PowerPoint Presentation 323 Morphology

3.2 The form of Morphological Rules

3.2.2 The Word Based Model.
Here, the fundamental significance of the word is significant. Rather than breaking words down, a word-schema is formulated. For example, the following English verb-forms can expressed in the following:
a) hits, sits, types, knows, feels, acts, procrastinate, regurgitate, and so forth.
b) [/Xz/, V, ‘third person singular of V].
Where X is the Lexeme of each verb in a):
E.G. X = {it, sit, know, feel, act, procrastinate, regurgitate (and so forth)},
V and /z/ ‘third person singular of Vs’. /X/ is a phonemic string such as /plej/. The word-schema a) that there is a list of word-forms that end in /z/, and that they are verbs (V), and that /z/ is the third person singular of V.
There is a closely related schema:
E. g [/X/, V, ‘x’]
Now.the two schemas can be represented in the following mapping correspondence:
E. g. [/Xz/, V, ‘third person singular of X] <--> [/X/, V, ‘x’].

3.2 The form of Morphological Rules

The word based model eliminates the need for morphemes, stems, bases, or roots. Words are related by mapping one scheme to another.
E.g. play/played:
[/X/, V, ‘x’] <--> [Xd, V, ‘past tense of ‘xd’]
“there is a string /X/, it is a verb (go, write, play, cough, …), and ‘a function ‘x’”; this corresponds with the string /Xd/, the same verb, and the past tense of ‘xd’ ‘xd’ is the function x of /X/, and ‘d’ which has the function ‘past tense’.
E.g. [/plej/,V, ‘engage in games’] corresponds with [/plejd/. V. ‘engage in games past tense’. PLAY <—> PLAYD. PLAY stands for the first bracketed sequence in the above line and PLAYD stands the second sequence.
Now is this perfectly clear? Methinks not. These rule schemas don’t cut the mustard as afar as I am concerned. Dr. A. told me that these are not explanatory, but just descriptive. If they cannot lead to an explanatory goal, why bother. At least we should try to become familiar with them, just in case I turn out to be on the wrong track.
Let us go along with set theory, followed by many logicians and mathematicians and possibly others in other fields. First, the following: “hits, sits, types, knows, feels, acts, procrastinates, regurgitates” form a set in their own right, just as the uninflected form (infinitive form) is a set and the proposed Lexemes of them form a set:
E.g. {HIT, SIT, TYPE, KNOW, FEEL, ACT, PROCRASTINATE, REGURGITATE, …}.