Lecture 1 2 Borderline between lexicology and morphology basic concepts

Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or gramatical function. The term comes from French morphme, coined by analogy with phonme, from Greek morph (= shape, form). There are many variations in how the term is used and understood, arising in the main from a distinction between language as arrangement and language as process. (1) Leonard Bloomfield (Language, 1933) Example: The cats were sitting unhappily in the rain is analysable into the morphemic string: the + cat + s + were + sit(t) + ing + un + happy + ly + in + the + rain. The 8-word sentence consists of 12 morphemes, all of equal status. (2) Joseph Vendryes (Le Langage, 1921) the + CAT + s + (BE + past/plural) + SIT(T) + ing + un + HAPPY + ly + in + the + RAIN (in which the lower-case items are morphemes, the upper-case lexemes). The 8-word sentence in this analysis contains 8 morphemes and 5 lexemes. Dwight Bolinger (Aspects of Language, 1968) Andr Martinet (lments de linguistique gnrale, 1970) - moneme

MORPHOLOGY Yule 61 (or tekauer 64) from Greek morph (shape, structure) and logy (study) FREE MORPHEMES BOUND MORPHEMES: un-, -ed, -ist, -s etc Example: undressed unprefix (bound morpheme) dress stem (free morpheme) - ed suffix (bound morpheme)

Problematic words: repeat, receive or reduce - the elements -peat, -ceive and -duce - not free morphemes. Free morphemes fall into two categories: lexical morphemes and functional morphemes. Bound morphemes fall also into two basic categories: derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.

Yule 63 MORPHS and ALLOMORPHS morphs = the actual forms used to realize morphemes Example: the form cat = a single morph realizing a lexical morpheme The form cat consists of two morphs, realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (plural). allomorphs of a particular morpheme; for example the morpheme plural: cat + plural, sheep + plural, and man + plural zero-morph: the plural form of sheep = sheep + irregular forms of plurals and past tenses in English rules: man + plural or go + past men and went individual morphological realization

Other basic terms and relations: ROOT root word of bloody, bloodily, bloodhound, bloodthirsty, A root word: blood bloodthirstiness, cold-blooded, cold-bloodedly, bleed, bleeds, bleeding, nose bleed.

A root creation : a) motivated root-creation (splash can be adapted to splish, splosh, sploosh, splush) b) and ex-nihilo root-creation (Kodak, googol) = the purest case of word manufacture words are created with no morphological, phonological or orthographic motivation whatsoever common in fiction (fantasy: Robert A. Heinleins Martian word grok suggests empathy and understanding: the ungrokkable vastness of ocean (Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961). Edgar Rice Burroughss Tarzan at the Earths Core (1929) Pellucidar the anagrammatic tarag (variant of tiger) and jalok (variant of jackal akal), the thag (a primeval1 ox, echoing stag2), the sagoth (a gorilla-like hominid, echoing and perhaps blending savage and Goth), the clipped horrib (a snake-like being overtly referred to as horrid and horrible), and the perhaps ex-nihilo gyor, a triceratops found on the Gyor Cors (the Gyor plains, whose name has a reduplicative quality). Such creations are usually nouns, but any part of speech is possible: They first repeated the word sak a number of times, and then Tars Tarkas made several jumps, repeating the same word before each leap; then, turning to me, he said, sak! I saw what they were after, and gathering myself together I sakked with such marvelous success that I cleared a good hundred and fifty feet. (Burroughs, 1912, A Princess of Mars, ch.4)
1

primeval, MAINLY UK primaeval .oq`H!lh9-u k. adjective ancient; existing at or from a

stag (ANIMAL) noun [C] plural stags or stag = an adult male deer

very early time: primeval forests

2

Although such ad-hoc creations seldom move into the wider world, some occasionally do. J.R.R. Tolkiens hobbit appears in1937 to echo a blend hob (a rustic3) and rabbit. The limits of actual or apparent root-creation are hard to establish, because it shades into such conventional of word-formation as: turning names into words: Hoover becoming to hoover a rug, blending: smog from smoke and fog, abbreviation: mob from mobile vulgus, and a classic clipping is: tawdry from tawdrie lace (16C) in turn from Seynt Audries lace, as sold at St Audreys Fair at Ely in East Anglia (Audrey in turn being a Normanization of Anglo-Saxon Etheldreda). Such creations can reasonably be identified as roots because they can and often do become the foundations of more complex forms, such as hobbitomane, Hoovermatic, Kodachrome, mobster, smog-bound, tawdriness, and triffid-like. Echoism (1880) has two meanings: (1) A word that echoes a sound: splash echoing a liquid striking something or something striking liquid; crunch suggesting something brittle (krehk) breaking into pieces. (2) An expression that echoes or alludes to other: the statement Marking T.S.Eliots centenary, not with a whimper but bang (Time, 26 Sept. 1988) echoes and inverts Eliots own lines This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper (The Hollow Men, 1925)

BASE Also base form. (13C: through French from Latin basis, Greek bsis = a step, stance, pedestal). A word or lexeme from which another is derived, for example the baase of sharpen is sharp, of dorsal (chrbtov napr. dorsal fin = chrbtov plutva) is dors-. Within a series, successive forms are bases: sharp for sharpen, sharpen for shapener. Here, sharp is a primary base and sharpen a secondary base. A word that serves as a base is a base word; part of a word that serves as a base is a bound base. STEM Also theme. A stem is a term in grammar and word-formation for a root plus the element that fits it into the flow of language. Latin, the root am (love) and a thematic vowel -a- make up the stem ama-, to which appropriate inflections are added: -s in amas (thou lovest), -t in amat (he/she/it loves). The only stems in present-day English are acquisitions from Latin and Greek: their stems are negatnegative and auditory from Latin negare (to deny), audire (to listen) and auditSpellings like negitive and audatory not possible. STEM FORMATIVE (formant)
3

rustic (adjective) = simple and often rough in appearance; typical of the countryside: a rustic bench/cabin; The property has a certain rustic charm.

A term in linguistics for a word element that attaches to a root or base so that a suffix can be then added: the -t- added to dogma to produce the stem dogmat- in dogmatic, dogmatism. Root, stem, base conclusion Taken from English Word-formation (1991:2022) All three terms are used in literature to designate that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed. A root is a form which is not further analyzable (untouchables the root is touch, to which first the suffix -able, then the prefix un- and finally the suffix -s have been added). A stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology (untouchables the stem is untouchable, although in the form touched the stem is touch). A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means that any root or any stem can be termed a base, but the set of bases is not exhausted by the union of the set of roots and the set of stems: a derivationally analyzable form to which derivational affixes are added can only be referred to as a base (touchable can act as a base for prefixation to give untouchable, but in this process touchable could not be referred to as a root because it is analyzable in terms of derivational morphology, nor as a stem since it is the adding of inflectional affixes which is in question).

PRODUCTIVITY Taken from Cambridge Grammar of English4 (2006:484)

Prefixes un- and de- and the -er/-or suffix are highly productive, with new words constantly being formed. The suffix -ion is particularly productive in English: reunion, confusion, extension, explosion, direction, infection, inflation, intuition, relation, resignation. The adjectival suffix -al produces a large number of high-frequency adjectives, e.g. critical, crucial, dental, frontal, typical, vital. Rare suffixes such as -ose (as in verbose5, jocose6) and -dom are rarely used to form new words.

BLOCKING (Taken from English Word-formation, 1991:8788) It is the name given by Aronoff to the phenomenon of the non-occurrence of a complex form because of the existence of another form.

Bolinger

stealer thief; the existence of forms like bad and small blocks the formation of

ungood and unbig;

4 5

Authors: Ronald Carter Michael McCarthy Using or containg more words than necessary: a verbose explanation/speech/report/style/after-dinner speaker 6 Amusing or playful (literary): His jocose manner was unsuitable for such a solemn occasion.

the prior existence of enlist prevents the use of list as a verb with that meaning. Aronoff lists a number of nominals related to adjectival bases in -ous such as: various curious glorious furious glory fury variety curiosity gloriosity furiosity

where the presence of a nominal like glory or fury can be said to block the generation of an ity form, but then he points out that a -ness nominalization is possible in every case. There is an inverse relationship between productivity and institutionalisation/lexicalization such that the most productive patterns are not lexicalized, and fully lexicalized processes are not productive. There are several limitations on the bases that may undergo word-formation processes. These limitations might be phonological, morphological, lexical and semantic.

Extra information about structural linguist BLOOMFIELD

BLOOMFIELD, Leonard (18871949)7 American philologist and linguist, born in Chicago, Illinois, and educated at Harvard, Wisconsin, and Chicago. He taught at several universities (190927) before coming professor of Germanic Philology at Chicago (192740) and Professor of Li ngui st i cs at Yale (19409). Ini ti al l y, he was i nt eres t ed i n IndoEuropean, and particularly Germanic, speech sounds and wordform ation. Lat er, he undert ook pioneering s tudi es i n t he M al a yoP ol ynes i an l anguages , i ncluding Tagalog i n the P hil ippines , and m ade a detailed study of the North American Indian languages, in particular the Al gonqui an famil y. His publications include: An Introduction to the Study of Language (1914), Language (1933), and Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages (1942). Influenced by European structuralism, Bloomfield is generall y regarded as the founder of American structural linguistics. He wished to introduce greater scientific rigour into the study of language, and believed that the only useful generalizations about it are based on induction. He argued for a mechanistic and experimental rather than an i nt rospect ive and m ent ali st approach t o i ts s tudy, cons ideri ng ideas ,

The Oxford Companion To The English Language (Abridged Edition) edited bz Tom McArthur (1996:135 136)

feelings, and volitions to be merely popular terms for various bodily movements Language (1933:142). His definitions of the basic units of language were influential. He defined the phoneme as a minimum same of vocal feature (that is, as a ph ys i cal pi ece of s peech rather t han as an abst ract const ruct of the linguis). He defined the morpheme as the basic unit of grammatical arrangement, a minimal form which bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form Language (1933:161). The word was a minimum free form, the smallest unit that can occur in isolation, and might consist of one morpheme (boy, but) or more than one (boyish, carelessness). However, he crucially revised his definition of the morpheme by introducing the concept of morpheme alternants.