III. CHECK YOURSELF

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 650.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

READING MATERIAL

II. ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The notion of a morpheme; types of morphemes. Morphemic distribution. Homonymy of affixes.

2. Allo-emic theory. Distributional analysis, types of distribution. The notion of a morph.

3. The notion of an allomorph; types of allomorphs: phonemically conditioned, morphemically conditioned.

4. Morphological analysis of words. The method of immediate constituents.

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. – М., 2000. – С. 18 – 26.

2. Ilyish B. The Structure of Modern English. – L., 1971. – P. 15 – 18; 21 – 23.

3. Khaimovich B.S., Rogovskaya B.I. A Course in English Grammar. – М., 1967. – P. 12 – 18.

4. Прокопчук Г.С. Курс лекций по теоретической грамматике английского языка: Учеб. пособие для 4 курса. – Мн., 1997. – С. 8 – 9.

1. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка. – М., 1975. – С. 6 – 22; 25 – 41.

1. Соmment on the terms: morpheme, allo-terms, eme-terms, morph, stem, distributional analysis, distribution, contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution (free alternation), complementary distribution; bound morpheme, free morpheme, overt morpheme, covert morpheme, additive morpheme, replacive morpheme, segmental morpheme, suprasegmental morpheme, continuous morpheme, discontinuous morpheme.

2. What are the criteria applied to morphemes in each classification? Fill in the chart.

3. What is the difference between derivational and grammatical affixes? Read the words and determine whether they are related to one another by process of word- or form-building.

a) write, writes, writing, written;

b) invent, invention, inventor, inventive;

c) easy, easier, the easiest;

d) reader, reader's, readers, readers'.

4. Give examples of grammatical suffixes (inflexions).

5. What is the way of distinguishing composite words like waterman from free phrases like has done?

6. What part of a word is obligatory? Prove that a morphemic segment of non-notional status can function as a root.

7. What is a zero-morpheme? State the meaning of the zero-morpheme: a table – tables, young – younger – youngest, speak – speaks.

8. In what way do you understand the following: " …нулевой суффикс можно сравнить с нулем в математике, регулярно используемым для обозначения отсутствия единиц, десятков и т. д.; ср., например, 40 и 54, где нуль в 40 выполняет ту же функцию, что и цифра 4 в 54, с той только разницей, что нуль указывает на отсутствие единиц, а четыре – на наличие определенного количества этих единиц" [32, 20].

What demand must a morpheme meet to be called zero?

9. Name the most common morphemic model of the English word. Make up your own examples according to this model. Group the words on the basis of the origin of their stems: whether a word has the prefixal or the suffixal stem origin.

10. What analysis is applied to achieve the allo-emic identification of language units?

11. Give examples of contrastive, non-contrastive and complementary distribution of morphemes.

12. What type of distribution is the most important for analytical purposes? Why?

13. How will you treat the morphemic segments of the plural -s, -en, -ee-: representing the same morpheme or different ones? Give your reasons.

14. Compare your answer to (12) with the following point of view: "In modern descriptive linguistics the term "morpheme" has been given a somewhat different meaning. Scholars belonging to this trend approach the problem from this angle: If we compare the four sentences: the student comes, the students come; the ox comes, the oxen come, it will be seen that the change of student to students is paralleled by the change of ox to oxen. That is, the meaning and function of the -en in oxen is the same as the meaning and function of the -s in students. On this account the -s and the -en are said to represent the same morpheme: each of them is a morph representing the morpheme, and they are termed allomorps of the morpheme. Furthermore, as in the word goose the form corresponding to students and oxen is geese, where nothing is added, but the root vowel is changed, the morph representing the morpheme in this case is said to be the very change of [u:] into [i:] (graphically, oo and ee). Thus the morpheme, in this case, has three allomorphs, (1) -s, (2) -en, (3) [u:] → [i:]" [11, 22 –23].