yasmin p.

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