
• Compact length. Eleven chapters in about 250 pages make it manageable for a single introductory course, and the chapter order moves from basic concepts to interfaces and then theory.
• Current edition. The third edition adds a corpus introduction in Chapter 2 and a new final chapter on theoretical frameworks.

Limitations

• Theory comes last and briefly. Chapters 10 and 11 together are about 42 pages, so the treatment of competing theories is an introduction, not a full comparison.
• The interface chapters are short. Chapter 8, on syntax, is about 16 pages, so students who need detailed syntactic argumentation about words must look elsewhere.
• Not a reference for English. A teaching text of this length is not a full description of English word formation; for that, this site lists a separate large reference by Bauer, Lieber and Plag that draws on corpus data and dictionaries.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is a first-course textbook that is more hands-on than theoretical. Of the other morphology books on this site, Aronoff and Fudeman's What Is Morphology? is a concise problem-based introduction with a running case study, and Booij's The Grammar of Words treats word structure as part of the whole grammar. Lieber's book is a natural choice for a class that wants a compact chapter sequence from the mental lexicon through inflection and typology to the interfaces, and that wants corpus work from the start.

Katamba and Stonham's Morphology and Haspelmath and Sims's Understanding Morphology are the books to move to when the course becomes more theoretical: the latter is described as a theory-aware textbook that contrasts morpheme-based and word-based models. The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (co-written by Lieber with Laurie Bauer and Ingo Plag) is a large descriptive reference to consult for English data rather than a textbook.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates meeting morphology for the first time. A general introductory linguistics course helps, particularly the phonetic symbols listed in the front matter, but the publisher does not make it a requirement.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1–7 in order. They hold the vocabulary of morphology (words, lexemes, derivation, inflection, productivity, typology) that the later chapters assume.
• Next: Chapters 8 and 9 once the basics are secure; read Chapter 9 with the IPA chart at hand.
• Theory: Chapters 10–11 are best read after the interfaces, or at the end of a first course; for a shorter course they can be omitted.
• Practice: do the exercises as you go, and use the corpus introduction in Chapter 2 early, so that the later analysis chapters can work with data you have collected yourself.
• Free resources: the publisher lists free and instructor-only resources for the textbook; check its page for what is available.