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M is for Morphology

Updated: Sep 29, 2019

Ella Minnow Pea becomes an exercise in morphology as the characters lose their accustomed building blocks of language, one letter at a time, and they are forced to reinvent how they speak in more and more constrained circumstances. While their initial strategy is to use more advanced vocabulary, as their obscure options run thin, they are soon needing to invent their own words. As they manufacture words using letters they all allowed to use, they go on an interesting journey of phonetics, etymology, and childlike regression.


First, they simple replace phonemes with the nearest sounding phoneme – as in closing a letter with “cloze,” which is actually a more appropriate phonetic spelling of the word in this context (Dunn, 2001, p. 11). A second strategy used increasingly as the novel unfolds is the invention of compounded and blended words using mixed morphemes from all of history and all of the world, including Greek, Latin, and French. This is not unlike the way our language actually evolves. Therefore, as the novel frequently mixes the most obscure of accepted English words with realistic fakes – Dunn’s cleverly morphed inventions – it is hard to tell which is which because his neologisms are formed in much the same way many English words are. The result is a lesson in etymology as the reader dissects words morpheme by morpheme in order to understand their new meanings.


In the later sections of the novel, when letters become scarce, the language regresses to a childlike state of very basic word construction and combination. Phonetically-based spelling errors and the use of shorter and shorter words and sentences, something perceived as charming and predictable in children, instead reads as encroaching insanity when coming from adults.


Go on an inventive exploration of this novel’s MORPHOLOGY


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