Construct · 4 fields · 7 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, four constructs Nearest construct by meaningerosioncompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to morphology is erosion.
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The study of the outward form and internal structure of living organisms and their parts. Goethe's 1790 Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären traced how the parts of a plant are variations on a shared underlying form, and he later named this study Morphologie in his 1817 essays on the subject. In this field the referent is the shape and structural organisation of a plant or animal, its bones, organs, and outward appearance, held apart from what those parts do. That living body is a different thing from the structure of a word, the shape of a landform, or an operation applied to a picture.[1][2]
The study of how words are built from smaller meaningful parts. August Schleicher introduced the term into the study of language with his 1859 Zur Morphologie der Sprache, and Matthews's 1974 Morphology set out the modern theory of word structure, organised around the morpheme, the smallest unit that carries meaning or grammatical function, such as a root or an affix. Here the referent is the internal make-up of words, how roots and endings combine and how related forms pattern together. That patterning of words is not the structure of an organism, the shape of the land, or an operation on a digital image.[3][4]
The study of the form of the Earth's surface and the landforms that make it up. Davis's 1899 The geographical cycle proposed that landscapes evolve through stages of youth, maturity, and old age as running water wears down uplifted land, giving a framework for reading a landform's shape as a record of its history. In this field the referent is the geometry and development of hills, valleys, slopes, and river channels. That sculpted terrain is a different thing from the body of an organism, the make-up of a word, or a filter run over an image.[5]
A theory that analyses shapes by probing them with a small reference set called a structuring element. Georges Matheron and Jean Serra founded mathematical morphology at the Paris School of Mines in the 1960s: Matheron's 1975 Random Sets and Integral Geometry gave its set-theoretic foundation and Serra's 1982 Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology made it the standard toolkit for processing binary and greyscale images. Here the referent is a family of operations, such as erosion and dilation, that add or remove points from a set according to how the structuring element fits. Those operators on a picture have nothing in common with the body of an organism, the parts of a word, or the shape of the land beyond the word for form.[6][7]
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