Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Basic Concepts
1.1 Lexemes
Phonology /kat/
Syntax Noun
Semantics cat
climbed:
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1.2 Paradigms
Phonology /swim/
Syntax intransitive verb
Semantics SWIM(x)
Morphology Past swam
Perfect/Passive Participle swum
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3 The derivation of lexemes
Compound lexemes
Many Noun Noun compounds are regular and are interpreted compositionally
Entry for morphology book, ‘book which has some relation to morphology’
N
N N
|morphology| |book|
Phon: /mO:f6l6ÃI/ /bUk/
Syn: N N
Sem: MORPHOLOGY BOOK
Compound lexemes
Many (most?) lexicalized NN compounds do not have compositional semantics
This means that their lexical entry will not necessarily contain complete lexemes
Entry for textbook
N
X N
|text| |book|
Phon: /tEkst/ /bUk/
Syn: N
Sem: TEXTBOOK
BOOK, used as principal source
for teaching in context of official instruction
Rejected lexical entry for textbook
N
X N
|text| |book|
Phon: /tEkst/ /bUk/
Syn: N N
Sem: TEXT BOOK
TEXTBOOK doesn’t contain the meaning of the lexeme TEXT
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|textbook|
Phon: /tekstbUk/
Syn: N
Sem: TEXTBOOK
TEXTBOOK does contain the meaning of the lexeme BOOK
Derivation of lexemes
Many derived words in English show the same semantic idiomaticity/non-compositionality
found in compounds such as textbook
a. cat catty cat + y
b. elephant elephantine elephant + ine
c. lion lionize lion + ize
d. ape to ape <conversion>
Some derivation looks more-or-less compositional
• cat-like
• elephant-like
• lion-like
• ape-like
In many cases the derivation looks compositional but there are subtle restrictions
on meaning
paint ∼ painter (a) ‘one who paints habitually, professionally’
(b) ‘the painter of this picture’
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Derivation of lexemes - transpositions
Some adjectives formed from nouns do not add any extra meaning to that of
the base noun
morphology morphological morphological theory
=theory of morphology
navy naval naval uniform
= Navy uniform
nerve nervous nervous system
= nerve system
music musical musical training
=training in music
Adjectives of this sort are called relational adjectives
They are often equivalent in meaning to NN compounds
a. Adjective Noun
strong strength the strength of the muscle
(strong muscle)
weak weakness the weakness of the muscle
(weak muscle)
banal banality the banality of his conversation
(banal conversation)
b.
strong strength
the essay has a number of strengths (??strong essay)
weak weakness
Tom has a weakness for chocolate (6= Tom is weak)
banal banality
he uttered nothing but banalities