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dis-, de-,etc.(e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise; unnatural, to displease, to decipher). 7 страница
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IV. Word-Structure
| § 1. Segmentation of Words into Morphemes |
Close observation and comparison of words clearly shows that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of smaller units, each possessing sound-form and meaning. These are generally referred to as morphemes defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units. For instance, words like boiler, driller fall into the morphemes boil-, drill- and -er by virtue of the recurrence of the morpheme -er in these and other similar words and of the morphemes boil- and drill- in to boil, a boil, boiling and to drill, a drill, drilling, a drill-press, etc. Likewise, words like flower-pot and shoe-lace are segmented into the morphemes flower-, pot-, shoe- and lace- (cf. flower-show, flowerful, etc., shoe-brush, shoeless, etc., on the one hand; and pot-lid, pottery, etc., lace-boots, lacing, etc., on the other).
Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern. Unlike a word a morpheme is not an autonomous unit and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word.
Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence, i. e. two-facetedness, association of a certain meaning with a given sound-pattern, cf. the morpheme lace- denoting 'a string or cord put through small holes in shoes', etc.; 'to draw edges together' and the constituent phonemes [l], [ei], [s] entirely without meaning.
Identification of morphemes in various texts shows that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes.
In the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the root-morpheme is represented by phonemic shapes: [pli: z] in please, pleasing, [plez] in pleasure and [plez] in pleasant. In such cases we say that the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme that manifest alteration are called allomorphs of that morpheme or morpheme variants. Thus [pli: z, plez] and [рlез] are allomorphs of оде and the same morpheme. The root-morphemes in the word-cluster duke, ducal, duchess, duchy or poor, poverty may also serve as examples of the allomorphs of one morpheme.
| § 2. Principles of Morphemic Analysis. Types of Word Segmentability |
As far as the complexity of the morphemic structure of the word is concerned all English words fall into two large classes. To Сlass I belong segmentable words, i. e. those allowing of segmentation into morphemes, e. g. agreement, information, fearless, quickly, door-handle, etc. To Сlass II belong non-segmentable words, i. e. those not allowing of such segmentation, e. g. house, girl, woman, husband, etc.
The operation of breaking a segmentable word into the constituent morphemes is referred to in present-day linguistic literature as the
analysis of word-structure on the morphemic level. The morphemic analysis aims at splitting a segmentable word into its constituent morphemes — the basic units at this level of word-structure analysis — and at determining their number and types. The degree of morphemic segment-ability is not the same for different words.
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Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished: complete, conditional and defective. 1
Complete segmentability is characteristic of a great many words the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word lending themselves easily to isolation.
As can be easily seen from the examples analysed above, the transparent morphemic structure of a segmentable word is conditioned by the fact that its constituent morphemes recur with the same meaning in a number of other words. There are, however, numerous words in the English vocabulary the morphemic structure of which is not so transparent and easy to establish as in the cases mentioned above.
Conditional morphemic segmentability characterises words whose segmentation into the constituent morphemes is doubtful for semantic reasons. In words like retain, contain, detain or receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [ri-], [di-], [кэn-] seem, on the one hand, to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes re-, de- as found in words like rewrite, re-organise, deorganise, decode; neither the sound-clusters [ri-] or [di-] nor the [-tern] or [-si: v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. The type of meaning that can be ascribed to them is only a differential and a certain distributional meaning: 2 the [ri-] distinguishes retain from detain and the [-tern] distinguishes retain from receive, whereas their order and arrangement point to the status of the re-, de-, con-, per- as different from that of the -tain and - ceive within the structure of the words. The morphemes making up words of conditional segmentability thus differ from morphemes making up words of complete segmentability in that the former do not rise to the full status of morphemes for semantic reasons and that is why a special term is applied to them in linguistic literature: such morphemes are called pseudo-morphemes or quasi-morphemes. It should be mentioned that there is no unanimity on the question and there are two different approaches to the problem. Those linguists who recognise pseudo-morphemes, i. e. consider it sufficient for a morpheme to have only a differential and distributional meaning to be isolated from a word regard words like retain, deceive, etc. as segmentable; those who deem it necessary for a morpheme to have some denotational meaning qualify them as non-segmentable words.
Defective morphemic segmentability is the property of words whose component morphemes seldom or never recur in other words. One
1 The Russian terms are: живое, условное и дефектное морфологическое членение слов.
2 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 13-16, pp. 23-25.
of the component morphemes is a unique morpheme in the sense that it does not, as a rule, recur in a different linguistic environment.
A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning. There is no doubt that in the nouns streamlet, ringlet, leaflet, etc. the morpheme -let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes stream-, ring-, leaf-, etc. each having a clear denotational meaning. Things are entirely different with the word hamlet. The morpheme -let retains the same meaning of diminutive-ness, but the sound-cluster [hæ m] that is left after the isolation of the morpheme -let does not recur in any other English word with anything like the meaning it has in the word hamlet. 1 It is likewise evident that the denotational and the differential meaning of [hæ m] which distinguishes hamlet from streamlet, ringlet, etc. is upheld by the denotational meaning of -let. The same is exemplified by the word pocket which may seem at first sight non-segmentable. However, comparison with such words as locket, hogget, lionet, cellaret, etc. leads one to the isolation of the morpheme -et having a diminutive meaning, the more so that the morphemes lock-, hog-, lion-, cellar-, etc. recur in other words (cf. lock, locky; hog, hoggery; lion, lioness; cellar, cellarage). At the same time the isolation of the morpheme -et leaves in the word pocket the sound-cluster [роk] that does not occur in any other word of Modern English but obviously has a status of a morpheme with a denotational meaning as it is the lexical nucleus of the word. The morpheme [роk] clearly carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes pocket from the words mentioned above and thus must be qualified as a unique morpheme.
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The morphemic analysis of words like cranberry, gooseberry, strawberry shows that they also possess defective morphemic segmentability: the morphemes cran-, goose-, straw- are unique morphemes.
The oppositions that the different types of morphemic segmentability are involved in hardly require any comments with the exception of complete and conditional segmentability versus defective segmentability. This opposition is based on the ability of the constituent morphemes to occur in a unique or a non-unique environment. In the former case the linguist deals with defective, in the latter with complete and conditional segmentability. The distinction between complete and conditional segmentability is based on semantic features of morphemes proper and pseudo-morphemes.
Thus on the level of morphemic analysis the linguist has to operate with two types of elementary units, namely full morphemes and pseudo-(quasi-)morphemes. It is only full morphemes that are genuine structural elements of the language system so that the linguist must primarily focus his attention on words of complete morphemic segmentability. On the other hand, a considerable percentage of words of conditional and
1 Needless to say that the noun ham denoting ‘a smoked and salted upper part of a pig’s leg’ is irrelevant to the ham- in hamlet.
defective segmentability signals a relatively complex character of the morphological system of the language in question, reveals the existence of various heterogeneous layers in its vocabulary.
| § 3. Classification of Morphemes |
Morphemes may be classified:
a) from the semantic point of view,
b) from the structural point of view.
a) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: root-morphemes and non-root or affixational morphemes. Roots and affixes make two distinct classes of morphemes due to the different roles they play in word-structure.
Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e. g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, -fill are understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable.
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The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a ward, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Besides it may also possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes1 except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach- in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- in theory, theorist, theoretical, etc.
Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes or inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building various types of stems — the part of a word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes.
Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.
b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types: free morphemes, bound morphemes, semi-free (semi- bound) morphemes.
A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem 2 or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend — of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend.
A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word, e. g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the prefixes un-,
1 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 13-16, pp. 23-25. 2 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 8, p. 97.
dis-, de-, etc. (e. g. readiness, comradeship, to activise; unnatural, to displease, to decipher).
Many root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes which always occur in morphemic sequences, i. e. in combinations with ‘ roots or affixes. All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical, etc., barbar- in barbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive in conceive, perceive, etc.
Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes1 are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morpheme well and half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour, ” on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.
The relationship between the two classifications of morphemes discussed above can be graphically presented in the following diagram:
Speaking of word-structure on the morphemic level two groups of morphemes should be specially mentioned.
To the first group belong morphemes of Greek and Latin origin often called combining forms, e. g. telephone, telegraph, phonoscope, microscope, etc. The morphemes tele-, graph-, scope-, micro-, phone- are characterised by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar stylistic reference: tele- means ‘far’, graph- means ‘writing’, scope — ’seeing’, micro- implies smallness, phone- means ’sound. ’ Comparing words with tele- as their first constituent, such as telegraph, telephone, telegram one may conclude that tele- is a prefix and graph-, phone-, gram- are root-morphemes. On the other hand, words like phonograph, seismograph, autograph may create the impression that the second morpheme graph is a suffix and the first — a root-morpheme. This undoubtedly would lead to the absurd conclusion that words of this group contain no root-morpheme and are composed of a suffix and a prefix which runs counter to the fundamental principle of word-structure. Therefore, there is only one solution to this problem; these morphemes are all bound root-morphemes of a special kind and such words belong to words made up of bound roots. The fact that these morphemes do not possess the part-of-speech meaning typical of affixational morphemes evidences their status as roots. 2
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1 The Russian term is относительно связанные (относительно свободные).
2 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 15, 16, p. 24, 25.
The second group embraces morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.
The root-morpheme man- found in numerous words like postman [ 'poustmэn], fisherman [ fi∫ эmэn], gentleman ['d3entlmэn] in comparison with the same root used in the words man-made ['mæ nmeid] and man-servant ['mæ n, sэ: vэnt] is, as is well-known, pronounced, differently, the [æ ] of the root-morpheme becomes [э] and sometimes disappears altogether. The phonetic reduction of the root vowel is obviously due to the decreasing semantic value of the morpheme and some linguists argue that in words like cabman, gentleman, chairman it is now felt as denoting an agent rather than a male adult, becoming synonymous with the agent suffix -er. However, we still recognise the identity of [man] in postman, cabman and [mæ n] in man-made, man-servant. Abrasion has not yet completely disassociated the two, and we can hardly regard [man] as having completely lost the status of a root-morpheme. Besides it is impossible to say she is an Englishman (or a gentleman) and the lexical opposition of man and woman is still felt in most of these compounds (cf. though Madam Chairman in cases when a woman chairs a sitting and even all women are tradesmen). It follows from all this that the morpheme -man as the last component may be qualified as semi-free.
| § 4. Procedure of Morphemic Analysis |
The procedure generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on a binary principle, i. e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i. e. morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs). For example the noun friendliness is first segmented into the IC friendly recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and the -ness found in a countless number of nouns, such as happiness, darkness, unselfishness, etc. The IC -ness is at the same time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC friendly is next broken into the ICs friend- and -ly recurring in friendship, unfriendly, etc. on the one hand, and wifely, brotherly, etc., on the other. Needless to say that the ICs friend- and -ly are both UCs of the word under analysis.
The procedure of segmenting a word into its Ultimate Constituent morphemes, may be conveniently presented with the help of a box-like diagram
In the diagram showing the segmentation of the noun friendliness the lower layer contains the ICs resulting from the first cut, the upper one those from the second, the shaded boxes representing the ICs which are at the same time the UCs of the noun.
The morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root principle and the affix principle. According to the affix principle the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words; for example, the identification of the suffixational morpheme -less leads to the segmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixational morpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a word-cluster; the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root -agree- and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-. As a rule, the application of one of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.
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| § 5. Morphemic Types of Words |
According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic
and polymorphic. Monomorphiс or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e. g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All pоlуmоrphiс words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into two subgroups: monoradical (or one-root words) and polyradical words, i. e. words which consist of two or more roots. Monoradical words fall into two subtypes: 1) radical-suffixal words, i. e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more suffixal morphemes, e. g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, etc.; 2)radical-prefixal words, i. e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, e. g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton, etc. and 3) prefixo-radical-suffixal, i. e. words which consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal morphemes, e. g. disagreeable, misinterpretation, etc.
Polyradical words fall into two types: 1) polyradical words which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes, e. g. book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc. and 2) words which contain at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes, e. g. safety-pin, wedding-pie, class-consciousness, light-mindedness, pen-holder, etc.
| § 6. Derivative Structure |
The analysis of the morphemic composition of words defines the ultimate meaningful constituents (UCs), their typical sequence and arrangement, but it does not reveal the hierarchy of morphemes making up the word, neither does it reveal the way a word is constructed, nor how a new word of similar structure should be understood. The morphemic analysis does not aim at finding out the nature and arrangement of ICs which underlie the structural and the semantic type of the word, e. g. words unmanly and discouragement morphemically are referred to the same type as both are segmented into three UCs representing one root, one prefixational and one suffixational morpheme. However the arrangement and the nature
of ICs and hence the relationship of morphemes in these words is different — in unmanly the prefixational morpheme makes one of the ICs, the other IC is represented by a sequence of the root and the suffixational morpheme and thus the meaning of the word is derived from the relations between the ICs un- and manly- (‘not manly’), whereas discouragement rests on the relations of the IC discourage- made up by the combination of the. prefixational and the root-morphemes and the suffixational morpheme -ment for its second IC (’smth that discourages’). Hence we may infer that these three-morpheme words should be referred to different derivational types: unmanly to a prefixational and discouragement to a suffixational derivative.
The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word is known as its derivative structure. Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it differs from it in principle.
| § 7. Derivative Relations |
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simplexes or simple, non-derived words and complexes or derivatives. Simplexes are words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs. The morphological stem of simple words, i. e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically non-motivated l and independent of other words, e. g. hand, come, blue, etc. Morphemically it may be monomorphic in which case its stem coincides with the free root-morpheme as in, e. g., hand, come, blue, etc. or polymorphic in which case it is a sequence of bound morphemes as in, e. g., anxious, theory, public, etc.
Derivatives are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i. e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence derivatives are secondary, motivated units, made up as a rule of two ICs, i. e. binary units, e. g. words like friendliness, unwifely, school-masterish, etc. are made up of the ICs friendly + -ness, un- + wifely, schoolmaster+-ish. The ICs are brought together according to specific rules of order and arrangement preconditioned by the system of the language. It follows that all derivatives are marked by the fixed order of their ICs.
The basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are: derivational bases, derivational affixes and derivational patterns which differ from the units of the morphemic structure of words (different types of morphemes). The relations between words with a common root but of different derivative structure are known as derivative relations. The derivative and derivative relations make the subject of study at the derivational level of analysis; it aims at establishing correlations between different types of words, the structural and semantic patterns
1 See ‘Semasiology’, § 17, p. 25. 96
words are built on, the study also enables one to understand how new words appear in the language.
The constituents of the derivative structure are functional units, i. e. units whose function is to indicate relationship between different classes of words or differently-behaving words of the same class and to signal the formation of new words. It follows that derivational functions are proper to different linguistic units which thus serve as ICs of a derivative. It must be also noted that the difference between classes of words is signalled by both the derivative structure of the word, or to be more exact by the stem it shapes, and by the set of paradigmatic inflections that this structure presupposes. For example, the nominal class of words to which derivatives like historian, teacher, lobbyist are referred is signalled by both the derivative structure, i. e. the unity of their ICs history+-ian, teach+ + -er lobby + -ist shaping the stems of these words — and the nominal set of paradigmatic inflections which these stems precondition, i. e. histori-an(O), historian (s) , historian('s), historian (s’) . The class of words like enrich, enlarge is likewise signalled by their derivative structure (en- + +rich, en-+large) and the verbal set of paradigmatic inflexions. Hence the paradigmatic systems of different classes of words have, among their functions, the function of distinguishing the formal make-up of word classes. It follows that the paradigmatic system of inflections in cases of meaningful absence of the 1С which determines the class membership of the motivated stem functions as the sole indication of its derived nature. 1
| § 8. Derivational Bases |
A derivational base as a functional unit is defined as the constituent to which a rule of word-formation is applied. It is the part of the word which establishes connection with the lexical unit that motivates the derivative and determines its individual lexical meaning describing the difference between words in one and the same derivative set, for example the individual lexical meaning of words like singer, rebuilder, whitewasher, etc. which all denote active doers of action, is signalled by the lexical meaning of the derivational bases sing-, rebuild-, whitewash- which establish connection with the motivating source verb.
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