1. Contrastive Morphology
Morphology= the study of morphemes
(combination of sounds, words, word
stems, affixes– unit of language one up
from phonemes)
Morphemes = combination of sounds
that make up words
e.g. books = book+ -s

2. English vs. Thai
• English is an inflectional language.
= adding inflection morphemes; showing
grammatical info such as case, number, tense,
gender.
• Thai is an isolating language. (analytic
language)
= almost every word consists of a single
morpheme, free morphemes- standing alone
as a word.

3. General morphological patterns of
English and difficulty for Thais
1. Inflectional suffixes in English
= creates a change in the grammatical function
of a word (gender, number, tense)
e.g. child-children
show shows showed showing
Many Thais have difficulty mastering this as Thai
doesn’t have any such system.

4. 1. Inflectional suffixes
1.1 Plural noun suffixes
• Adding –s to the noun; causing a change in
number.
Can be pronounced differently /s/
/z/
/Iz/
/s/ after voiceless consonants /p
t
k
f
T/ e.g. lips, weeks, chiefs,
myths
/z/ after voiced consonants /b
d
g
D
m
n N
l
h
r
w
j/
e.g. cars
hills homes dogs ideas wives
/Iz/
after /tS
S
Z
dZ
s
z / e.g. matches

5. Difficulty for Thais
• Thai has no plural noun inflection but has noun
classifiers.
• Thai people have a tendency to write:
*I bought some book.
*He owns two car.
*There are 2 house in the wood.
• Pronunciation: /s/
/Iz/
z/

6. Test
1.) From the sentence “He gives his mom a kiss
when he wants something.”
The initial problem with this recognition and
production of these affixes is phonological
and not a morphological one.”
Please explain this phenomenon.

7. Difficulty for Thais
Irregular forms
e.g. man/men foot /feet
goose /geese
Zero morphemes
e.g. sheep/sheep deer/deer
How do we know if the noun is singular or plural?

8. 1.2 possessive cases
• Possessive singular
• Possessive plural
= apostrophe s
e.g. /s/ wife’s student’s animal’s
students’
/z/ school’s Jane’s
/Iz/
houses’ judges’
Occur before the head noun e.g.
the boy’s mother
the animal’ s skin

9. • Sometimes apostrophe s is replaced by of (of
phrase)
a city’s problem
the problem of the city
a team’s captain
the captain of a team
the Mayor’s responsibility
the responsibility of
the mayor
• However, of phrase may sound gr. odd
*the book’s cover
the cover of the book
*the table’s leg
the legs of the table

10. • /kHN/ is functioned as
grammatical particle to show possessive.
• Contrastive English and Thai
The leg of the table
(Thais delete “the”) *leg of table

11. • What do you think of these sentences?
1.) the book of John.
2.) the car of my father.
Activity: Think of the of phrase in English and
Thai.

12. Difficulty for Thais
• The use of apostrophe s may confuse Thai
people.
• Of phrase in English are not applicable to
every sentence.

13. 1.3 Pronoun inflection
• Subject pronouns in English have object
pronoun counterparts.
Subject
Object
Possessive adj Poss pronoun
I
Me
My
Mine
You
you
Your
yours
We
Us
Our
ours
They
Them
Their
Thiers
He
Him
His
His
She
Her
Her
Hers
It
It
Its
Its

14. English vs. Thai
1. Thai has no inflections; neither subject or
object.
I
like her
She likes me

15. 2. Noun determiner in Thai = /kHN/
/kHN/ can be deleted.
This is different from English: My book
Which one is easier for Thais?
a.
This book is yours.
b.
This is your book.
Possessive pronouns are absent in Thai so some Thais find it difficult to
master possessive pronoun, This book is yours
It is easier to get, “This is your book.”

16. Difficulty for Thais
• The pronoun systems of English are more
complicated than Thai.
• May be difficult for some Thai people to
understand why “I” becomes “me” if it is an
object of the sentence.
• Possessive pronouns are very problematic.

17. 1.4 Verb inflection
• English verbs can have many different forms.
Simple
form
Show
Have
Want
Go
3rd person
singular
Shows
Has
Wants
Goes
Past tense
Showed
Had
Wanted
Went
Past
participle
Shown
Had
Wanted
Went
Present
participle
Showing
Having
Wanting
Going

18. Difficulty for Thais
• Inflectional affixes showing past and present
times or numbers are absent in Thai.
• Thai students have a tendency to make
mistakes when using English inflectional
affixes.
* She come here every day.
* I come here every day last year.
* She has see it somewhere.

19. 1.5 Inflection in comparison of adj. and
adv.
• Comparison  comparative degree
 superlative degree
-er is used in English to mark the comparative
forms of adj. and adv.
-est is used in English to mark the superlative
degree of adj. and adv.

20. • In Thai, comparative degree is marked by the
addition of words /kwA$/ more.
• Superlative degree is marked by the
addition of words /tH
i^isu$t/ most
Page 32
- Thai is less complicated than English in
comparison of adj. and adv.

21. Difficulty for Thais
• Comparative and superlative in English is a
system which is more complicated and
irregular than Thai as Thai learners must
internalize the following rules:
1. All one syllable adj. and adv. are marked with
the –er inflection in the comparative and –est
inflection is marked in the superlative.

22. 2. All other forms are preceded by more…than
in the comparative and most in the
superlative.
‘than’ may be deleted in some cases.
e.g. Pat is older than Kim. Who is older?
3. There are some exceptions in rule 2 e.g.
good/better/best
bad/worse/worst
little/less/least
much/more/most
4. Superlative forms are almost always preceded
by the.

23. Difficulty for Thais
• Difficult to master the comparative and superlative
forms.
• Because there is no article in Thai, there is a
tendency for Thai to delete ‘the’ from superlative
forms in English.
• Difficult to master its grammatical forms.
From your experience of learning English, what mistakes do
usually make when using comparative and superlative
degree? Why?