UNIT II
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 954.
I. THE MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS
1. Classification of morphemes. Homonymy of affixes.
2. The definition of the morph, the allomorph, the morpheme. Morphemic distribution.
3. The internal structure of English words.
1. CLASSIFICATION OF MORPHEMES. HOMONYMY OF AFFIXES
Morpheme is one of the main concepts in grammatical theory.
Morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of a word.
The word tables, for example, can be divided into two parts: table- and -s. The meaning of the first part is contained in the Russian ñòîë-, and the meaning of the second part is 'plurality'. Thus, both of them are meaningful, both have form and content, thus can be called morphemes.
Many words in English consist of one morpheme (and, girl, speak), but there are words which contain two and more morphemes (table-s, hunt-er-s, gentle-man-li-ness).
Morphemes can be classified differently.
a) Analyzing the morphemes table- and -s we immediately see that table' is directly associated with a certain object in reality, though -s is not. It adds the meaning of plurality to the part expressed by table-, as well as it does combined with any other part of the table- type. Table- expresses the material part of meaning, -s expresses the specific (grammatico-semantic) meaning. Thus, they differ in their relations to reality.
b) We differentiate between free and bound morphemes according to their relations to the word they are part of. Table- is more independent than -s. A morpheme like this, which can function alone is called free. A bound morpheme is always detached to other morphemes and cannot function independently.
c) According to their fundamental meaning we classify morphemes in the following way: lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical morphemes.
A word has at least one lexical morpheme that is regarded as the root of the word. Roots are most numerous in English. All the other bound morphemes are affixes. Affixes fall into several types according to their position relative to the stem – the form to which an affix is added. Thus, a prefix is an affix attached to the front of its stem, while suffix is an affix attached to its end.
The peculiar feature of the English language is that words are homonymous with roots. The class of words is recognized then not through its form but through its distributional qualities. Homonymy is also typical of affixes.
e. g. -en in verbs like to strengthen derived from nouns, -en in adjectives like wooden also derived from nouns, -en in plural old forms like oxen, etc.
We use the term 'suffix' only with reference to derivational morphemes that follow the root. The words 'inflection' or 'ending' is applied to denote a morpheme possessing no lexical meaning and serving to derive a grammatical form.
Grammatical morphemes can be called functional as they create new forms. English is not a highly inflected language, it has only eight functional endings: the plural ending -s, the possessive ending -'s, the third person singular presents inflexion -s, the progressive form ending -ing, the past tense inflexion -ed, past participle ending -en or -ed, the comparative suffix -er and the superlative suffix -est.
Sometimes scientists exaggerate the fact that English morphological system is very poor. According to A.I. Smirnitsky this happens because they overlook the existence of a) homonymy of affixes; b) zero morphemes. The number of grammatical endings will increase greatly if we recognize the existence of the zero-forms, namely: the absence of a certain form may have a meaningful value, a special meaning.
e. g. boy – boys: the idea of plurality is materially expressed here, the idea of singularity is expressed by meaningful absence of the ending. The morpheme -s possessing a positive form may be called a positive morpheme. One can say that a word has a zero morpheme comparing two opposite affixes: a positive and a zero morpheme – in the same word. Both must perform a certain function.
Lexico-grammatical morphemes constitute a special derivational type of morphemes that create new words. In English prefixes are always derivational. Morphemes like de- (to depart), for- (to forgive), er- (reader), -less (helpless), -ful (helpful) belong to the latter type as they determine the lexical meaning of words like lexical morphemes and resemble grammatical morphemes in their dependence on lexical morphemes, but unlike grammatical morphemes they are not relative.
2. THE DEFINITION OF THE MORPH, THE ALLOMORPH, THE MORPHEME. MORPHEMIC DISTRIBUTION
In current linguistic research language units are described in allo-terms and eme-terms. Eme-terms denote generalized invariant language units. Allo-terms denote the concrete manifestations, or variants of generalized language units.
To achieve allo-emic identification of language units we apply the distributional analysis – the analysis of lingual units in relation to their textual environments.
Morphemes are abstract notions. They are represented in speech by concrete units – morphs.
Morphs are material expressions of morphemes.
Allomorphs are the positional variants of morphemes.
Allomorphs are characterized by a complementary distribution. It means that they cannot occur in the same phonetical environment, but they denote the same meaning.
e. g. suffixes: -ion, -tion, -sion, -ation;
prefixes: im-, ir-, il-, in-.
Thus, a morpheme is a general notion, the sum of all allomorphs of a given morpheme united on the basis of being common in phonetical and meaningful expression.
Morphemic distribution (co-occurrence with other morphs) can be of three types:
1) contrastive – when the position of morphs is the same, but their meanings are different.
e. g. works – working
2) non-contrastive – when the position of morphs is the same as well as their meaning. Morphs contrasted in such a way are free variants of the morpheme.
e. g. learned – learnt
3) complementary – when the positions of morphs are different but their meaning is the same.
e. g. working – teaching
Complementary distribution helps establish the identity of outwardly different elements of language.
3. THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS
According to their structure words fall into several groups: a) simple or root-words – those which cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful elements as they consist of a root only (e. g. girl). b) derivatives or complexwords – words consisting of a root and some derivational affixes (e. g. girlish). c) compound words – words consisting of two or more roots (e. g. a girl-friend); d) compound derivatives – words consisting not only of two roots but also of some derivational affixes (e. g. light-greenish).
English compounds are sometimes written as single words, or with an intervening hyphen, and sometimes as separate words. However, it is usually possible to recognize noun compounds by their stress pattern since the first component is pronounced more prominently than the second. In non-compounds it is the second element that is stressed.
e. g. a) greenhouse 'an indoor garden',
green house 'a house painted green';
b) blackboard 'a chalkboard used in classrooms',
black board 'a board that is black';
c) wetsuit 'a diver's costume',
wet suit 'a suit that is wet'.
To analyze the word morphologically one usually employs the method of immediate constituents. It consists in the following procedure: a linguistic unit is divided step by step, and at each step of analysis two immediate constituents are obtained.
e. g. un-gentle-man-ly
The result of this analysis is the structural pattern of the word. Sometimes there are cases of double interpretation.
e. g. untruly: un-truly or untru-ly.
According to M.Y. Blokh the most common model of the morphemic structure of the English word is: prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix. This model falls into two types:
1) with the original prefixal stem:
W1 = {[Pr + (R + L)] +Gr};
2) with the original suffixal stem:
W2 = {[(Pr + R) + L] +Gr}.
The internal structure of words is not always easily defined. It is obvious that there is some difference between such words as inept and incompetent. Competent is a free root, while ept is not (it is not an English word). Thus, this suggests the existence of bound stems. Cf.: relig-ion, grate-ful, etc.
Another problem arises when we deal with the words of cranberry-type. No matter how tempting it is to treat berry as the root, this is not so. If it were so, what could be the structural status of cran- ? It is obviously not a root, nor an affix, nor a free word (it never functions independently). Thus, most linguists call such problematic units exceptional cases, or cranberry morphemes.
A different problem arises with the words such as to receive, to deceive, to conceive, to perceive, to remit, to permit, to submit and to commit. The prefix re- here does not have the meaning 'again' (Cf. to rewrite 'to write again'), nor does the prefix de- have the meaning 'reverse the process of' (Cf. to decode). Thus, it is reasonable to assume that these words are simple and consist of one morpheme.
Units of the type give in, break out can be treated as containing word-morphemes (or semi-bound morphemes) in their structure for they perform the same function as lexico-grammatical prefixes (synthetic elements) in German words (e. g. aufstehen).
But one must keep in mind the difference between shall / will stand and stand up. Shall / will introduce the grammatical meaning of tense while stand up differs from stand for, or stand about / around lexically.
Derivation and compounding are not the only ways of word formation in English though they are the most common.
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