To parse a word means to analyze it into component morphemes. Recall
that morphemes are the smallest units in a language that link a form
with a meaning or function.
Parsing is generally done on complex words that came from Latin and Greek. (We call such words "Latinate" vocabulary or "Classical" vocabulary.) Such words typically show the clearest word structure, in part because Latin and Greek had many affixes for inflection and for dervivation, and (unlike in Germanic) their word structure REQUIRED putting together roots with affixes. Further, many Classical words were coined long after the classical period, so the word structure is more transparent than words from English or French that have been in the language so long that their morphological structure has become murky. With many native and nativized words, what were once separate morphemes have over a long period of time fused together.
For example, the native word stirrup comes from stig 'climb' + rap 'rope'. The word meant in Old English 'loop of rope for placing the foot to climb on a horse'. This word was a compound in Old English, with two separate morphemes, but now it is a single, unanalyzable morpheme with the modern meaning 'device for holding the foot when mounting and riding a horse.' The whole word now has one morpheme instead of two, and it no longer refers specifically to rope at all.
The following example words are for parsing practice. For each morpheme in a word:
1. specify the form of the morpheme (the major allomorphs, separated by slashes)
2. below it write the morpheme's meaning or function. (There may be some parts of the word that are "linking forms" without any meaning.)
3. To complete the parse, we state the actual meaning of the whole word in Modern English. Note that this meaning may be somewhat indirectly related to the component morphemes.
Examples:
The 'e' in parentheses is only there for spelling reasons--it has no
etymological connection with the word for 'create' in Latin. It is
only a prompt to remind us that the morpheme /ate/ is pronounced with
a front mid vowel.
Parsing is related to finding the etymology of a word, but it is a
little different because the focus is on word structure, rather than
word history. This has various consequences.
Word structure (for our purposes) includes primarily roots
and affixes. So, many of original bits of the source word, such as
inflectional morphology in the original language, are not relevant to a
parsing.
For example, for hippopotamus, you mind find in a dictionary
etymology that the word comes from Greek hippos 'horse'
followed by Greek potamos 'river'. The dictionary etymology
might also indicate that the -us ending comes from Latin (Latin
and Greek were fairly closely related languages, and the Greek noun
inflectional ending -os is historically/etymologically the same
as Latin -us.)
In a parse, we leave out the information about what language the
word parts come from: it is not relevant for this purpose.
Even more important, we also strip the source elements down to their
roots, removing inflectional endings from the original language
that the dictionary etymology included, if they do not survive in the
borrowed word.
The resulting parse:
For the definition, you have to get close enough to the modern meaning
for someone to understand the thing defined as something distinct from
similar things, but you do not need a very technically precise
definition. For our purposes 'large African mammal living around
rivers and swamps' would be good enough.
Important: Definitions
should preserve the part of speech of the word defined. So you would
not define somnambulant as 'to sleep-walk', but rather
'sleep-walking'. It is an adjective, not a verb, so the definition
must be appropriate for an adjective.
As stated above, parsing is generally done on complex words that came
from the classical languages.
The aim in parsing is to find out the structure of the word,
isolating the meaningful elements that recur not only in this word but
in other words, so that
we can learn more of those elements and learn more words that use
them.
Etymology, on the other hand, is more like the story of a word from
the earliest point we can trace, to its modern meaning. Etymology can
be done on any word, because all words have SOME history. Even a novel
creation like googol 'mathematical term for 10 to the 100th
power' has an etymology: "Novel creation of amusing-sounding
word by young son of the mathematician who defined it". But
it wouldn't make too much sense to try to parse googol,
because it is a simplex word, i.e. it has only one morpheme in it.
In the hippopotamus example, the parse is different from the
etymology, not only because a parse does not include the source
language of loanwords as an etymology does, but also because some
dictionary etymologies break the word down into whole source
words instead of roots, e.g. an etymology might state: "from
L. hippopotamus, from Gr. hippos 'horse' +
potamos 'river' " . (Dictionary etymologies are heavily
abbreviated and you have to figure out the abbreviations for
the dictionary you use.) The
-os part of both of the components of the compound was just a
Greek inflectional ending signalling a certain class of masculine noun
with nominative case. It's not in the parse because it doesn't show up
in the word today. The -us ending of hippopotamus, on
the other hand, DOES show up in the modern word so we must take
account of it. In fact it is the Latin version of the same Greek
inflectional ending seen in hipp-os. It is enough to just gloss
it as 'noun inflection'. Later (Ch. 9) we will learn some of the
inflectional categories of Latin and Greek which have ended up in our
English words.
To find the elements relevant to parsing, look in our textbook in
Appendix 1, starting on page 221. These elements are the pure roots
and affixes, without additional morphology, such as inflectional
morphemes that allowed them to be used in whole words in Latin and Greek.
That is what we want to use in parsing: roots and affixes.
© Suzanne Kemmer
egregious
e/ex + greg + i + ous
out social group (linker) ADJ
'unpleasantly standing out; blatantly bad'
azoic
a/an + zo + ic
not animal ADJ
'without (animal) life; preceding the appearance of life on earth'
creation
cre + at(e) + ion
'create' V N
'the final product in the process of making something new'
More etymologically exact parse:
creation
cre + a + t(e) + ion
'create' stem vowel Past. part. N
'the final product in the process of making something new'
Sample words for parsing
One set of sample words comprises the phonetics terminology for our
class. For these words see Sound terminology.
apteryx hippopotamus megalith
perihelion bilabial eliminate
transliterate seminal iatrogenic
anhydrous biennial apnea
endoscopy supercilious aphelion
inculpate exophthalmic laryngoscope
anemia osculate subcutaneous
luminary amygdala polysemy
pandemic androgynous agenda
memorandum exculpate hippocampus
More sample words for parsing
confluence megalith incarnation
cryptogenic geminate phyllophagous
nyctitropism phototropic phytogenic
aphasia perigee oenophile
formicivorous apterous aliform
arachnophobia apiculture oology
galactic errant errand
Parsing vs. Etymology
hippopotamus
hipp + o + potam + us
'horse' linker 'river' 'noun inflection'
'large thick-skinned herbivorous mammal living in and around tropical waters
of Africa'.