mor·phol·o·gy

2020

Morphology, in linguistics, refers to the forms and structure of words in language. This project explores its various meanings in three parts.

For the first part of this project, I created three posters, with each one highlighting and approaching language structure from a different perspective.

semi-glossy round blob shapes floating amidst a thin line that swirls around them — blobs

a ceiling shaped like a wave covered in nubby shapes of different sizes — nubs

a metallic-textured form made of a series of concentric circles, like the splash made by a drop of water in a puddle — waves

part two

For the second part of the project, I interpreted morphology in its most general interpretation, which describes the forms of things—anything, not just words. I modeled and rendered three images in Blender, then post-processed them.

a poster that reads, "it isn't unfeasible, it's unfamiliar" in English, beside vertical Japanese text that roughly translates to the same. — using English and Japanese to show contrast in types of sentence structure. the Japanese text reads, "it's easy, it's intuitive." while sentences in English generally follow a subject-verb-object order, Japanese places verbs at the ends of sentences, with verb objects coming before them.

a poster with the syllables of "mellifluous" broken down and wrapped in blob shapes. text at the bottom reads, "sweetly or smoothly-flowing; sweet-sounding". — breaking the word "mellifluous" into its syllables

a poster that reads "um sonho que eu tenho que vocês criticam, que eles insultam, que eu continuarei sonhando" in Portuguese — using Portuguese to highlight the complexity of verb conjugations. compared to many other languages, including English and Japanese, Portuguese has a great amount of different verb forms.

part three

Lastly, I composited images from the previous steps together, creating a pair of posters that emphasize morphology in its two interpretations.

composite poster containing japanese and english text in front of floating blobs

a poster with text "it isn't unfeasible, it's unfamiliar" in japanese and english, composited atop an image of floating blobs