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October 04, 2005
Assignment 3, writing exercise
The advantages of morphological modifications are numerous. We can make our conversations more creative by using words like "unpretty" instead of "ugly" to put more emphasis and focus on the fact. Also, it gives those who are native to the language a wider range of lexicon to use without using complex words that a unintelligent or young person might not understand. It gives those who are not native to the language an easier time learning it because they could potentially use/learn half the words someone native would. For example, if a nonnative speaker of English knew the word pleasant but not horrid, he/she could put the prefix un- on pleasant and use a totally correct word without learning more vocabulary. This of course, depends on the person learning these suffixes and prefixes. It is relatively easy to learn these prefixes and suffixes, though. There aren't that many available to learn (at least not as much as content words).
We are able to plant more meaning in each word if we have these modifications and we can potentially understand any word as long as we know the little modification suffixes.
I found it really easy to pick up the different languages in the book exercizes. I am not saying that I understand the language and could repeat things back to you, but I understand how the words were set up and it seemed not so hard from the standpoint that the book gave.
Posted by lcisyeich at October 4, 2005 09:33 PM
Comments
People always say that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, but after reading the chapter and your post, it seems like English would not be so difficult. I know I have a biased opinion because English is my first language, but if one could learn the morphological modifications of our language, they could express themselves in a variety of ways, as you said. They could also understand the thoughts and ideas of others...when you break English down into its individual morphemes, it seems so simplistic. Good post!
Posted by: Brenna S. at October 5, 2005 04:17 PM