Dividing a word into morphemes

Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning. Morphemes are important for phonics in both reading and spelling, as well as in vocabulary and comprehension.

Why use morphology

Teaching morphemes unlocks the structures and meanings within words. It is very useful to have a strong awareness of prefixes, suffixes and base words. These are often spelt the same across different words, even when the sound changes, and often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning.

Types of morphemes

Free vs. bound

Morphemes can be either single words (free morphemes) or parts of words (bound morphemes).

A free morpheme can stand alone as its own word

• gentle
• father
• licence
• picture
• gem

A bound morpheme only occurs as part of a word

• -s as in cat+s
• -ed as in crumb+ed
• un- as in un+happy
• mis- as in mis-fortune
• -er as in teach+er

In the example above: un+system+atic+al+ly, there is a root word (system) and bound morphemes that attach to the root (un-, -atic, -al, -ly)

system = root un-, -atic, -al, -ly = bound morphemes

If two free morphemes are joined together they create a compound word. These words are a great way to introduce morphology (the study of word parts) into the classroom.

For more details, see:
Compound words

Inflectional vs. d​​erivational

Morphemes can also be divided into inflectional or derivational morphemes.

Inflectional morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not create a new word.

For example, the word <skip> has many forms: skip (base form), skipping (present progressive), skipped (past tense).

The inflectional morphemes -ing and -ed are added to the base word skip, to indicate the tense of the word.

If a word has an inflectional morpheme, it is still the same word, with a few suffixes added. So if you looked up <skip> in the dictionary, then only the base word <skip> would get its own entry into the dictionary. Skipping and skipped are listed under skip, as they are inflections of the base word. Skipping and skipped do not get their own dictionary entry.

Skip

Another example is <run>: run (base form), running (present progressive), ran (past tense). In this example the past tense marker changes the vowel of the word: run (rhymes with fun), to ran (rhymes with can). However, the inflectional morphemes -ing and past tense morpheme are added to the base word <run>, and are listed in the same dictionary entry.

Run

Derivational morphemes are different to inflectional morphemes, as they do derive/create a new word, which gets its own entry in the dictionary. Derivational morphemes help us to create new words out of base words.

For example, we can create new words from <act> by adding derivational prefixes (e.g. re- en-) and suffixes (e.g. -or).

Thus out of <act> we can get re+act = react en+act = enact act+or = actor.

Whenever a derivational morpheme is added, a new word (and dictionary entry) is derived/created.

For the <act> example, the following dictionary entries can be found:

Act

React

Enact

Actor

Teachers should highlight and encourage students to analyse both Inflectional and Derivational morphemes when focussing on phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For more information, see: 

Prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases

Many morphemes are very helpful for analysing unfamiliar words. Morphemes can be divided into prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases.

• Prefixes are morphemes that attach to the front of a root/base word.
• Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a root/base word, or to other suffixes (see example below)
• Roots/Base words are morphemes that form the base of a word, and usually carry its meaning.
  • Generally, base words are free morphemes, that can stand by themselves (e.g. cycle as in bicycle/cyclist, and form as in transform/formation).
  • Whereas root words are bound morphemes that cannot stand by themselves (e.g. -ject as in subject/reject, and -volve as in evolve/revolve).

Most morphemes can be divided into:

• Anglo-Saxon Morphemes (like re-, un-, and -ness);
• Latin Morphemes (like non-, ex-, -ion, and -ify); and
• Greek Morphemes (like micro, photo, graph).

It is useful to highlight how words can be broken down into morphemes (and which each of these mean) and how they can be built up again).

For example, the word <unreliability> may be unfamiliar to students when they first encounter it.

If <unreliability> is broken into its morphemes, students can deduce or infer the meaning.

So it is helpful for both reading and spelling to provide opportunities to analyse words, and become familiar with common morphemes, including their meaning and function.

Compound words

Compound words (or compounds) are created by joining free morphemes together. Remember that a free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand along as its own word (unlike bound morphemes — e.g. -ly, -ed, re-, pre-). Compounds are a fun and accessible way to introduce the idea that words can have multiple parts (morphemes). Teachers can highlight that these compound words are made up of two separate words joined together to make a new word. For example dog + house = doghouse

Examples

Example activities of highlighting morphemes for phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension

There are numerous ways to highlight morphemes for the purpose of phonics, vocabulary and comprehension activities and lessons.

Highlighting the morphology of words is useful for explaining phonics patterns (graphemes) and spelling rules, as well as discovering the meanings of unfamiliar words, and demonstrating how words are linked together. Highlighting and analysing morphemes is also useful, therefore, for providing comprehension strategies.

Examples of how to embed morphological awareness into literacy activities can include:

• Sorting words by base/root words (word families), or by prefixes or suffixes
• Word Detective — Students break longer words down into their prefixes, suffixes, and base words
• e.g. Find the morphemes in multi-morphemic words like: dissatisfied unstoppable ridiculously hydrophobic metamorphosis oxygenate fortifications
• Word Builder — students are given base words and prefixes/suffixes and see how many words they can build, and what meaning they might have:
• Prefixes: un- de- pre- re- co- con-
  Base Words: play help flex bend blue sad sat
  Suffixes: -ful -ly -less -able/-ible -ing -ion -y -ish -ness -ment
• Etymology investigation — students are given multi-morphemic words from texts they have been reading and are asked to research the origins (etymology) of the word. Teachers could use words like progressive, circumspect, revocation, and students could find out the morphemes within each word, their etymology, meanings, and use.

​

2. Dividing words into morphemes

Divide the following words by placing a + between their morphemes. (Some of the words may be monomorphemic and therefore indivisible.)

Example: replaces = re + place + s

a. Retroactive → retro + active

b. Befriended → be + friend + ed

c. televise → tele + vise

d. margin

e. Endearment → en + dear + ment

f. Psychology → psych + ology

g. Unpalatable → un + palate + able

h. holiday

i. Grandmother → grand + mother

j. Morphemic → morph + emic

k. Mistreatment → mis + treatment

l. Deactivation → de + activate + tion

m. saltpeter

n. Airsickness → airsick + ness

o. Bureaucrat → bureau + crat

p. Democrat → demo + crat

q. Aristocrat → aristo + crat

r. Plutocrat → pluto + crat

s. Democracy → demo + cracy

t. Democratic → demo + crat + ic

u. Democratically → demo + cratic + ally

v. democratization → demo + crat + iz + ation

w. Democratize → demo + crat + ize

x. Democratizer → demo + crat + iz + er

y. Democratizing → demo + crat + iz + ing

z. Democratized → demo + crat +ize + ed

4. Matching morpheme types

Write the one proper description from the list under B for the italicized part of each word in A.

A	B
a. terrorized 3) b. uncivilized (1) c. terrorize (4) d. lukewarm (2) e. impossible (6)	(1) free root (2) bound root (3) inflectional suffix (4) derivational suffix (5) inflectional prefix (6) derivational prefix (7) inflectional infix (8) derivational infix

5. Zulu

Part One

Consider the following nouns in Zulu and proceed to look for the recurring forms.

umfazi ‘married woman’

umfani ‘boy’

umzali ‘parent’

umfundisi ‘teacher’

umbazi ‘carver’

umlimi ‘farmer’

umdlali ‘player’

umfundi ‘reader’

abafazi ‘married women’

abafani ‘boys’

abazali ‘parents’

abafundisi ‘teachers’

ababazi ‘carvers’

abalimi ‘farmers’

abadlali ‘players’

abafundi ‘readers’

a. What is the morpheme meaning ‘singular’ in Zulu?

The morpheme meaning singular in Zulu is “um.”

b. What is the morpheme meaning ‘plural’ in Zulu?

The morpheme meaning plural in Zulu is “aba.”

c. List the Zulu stems to which the singular and plural morphemes are attached, and give their meanings.

Stems (singular)	Meanings
um + fazi (married woman)	prefix + adjective + noun
um + fani (boy)	prefix + noun
um + zali (parent)	prefix + noun
um + fundisi (teacher)	prefix + verb + suffix
um + bazi (carver)	prefix + verb + suffix
um + limi (farmer)	prefix + verb + suffix
um + dlali (player)	prefix + verb + suffix
um + fundi (reader)	prefix + verb + suffix
Stems (plural)	Meanings
aba + fazi (married women)	prefix + verb + noun
aba + fani (boys)	prefix + noun + suffix
aba + zali (parents)	prefix + noun+ suffix
aba + fundisi (teachers)	prefix + noun + suffix
aba + bazi (carvers)	prefix + noun + suffix
aba + limi (farmers)	prefix + noun + suffix
aba + dlali (players)	prefix + noun + suffix
aba + fundi (readers)	prefix + noun + suffix

Part 2

The following Zulu verbs are derived from noun stems by adding a verbal suffix.

fundisa ‘to teach’

lima ‘to cultivate’

funda ‘to read’

baza ‘to carve’

d. Compare these words to the words in section A that are related in meaning, for example, umfundisi ‘teacher,’ abafundisi ‘teachers,’ fundisa ‘to teach.’ What is the derivational suffix that specifies the category verb?

The derivational suffix that species the category verb is “-a.”

e. What is the nominal suffix (i.e., the suffix that forms nouns)?

The nominal suffix that forms nouns is “-i.”

f. State the morphological noun formation rule in Zulu

In Zulu, nouns are formed by having having the suffix -i at the end of a word.

g. What is the stem morpheme meaning ‘read’?

The stem morpheme ‘read’ is um + fun → umfun

h. What is the stem morpheme meaning ‘carve’?

The stem morpheme meaning ‘read’ is um + ba → umba

6. Swedish

Sweden has given the world the rock group ABBA, the automobile Volvo, and the great film director Ingmar Bergman. The Swedish language offers us a noun morphology that you can analyze with the knowledge gained reading this chapter. Consider these Swedish noun forms:

en lampa ‘a lamp’

en stol ‘a chair’

en matta ‘a carpet’

lampor ‘lamps’

stolar ‘chairs’

mattor ‘carpets’

lampan ‘the lamp’

stolen ‘the chair’

mattan ‘the carpet’

lamporna ‘the lamps’

stolarna ‘the chairs’

mattorna ‘the carpets’

en bil ‘a car’

en soffa ‘a sofa’

en tratt ‘a funnel’

bilar ‘cars’

soffor ‘sofas’

trattar ‘funnels’

bilen ‘the car’

soffan ‘the sofa’

tratten ‘the funnel’

bilarna ‘the cars’

sofforna ‘the sofas’

trattarna ‘the funnels’

a. What is the Swedish word for the indefinite article a (or an)?

The Swedish word for the indefinite article a is “en.”

b. What are the two forms of the plural morpheme in this data? How can you tell which form applies?

The two forms of the plural morpheme in this data are “-ar” and “-or.” The “-ar” morpheme is used when a word ends in a consonant, while the “-or” morpheme is used when a word ends with a vowel. I figured out how this form applies by observing the plural and singular forms of the words.

Swedish word (singular)	Proposed plural suffix	Actual plural form
lampa	-or	lampor
matta	-or	mattor
stol	-ar	stolar
bil	-ar	bilar
soffa	-or	soffor
tratt	-ar	trattar

By observing the words side by side, I saw a pattern with words that ended with a vowel and words that ended with a consonant. I was able to see that words that ended with a consonant had the “-ar” plural morpheme, while words that ended with a consonant had a “-or” plural morpheme.

c. What are the two forms of the morpheme that make a singular word definite, that is, correspond to the English article the? How can you tell which form applies?

The two forms of the morpheme that make a singular word definite are “-en” and “-n.” Similar to the previous question, I observed the singular form and the definite form in order to find the two morpheme forms.

Swedish word (singular)	Proposed definite suffix	Actual definite form
stol	-en	stolen
matta	-n	mattan
bil	-en	bilen
soffa	-n	soffan
tratt	-en	tratten

This observation equates the observation from the previous question because the pattern is the same. Words that end with a consonant have an “-en” definite morpheme, while words that end with a vowel have an “-n” definite morpheme.

d. What is the morpheme that makes a plural word definite?

The morpheme that makes a plural word definite is “-na.” Again, I found this pattern by using a table to compare plural word forms and their definite plural word forms.

Swedish word (plural)	Proposed definite form	Actual definite form
lampor	-na	lamporna
mattor	-na	mattorna
stolar	-na	stolarna
bilar	-na	bilarna
soffor	-na	sofforna
trattar	-na	trattarna

e. In what order do the various suffixes occur when there is more than one?

The various suffixes occur following one another. For example, the word “lampa” uses the plural form in order to get “lampor” and then if someone wanted the plural definite form, then they would add the “-na” suffix, and if they want the singular form, then they would add the singular definite form “-en.”

f. If en flicka is ‘a girl,’ what are the forms for ‘girls,’ ‘the girl,’ and ‘the girls’?

These are the forms for ‘girls,’ ‘the girl,’ and ‘the girls’:

Plural form	Definite form	Definite plural form
flickor	flicken	flickorna

g. If bussarna is ‘the buses,’ what are the forms for ‘buses’ and ‘the bus’?

These are the forms for ‘buses’ and ‘the bus’:

Plural form	Definite form
bussar	bussen

15. Parent and Child Dialogue

Consider the following dialogue between parent and schoolchild:

PARENT: When will you be done with your eight-page book report, dear?

CHILD: I haven’t started it yet.

PARENT: But it’s due tomorrow, you should have begun weeks ago. Why do you always wait until the last minute?

CHILD: I have more confidence in myself than you do.

PARENT: Say what?

CHILD: I mean, how long could it possibly take to read an eight-page book?

The humor is based on the ambiguity of the compound eight-page book report. Draw two trees similar to those in the text for top hat rack to reveal the ambiguity.

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

  I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

II.   Structural types of words.

III.   Principles of morphemic analysis.

  IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.

I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes 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 centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please , pleasing , pleasure , pleasant 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 alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –able mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II. Structural types of words.

The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:  derived words and compound words – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.

III. Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the 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. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+ { [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.

A  diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1. un- / gentlemanly

2.   un- / gentleman / — ly

3.   un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.   un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.

The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number  of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or  receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes  re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detain and [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand —tain and –ceive as roots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind  are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.

The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask ( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer ( ), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech.

The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with the result of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevant at the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. It follows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevant to the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements of double opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain, receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non- motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though which they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between their IC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic in which case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, the other IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarily polymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselves stems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is built by joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result of the analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivational morpheme.

Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process of composition and derivational.

Compound words proper are formed by joining together stems of word already available in the language.

Теги:
Word structure in modern english 
Реферат 
Английский
Просмотров: 27509
Найти в Wikkipedia статьи с фразой: Word structure in modern english

Lecture 6 Word-structure and Word-formation

Plan: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words. Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability. Derivative structure. Derivational analysis. Major types of word-formation: affixation, conversion, word-composition. Secondary types of word-formation.

1. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words

The Morpheme: the smallest ____ indivisible two-facet language unit.

Meaning of word building morphemes: 1. lexical meaning: — ______ (serves a linguistic expression for a concept or a name for an individual object) Especially revealed in root-morphemes. E. g. -girl- -ly, -like, -ish ; – similarity — ______ (an emotional content of the morpheme) E. g. the suffix in piglet has a diminutive meaning.

Word building morphemes do not possess grammatical meaning.

Meaning of word building morphemes: 2. part-of-speech meaning (is proper only to _______) (government, teach-er)

Specific meaning of word building morphemes: n Differential: serves to distinguish words having the same morphemes (over-cook, under cook, precook) n Distributional (the meaning of morpheme arrangement in a word: certain morphemes usually follow or precede the root) (un-effective, speech-less)

Semantic Classification of Morphemes: ______ morpheme (the lexical center of words, has an individual meaning) n non-root or ______ morpheme. n

Affixational Morphemes: 1. form building, or inflectional morphemes (only _____ meaning and only for the formation of word-forms) n smiled, smiles, is smiling

2. derivational morphemes (the smallest meaningful stem building or word building lexical units) n reason-able, un-reason-able

Derivational morphemes: n prefixes n suffixes

Structural classification: 1. ______ morphemes (may function independently. Most roots are free) n friend- in the word friendship 2. ______ morphemes (function only as a constituent part of a word). Affixes are bound morphemes.

3. semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes (can function both as an ______ and as a ______ morpheme). n • • the morpheme well: the stem and the word-form in the utterance like sleep well; a bound morpheme in the word wellknown.

According to the Number of the Morphemes: § monomorphic words § polymorphic

Monomorphic or root -words: only one rootmorpheme. § small, dog.

Polymorphic Words: 1) Monoradical (one-root words) monoradical suffixal (teacher); n monoradical prefixal (overteach); n radical prefixal-suffixal (superteacher, beheaded). n

2) Polyradical (consist of two or more roots): n polyradical proper (headmaster); n polyradical suffixal (head-teacher, boarding-school); n polyradical prefixal (superheadmaster); n polyradical prefixal-suffixal (superheadteacher).

2. Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability

According to the complexity of the morphemic structure: 1. segmentable words (allowing of segmentation into morphemes). n agreement, information, quickly. 2. non-segmentable words. n house, girl, woman.

Levels of the Analysis of the Word Structure: n Morphemic: its aim is to state the number and type of morphemes the word consists of. Basic units: ______ mislead — polymorphic, monoradical, radical-prefixal.

n Derivational: its aim is to establish the correlations between different types of words and to establish a word’s derivational structure. Basic units: derivational bases, derivational affixes, derivational patterns.

The Morphemic Analysis: the operation of breaking a segmentable word into the constituent morphemes.

The method of Immediate and Ultimate constituents (the IC and UC method): to know how many _____ parts are there in a word.

At every stage the word is broken into 2 components (IC-s) unless we achieve units incapable of further division – the so-called ultimate constituents.

Friendliness: 1. is divided into the component friendly-, occurring in such words as friendly, friendly-looking, and the component ness- as in dark-ness, happy-ness. 2. is divided into friend- and -ly which are ultimate constituents.

Types of Morphemic Segmentability of Words: 1. complete 2. conditional 3. defective

Complete Segmentability: one can easily divide a word into morphemes. The constituent morphemes of the word recur with the same meaning in a number of other words. n teacher: teach- — in to teach and teaching. -er – in words like worker, builder, etc.

Conditional Segmentability: when segmentation is doubtful for ____ reasons, as the segments (pseudo-morphemes) regularly occurring in other words can hardly possess any definite lexical meaning.

n retain, detain, contain or receive, conceive, perceive: sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-], [kən-] seem to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, but they have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes like re-, de- as in words rewrite, re-organize, decode.

Defective Segmentability: when segmentation is doubtful for ______ reasons because one of the components (a unique morpheme) has a specific lexical meaning but seldom or never occurs in other words.

n streamlet, ringlet, leaflet: the morpheme -let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes stream-, ring-, leaf-, each having a clear denotational meaning. n hamlet – the morpheme -let retains the same meaning of diminutiveness, but the soundcluster [hæm] does not occur in any English word with the meaning it has in the word hamlet.

Morphological analysis: + reveals the number of meaningful constituents in a word and their usual sequence. — does not reveal the way the word is constructed.

3. Derivative structure. Derivational analysis

Words having the same morphological structure may be derived in completely different ways. n do-gooder: (do good) + -er (suffixation). n dress-maker: dress + (make + -er) (word -composition)

Derivatives: nare words depending on some other lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically.

The basic elements of a derivative structure of a word: n a derivational base n a derivational affix n derivational pattern

A derivational base: n a unit to which derivational affixes are added. It is always monosemantic.

Derivational bases are built on the following language units: a) stems of various structure, b) word-forms (unknown: un + Ved –>A) c) word-groups or phrases (longlegged: (A + N) + ed –> A)

The derivational base a stem (an unchangeable part of the word throughout its paradigm) n unknown – derivational base n know – stem

A derivational affix is added to a derivational base.

They have lexical, functional, distributional, and differential meaning and are characterized by 2 functions: n stem-building (public, curious) n word-building (economic = economy + ic, courageous = courage + ous)

A derivational pattern: a scheme of order and arrangement of the IC-s of the word. n v + -er =N (teach-teacher, build- builder) n re + v = V (re + write — rewrite)

4. Major types of wordformation: affixation, conversion, wordcomposition

In English there are three major types of word-formation: affixation, n zero derivation (conversion), n composition (compounding). n

Affixation. Prefixation. Classifications of prefixes. Suffixation. Classifications of suffixes. Productivity of suffixes.

Affixation has been one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English.

Affixation: n formation of new words by adding _____ affixes to different types of derivational bases.

Affixes: n ______ (take part in deriving new words in the particular period of language development. To identify productive affixes one should look for them among neologisms). E. g. -er, -able. n ______. E. g. -hood, -ous.

The productivity of affixes their frequency of occurrence: there are some high-frequency affixes which are no longer used in word derivation (the adjective-forming suffixes -ful, -ly, etc. ).

Derived words formed by affixation may be the result of one or more applications of word-formation rule. Degrees of derivation: zero degree (found in simple words whose stem coincides with a word morpheme) (cat, table) n first degree (found in words with one derivational affix) (teach-er, re-write) n second degree (found in words formed by adding 2 derivational affixes in consequence) (teach-er head-teacher) n

Affixation: n suffixation n prefixation

Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a ______ to the stem. There about 51 prefixes in the system of Modern English word-formation.

The main function of prefixes: n to change the lexical meaning of the ______ part of speech. But the recent research showed that there about 25 prefixes which can transfer words to different parts of speech. to begulf, to debus, etc.

In Modern English suffixation is mostly characteristic of ______ and ______ formation, while prefixation is mostly typical of ______ formation.

The main function of suffixes: n to form one ______ from another (to work – a worker), n to change the ______ meaning of the ______ part of speech (to educate, educatee).

Main differences between suffixes and prefixes: suffixes functional meaning is significant prefixes functional meaning is not that important the same prefix may function in different parts of speech the main function of prefixes is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech usually function in one part of speech the main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another (to work – a worker), the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech (to educate, educatee) a characteristic of noun and typical of verb formation adjective formation

Prefixes may be classified on different principles: 1) origin of prefixes: native (Germanic) (un-, over-, under-, etc. ); n Romanic (in-, de-, re-, ex-, etc. ); n Greek (sym- sympathy, hyper- hypertension, etc. ). n 2) the lexico-grammatical type of the stem: deverbal (overdo, rewrite); n denominal (unbutton, ex-president); n deadjectival (uneasy). n

Prefixes may be classified on different principles: 3) meaning: negation (ungrateful, incorrect, disadvantage, etc. ); n time and order (foretell, foreknowledge, pre-war, post-war, etc. ); n repetition (rebuild, re-write, etc. ); n location (subway, inter-continental, etc. ), n quantity and intensity (bilingual, polytechnical), etc. n 4) stylistic reference: neutral stylistic reference (over-, re-, under-, etc. ); n with stylistic value (super-, ultra-, pseudo-, bi-, etc. ). n

Disputable cases: n words with a disputable structure, such as contain, retain, detain and conceive, receive, deceive, where we can see that re-, de-, con- act as prefixes and -tain, -ceive can be understood as roots. But in English these combinations of sounds have no lexical meaning and are called pseudo-morphemes. Some scientists treat such words as simple words, others as derived ones.

Suffixes may be classified according to: 1) the part of speech formed: a) noun-forming suffixes (-er, -dom, -ation, etc. ) (teacher, Londoner, freedom, justification, etc. ); b) adjective-forming suffixes (-able, -less, -ful, -ic, -ous, etc. ) (agreeable, careless, doubtful, poetic, courageous, etc. ); c) verb-forming suffixes (-en, -fy, -ize) (darken, satisfy, harmonize, etc. ); d) adverb-forming suffixes (-ly, -ward) (quickly, eastward, etc. ); e) numeral-forming suffixes (-teen, -ty ) (sixteen, seventy).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 2) lexico-grammatical character of the base the affix is usually added to: n deverbal (those added to the verbal base), e. g. -er, -ing, -ment, -able, etc. (speaker, reading, agreement, suitable, etc. ); n denominal (those added to the noun base), e. g. less, -ish, -ful, -ist, -some, etc. (handless, childish, mouthful, violinist, troublesome, etc. ); n deadjectival (those affixed to the adjective base), e. g. -en, -ly, -ish, -ness, etc. (blacken, slowly, reddish, brightness, etc. ).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 3) meaning. For instance, noun-suffixes fall into those denoting: a) the agent of an action, e. g. -er, -ant (baker, dancer, defendant, etc. ); b) nationality, e. g. -an, -ian, -ese, etc. (Arabian, Elizabethan, Russian, Chinese, etc. ); c) collectivity, e. g. -dom, -ry, -ship, etc. (moviedom, readership, peasantry, etc. ); d) diminutiveness, e. g. -ie, -let, -ling, etc. (birdie, piglet, wolfling, etc. ) e) quality, e. g. -ness, -ity (helplessness, answerability).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 4) the origin of suffixes: a) native (Germanic), such as -er, -ful, less, -ly; b) Romanic, such as : -tion, -ment, -able, eer; c) Greek, such as : -ist, -ism, -ize; d) Russian, such as -nik.

Suffixes may be classified according to: 5) productivity: a) productive, such as -er, -ize, -ly, ness; b) semi-productive, such as -eer, ette, -ward; c) non-productive, such as -ard (drunkard), -th (length).

Disputable cases: whether we have a suffix or a root morpheme in the structure of a word. In such cases we call such morphemes semi-suffixes, and words with such suffixes can be classified either as derived words or as compound words, e. g. -burger (cheeseburger), -aholic (workaholic).

Conversion. Typical semantic relations. Productivity of conversion.

The term conversion was first mentioned by H. _______ in 1891.

Conversion: n a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its ______ The morphological paradigms of the word eye n as a noun: eye — eyes n as a verb: to eye, eyes, eyed, will eye

The clearest cases of conversion are observed between verbs and nouns, and this term is now mostly used in this narrow sense.

Conversion is very active both in nouns for verb formation: doctor to doctor, shop to shop in verbs to form nouns: to smile a smite, to offer an offer).

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): a) names of _______ of a human body and _______ , _______ – verbs have instrumental meaning (to hammer, to rifle, to nail), b) verbs denote an action characteristic of the _______ denoted by the noun from which they have been converted (to crowd, to wolf, to ape),

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): c) verbs denote acquisition, addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object (to fish, to dust, to paper), d) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the process of occupying the place or of putting smth. /smb. in it (to room, to house, to cage), e) the _______ denoted by the noun – verbs denote an action performed at the time (to winter, to week-end),

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): f) the name of a _______ or occupation – verbs denote an activity typical of it (to nurse, to cook, to maid, to groom), g) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the act of putting smth. within the container (to can, to bottle, to pocket). h) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the process of taking it (to lunch, to supper).

Nouns converted from verbs can denote: a) instant of an action, e. g. a jump, a move, b) process or state, e. g. sleep, walk, c) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e. g. a help, a flirt, a scold,

Nouns converted from verbs can denote: d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e. g. a burn, a find, a purchase, e) place of the action, e. g. a drive, a stop, a walk.

The main reason that conversion pairs are so widely spread in present-day English: a limited number of inflexions the word-formation based on changing the paradigm is very economical and productive.

Word-composition. Features of compoundwords. Classifications of compound-words.

Composition nthe way of word building when a word is formed by joining two or more _______ to form one word.

As English compounds consist of free forms, it is difficult to distinguish them from phrases.

Criteria of distinguishing compound words: 1) _______ (solid or hyphenated spelling), e. g. phrase-book, Sunday. 2) _______ (based on the position of stress). There is a tendency to put heavy stress on the 1 -st element (‘blackboard, ‘ice-cream). But this rule does not hold in some cases: with adjectives (new-‘born, easy-‘going) etc.

3) _______ (a compound is a combination forming a unit that expresses a single idea and that is not identical in meaning to the sum of the meanings of its components in a free phrase). 4) the unity of _____ and _____ functioning. Compounds are used in a sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically, e. g. These girls are chatterboxes. «Chatter-boxes» is a predicative in the sentence and only the second component changes grammatically.

Borderline cases (present the greatest difficulty in determining their status as compounds): n String compounds (sit-on-the-fenceattitude, once-in-a-time-opportunity). n «Stone Wall» constructions. n Bound stems/semi-affixes (seaman, homophobia).

Characteristic features of English compounds: n Both components in an English compound are free stems: they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own. n English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e. g. middle-of-the-road, off-therecord, up-and-doing etc.

Compounds may be classified according to: 1. The way components are joined together: a) _______ (by joining together two stems without any joining morpheme), e. g. ball-point, to windowshop, b) _______ (components are joined by a linking element: vowels «o» or «i» or the consonant «s» ), e. g. handicraft, sportsman, c) _______ (components are joined by means of form-word stems), e. g. here-and-now, free-for-all.

Compounds may be classified according to: 2. Their _____: n compound proper (formed by joining two stems), e. g. to job-hunt, train-sick, n compound-derived compounds (besides the stems they have affixes), e. g. ear-minded, hydro-skimmer, n compound-shortened words, e. g. Eurodollar, H-bomb.

Compounds may be classified according to: 3. Semantic relations: 1) _______ (the meaning of the whole is the sum total of the meanings of the components), e. g. music-lover, flower-bed 2) _______ , e. g. hotdog, wet-blanket

5. Secondary types of word-formation

_____ types of wordformation: n lexicalization, n sound-imitation, n reduplication, n back-formation, n sound and stress interchange, n shortening (abbreviation, acronymy, blends, clipping).

Besides major types of word-formation (affixation, composition and conversion) in English, there are some other types, which are less important for replenishment of vocabulary. Some of them (sound-interchange, stress shift and back-formation) were acting in the past and are more important for diachronic research of vocabulary. Such types as clipping, blending, and acronymy are very common in modern English.

Lexicalization: the process, when due to some semantic and syntactic reasons, the grammatical flexion in some word forms loses its _____ meaning and becomes isolated from the paradigm e. g. the plural of nouns like arms, colours of the words arm and colours. As the result these word forms (arms, colours) develop a different lexical meaning (arms = weapons and colours = flag) and become independent words. n

Sound-imitation: n the way of word-building when a word is formed by _______ different sounds. E. g. to whisper, to sneeze, to whistle, to buzz, to bark, to bubble.

Reduplication: n the way of word-formation within which new words are formed by _____ a stem, either without any phonetic changes or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant. E. g. bye-bye, gee- gee, hush-hush, ping-pong, dilly-dally.

Back-formation: n the creation of new words by losing a _______ morpheme (babysitter to baby-sit, editor to edit, beggar to beg). It is opposite to suffixation, that is why it is called back-formation.

Sound-interchange n the creation of new words by changing the _____ (to breathe – breath, food – feed)

Stress-shift: n the process of forming new words by replacement of _______ from one syllable to another (‘import – to im’port, ‘record – to re’cord).

Types of Shortening: n substantivisation n acronyms and letter abbreviations n blends (сращения) n clippings (усечения)

Substantivisation: n is dropping of the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive word-group. The remaining adjective takes on the meaning and all syntactic functions of the noun and, in this way, develops into a new word. A number of nouns in English appeared in this way (documentary – a doc. film; finals – final examination; an editorial – an editorial article).

Abbreviation: na _____ form of a _____ word or a phrase used in a text in place of the whole for economy of space and effort.

Main types of shortenings: n _______ abbreviations (the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing), e. g. Mon — Monday, April, Mr. , Dr. n _______ abbreviations

Acronyms and letter abbreviations: Though the border-line between them is rather vague scholars make distinction between these 2 notions.

Letter abbreviations: n are mere replacements of longer phrases including names of well-known organizations, agencies, institutions, political parties, official offices. They are pronounced ______ and, as a rule, possess no linguistic forms proper to words (ITV = Independent Television; SST = Supersonic Transport)

Acronyms n are regular vocabulary units spoken as _______ (CLASS, yuppie). All acronyms, unlike letter abbreviations, perform the syntactic functions of ordinary words and can have grammatical inflexions. n Eg. : MP-MP’s-MPs

Acronyms may be formed in different ways: n from the initial letters or syllables of a phrase (NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization; UNO = United Nations Organization) n from the initial syllables of each word of a phrase (Interpol = international police)

Blends: n are words created when _______ and _______ segments of two words are joined together (smog = smoke + fog; brunch = breakfast + lunch).

Clipping: n is creation of new words by shortening a word of 2 or more _______ without changing its class membership (van = caravan, advantage (in tennis); dub = double; mike = microphone).

As a rule, lexical meanings of the clipped and the original word do not coincide. E. g. : Doc refers only to «sb. who practises medicine», while doctor denotes also «the higher degree given by a University, and a person who has received it» – Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Law).

Clippings fall into: n initial (van = advantage) n medial (specs = spectacles, maths = mathematics) n final (fan = fanatic)

Morphological Structure of Words

1.Types of Words: Monomorphic

Polymorphic

2.Morphemes: Types

DIVIDE THE FOLLOWING WORDS INTO MEANINGFUL PARTS

workers

pre-reading

loves

bicycles

classified

impossible

dresses

beautifully

OBJECTIVES

• To know how to divide words into morphemes

• To identify the different types of morphemes

• To classify morphemes

GRAMMAR IS DIVIDED INTO MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

• Syntax –structure of sentences

• Morphology –structure of words

• Words

• Words are composed of morphemes.

• Words that consist of just one morpheme are monomorphic words.

• Words that consist of more than one morpheme are polymorphic words
  Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning

• Morphemes are classified according to different principles

• Degree of independence: free or bound

• Role they play in forming words: roots or affixes

• Degree of independence

Free morphemes stand alone in the language. Ex. work -worker

write -writer

Bound morphemes are used exclusively with free or bound morphemes.

Ex. -er worker writer

leg- — legible

arrog- — arrogant

ROLE THEY PLAY IN FORMING WORDS

Root morphemes —

The root is the primary lexical unit of a word which carries semantic aspects of a word and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.

It is the common element in a word family.

Roots can be free or bound

Most native English roots are free morphemes. Ex. read, eat, write

Most borrowed roots are bound

Arrog- -ance

Char- -ity

Leg- -ible

Toler- -able

Affixes

Affixes are always bound forms. Ex. -ful, -ly, -ity,

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes.

Prefixes come before the base or root.

Ex. im- possible un- happy

• Suffixes come after a base or root.

• They may be inflectional or derivational.

Derivational morphemes

Change the meaning of a word or the part of speech or both. Derivational morphemes create new words.

Example: kind — kindness

friend — friendship

Inflectional morphemes

They can only be suffixes.

Example -s cats

-s reads

An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of a word. Ex. invited

English has only seven inflectional morphemes—plural, possessive -nouns

3rd.person singular, past tense, past participle, present participle -verbs

comparative , superlative — adjectives

allomorphs

Different phonetic forms or variations of a morpheme

/Z/ /S/ /IZ/

Plural dogs cats horses

3rd person reads talks dresses

eatable edible soluble

Jj is for Jottings 135.  Morphemes.

There was a brief definition of morphemes in the article on learning vocabulary.  Direct vocabulary instruction referred to using morphological knowledge to work out meanings of more complex words.  So it’s probably time to go more thoroughly into morphemes and how important they really are.  Knowledge of morphemes is important in phonics for both reading and spelling; and also in vocabulary and comprehension.  That’s a broad sweep across both language and literacy.

A BASIC DEFINITION.

Here is a repeat of the definition given in the earlier article: Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further.  An example of a free morpheme is “bad”, and an example of a bound morpheme is “ly.” It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone.

So, morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.  The word “morphology” is Greek, and is made up of two parts: “morph”, meaning “shape, form”; “-ology”, which means “the study of something”.

TYPES OF MORPHEMES.

1. Free vs. Bound.

A morpheme can be either single words (free morphemes) or parts of words (bound morphemes).  Thus a word consists of one or more morphemes.

A free morpheme can stand alone as a single word.  Examples are:

picture

father

 gentle.

A bound morpheme exists as only part of a word.  Examples are:

-s as in dog+s;

-ed as in jump+ed;

 un- as in un+happy;

mis- as in mis+fortune;

-er as in sing+er.

1. Compound words.

When we join free morphemes together we make compound words.  Examples are sunshine, eyeball, birthday, rainbow.  Compound words make an easy introduction to the idea that words can have multiple parts.

1. Inflectional vs. Derivational.

Morphemes can also be divided into inflectional or derivational morphemes.

This sounds tricky, but it really isn’t.

Inflectional Morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but do not create a word.  Let’s use the word jump as an example.

We have jump (base form); jumping (present progressive); jumped (past tense).  The inflectional morphemes -ing and -ed are added to the base word jump, to indicate the tense of the word.

If a word has an inflectional morpheme, it is still the same word, with a few possible suffixes added. So if you looked up jump in the dictionary, then only the base word jump would get its own entry into the dictionary. Jumping and jumped are listed under jump, as they are inflections of the base word. Jumping and jumped do not get their own dictionary entry.

With an irregular past tense, such as ran (past tense of run), the past tense marker is not -ed, as usual. Instead, the past tense marker is a change in the vowel from ‘u’ to ‘a’.  As always, English is a very complex language, and I’m jolly glad I didn’t have to learn it as a second language!

Derivational morphemes are different from inflectional morphemes, in that they do create (derive) a new word.  And this new word gets its own entry in the dictionary.  So derivational morphemes help us to create new words out of base words.

We will use the base word act as an example.  We can create new words from act by derivational prefixes ( eg. re-, en-) and suffixes (eg. –or).  Thus we have created three new words: re+act (react); en+act (enact); act-or (actor).  Each of these new words has its own dictionary entry.

1. Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots/Bases.

We can divide morphemes into prefixes, suffixes and roots/bases.

• Prefixes are morphemes that attach to the front of a root/base word.
• Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a root/base word, or to other suffixes.
• Roots/Base words are morphemes that form the base of a word, and usually carry its meaning.
  • Generally, base words are free morphemes, which can stand by themselves (e.g. cycle as in bicycle/cyclist, and form as in transform/formation).
  • Whereas root words are bound morphemes that cannot stand by themselves (e.g. -ject as in subject/reject, and -volve as in evolve/revolve).

Most morphemes can be divided into:

• Anglo-Saxon (like re-, un-, -ness);
• Latin  (like non-, ex-, -ion, -ify);
• Greek  (like micro, photo, graph).

So morphemes can be very helpful for analysing unfamiliar words.  For more on root words and analysis, check out the article on children or feet: using the right root.

BREAKING WORDS INTO MORPHEMES.

It is useful to break words into morphemes and, if you know the meaning of the some or all of them, you can unlock the meanings of difficult words. Here is an example: unreliability (“unable to be relied upon or trusted”).

We have un+rely+able+ity.

Un is a prefix with a negative meaning or not.

Rely is the base word meaning “depend upon with full trust or confidence”.

Able is a suffix meaning “capable of”.

Ity is a suffix referring to quality or condition (although I couldn’t have told you that one off the top of my head).

So even if the word unreliability were unfamiliar, by knowing the meanings of prefixes and suffixes and some base words, you can often deduce the meanings.  And it’s fun being a word detective!

SUGGESTIONS FOR MORPHEME ACTIVITIES.

Analysing the morphology of words is useful for explaining phonics patterns (graphemes) and spelling rules.  This is in addition to discovering the meanings of unfamiliar words, as mentioned above.  It also shows us how words are linked together. Recognising and analysing morphemes is also useful, therefore, for providing comprehension strategies.  Activities can include:

• Sorting words by base or root words.
• Picking out prefixes and suffixes.
• Making new words by combining base words with one of a choice of several prefixes.
• Finding all the morphemes in multi-morphemic words (eg. unhappiness, indecisiveness, unstoppable, metamorphosis.)
• Give base words and prefixes/suffixes and see how many words students can build, and what meaning they might have.  For example: Prefixes: un- de- pre- re- co- con-
  Base Words: play help flex bend blue sad sat
  Suffixes: -ful -ly -less -able/-ible -ing -ion -y -ish -ness –ment

As you can see, although we don’t hear the words “morpheme” or “morphology” very often, we are using them every time we speak or write.  And knowing about morphemes and their meanings plays a very important part in reading, writing, spelling and language.

Check out the Facebook page: Aa is for Alpacas.

55

Bochkova
G.Sh.

A
COURSE IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Lecture
One

1. Grammar
   as part of language. Grammar as a linguistic discipline.

2. Parts
   of grammar. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of grammatical
   units.

3. The
   main notions of grammar. Grammatical meaning, grammatical form.
   Grammatical category.

1.
We should distinguish between language as an abstract system of signs
(meaningful units) and speech as the use of language in the process
of communication. Language and speech are interconnected. Language
functions in speech. Speech is the manifestation of language.

The main distinctions of
language and speech are:

1. language
   is abstract while speech is concrete;

2. language
   is common, general for all the bearers while speech is individual;

3. language
   is stable, less changeable while speech tends to changes;

4. language
   is a closed system, its units are limited while speech tends to be
   open and endless.

The system of language is
constituted by 3 subsystems: phonetics, vocabulary, grammar. The
three constituent parts of language are studied by the corresponding
linguistic disciplines: phonology, lexicology, grammar.

Grammar may be defined as a
system of word changing and other means of expressing relations of
word in the sentence.

Grammar
as a linguistic discipline may be practical (descriptive, normative)
or theoretical. Practical
grammar
describes the grammatical system of a given language.
Theoretical grammar
gives a scientific explanation of the nature and peculiarities of the
grammatical system of the language.

Modern English, as distinct
from Modern Russian, is a language of analytical structure. Relations
of words in the sentence are expressed mainly by the positions of
words or by special form-words. The main means of expressing
syntactic relations in Russian (a language of synthetic structure) is
the system of word changing.

2. Main units of grammar are a
word and a sentence. A word may be divided into morphemes, a sentence
may be divided into phrases (word- groups). A morpheme, a word, a
phrase and a sentence are units of different levels of language
structure. A unit of a higher level consists of one or more units of
a lower level.

Grammatical units enter into
two types of relations: in the language system (paradigmatic
relations) and in speech (syntagmatic relations).

In
the language system each unit is included into a set of connections
based on different properties. For example, word forms child,
children, child’s, children’s
have the same lexical meaning and have different grammatical
meanings. They constitute a lexeme.

Word-forms children, boys,
men, books have the same grammatical meaning and have different
lexical meanings. They constitute a grammeme (a categorical form, a
form class).

The
system of all grammemes (grammatical forms) of all lexemes (words) of
a given class constitutes a paradigm.

Syntagmatic
relations are the relations in an utterance: I
like children.

There
is an essential difference in the way lexical and grammatical
meanings exist in the language and occur in speech. Lexical meanings
can be found in a bunch only in a dictionary or in the memory of a
man, or, scientifically, in the lexical system of the language. In
actual speech a lexical morpheme displays only one meaning of the
bunch in each case and that meaning is singled out by the context or
the situation of speech (syntagmatically): He
runs fast. He runs a hotel.

The meanings of a grammatical
morpheme always come together in the word. They can be singled out
only relatively in contrast to the meanings of other grammatical
morphemes (paradigmatically).

Main grammatical units, a word
and a sentence, are studied by different sections of Grammar:
Morphology (Accidence) and Syntax. Morphology studies the structure,
forms and the classification of words. Syntax studies the structure,
forms and the classification of sentences. In other words, Morphology
studies paradigmatic relations of words; Syntax studies syntagmatic
relations of words and paradigmatic relations of sentences.

According to another approach
Morphology should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations
of words. Syntax should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations of sentences.

Syntactic syntagmatics is a
relatively new field of study, reflecting the functional approach to
language, i.e. the description of connected speech, or discourse.

3. The basic notions of
grammar are the grammatical meaning, the grammatical form and the
grammatical category.

The
grammatical meaning is a general, abstract meaning which embraces
classes of words (ox –
oxen,
bush – bushes).

The grammatical meaning
depends on the lexical meaning and is connected with objective
reality indirectly, through the lexical meaning.

The
grammatical meaning is relative, it is revealed in relations of word
forms: put – puts.

The grammatical meaning is
obligatory. The grammatical meaning must be expressed if the speaker
wants to be understood.

The
grammatical meaning must have a grammatical form of expression
(inflexions, analytical forms, word-order, etc.). Compare the
word-forms reads, is
writing. Both forms
denote process, but only the second form expresses it grammatically.

The term form may be used in a
wide sense to denote all means of expressing grammatical meanings. It
may be also used in a narrow sense to denote means of expressing a
particular grammatical meaning (plural number, present tense, etc.).

Grammatical
elements are unities of meaning and form, content and expression. In
the language system there is no direct correspondence of meaning and
form. Two or more units of the plane of content (meaning) may
correspond to one unit of the plane of expression (polysemy,
homonymy) – bushes,
speaks,
man’s;
oxen,
spoken.
Two or more units of the plane of expression (form) may correspond to
one unit of the plane of content (synonymy) – books,
buses,
children,
feet, criteria, data,
nuclei.

1. In the system of language
   grammatical elements are connected on the basis of similarity and
   contrast.

Partially
similar elements, i.e. elements having common and distinctive
features, constitute oppositions: goes
– went, box – boxes, good – better – best.
Consider the opposition box – boxes. Members of the opposition
differ in form and have different grammatical meanings (singular and
plural). At the same time they express the same general meaning –
number.

The
unity of the general meaning and its particular manifestations, which
is revealed through the opposition of forms, is a grammatical
category. There may be
different definitions of the category laying stress either on its
notional or formal aspect. But the category exists only if there is
an opposition of at least two forms. If there is one form, there is
no category.

The minimal (two-member)
opposition is called binary.

Oppositions may be of three
main types:

1. privative. One member has a
   certain distinctive feature. This member is called marked, or
   strong (+). The other member is characterized by the absence of
   this distinctive feature. This member is called unmarked, or weak
   (-):

speak
– speaks ⁺

1. equipollent. Both members of
   the opposition are marked:

am⁺
— is⁺

1. gradual. Members of the
   opposition differ by the degree of certain property:

good – better – best

Most grammatical oppositions
are privative.

The
marked (strong) member has a narrow and definite meaning. The
unmarked (weak) member has a wide, general meaning.

Grammatical
forms express meanings of different categories. The form goes denotes
present tense, 3^rd
person, singular number, indicative mood, active voice, etc. These
meanings are revealed in different oppositions:

goes
– is going

goes
– went

goes
– has gone

But
grammatical forms cannot express different meanings of the same
category. So if a grammatical form has two or more meanings, they
belong to different categories.

In
certain contexts the difference between members of the opposition is
lost, the opposition is reduced to one member. Usually the weak
member acquires the meaning of the strong member: The
train starts at 8 p.m. tomorrow.
This kind of oppositional reduction is called neutralization.

On
the other hand, the strong member may be used in the context typical
for the weak member. This use is stylistically marked: He
is always complaining.
This kind of reduction is called transposition.

Grammatical
categories reflect phenomena of objective reality. Thus the category
of number in nouns reflects the essential properties of
noun-referents. Such categories may be called notional, or
referential. Other categories reflect peculiarities of the
grammatical structure of the language (number in verbs). Such
categories may be called formal, or relational.

Besides
grammatical, or inflexional categories, based on the oppositions of
forms, there are categories, based on the oppositions of classes of
words. Such categories are called lexico-grammatical, or selective.
Compare: стол
– доска
– окно;
большой
– большая
– большое.The
formal difference between members of a lexico-grammatical opposition
is shown syntagmatically: большой
стол.

Grammatical
categories may be influenced by the lexical meanings. Such categories
as number, case, voice strongly depend on the lexical meaning. They
are proper to certain subclasses of words. Thus, only objective verbs
have the voice opposition, subjective verbs have only one form, that
of the weak member of the opposition. Other categories (tense, mood)
are more abstract. They cover all words of a class.

As
grammatical categories reflect relations existing in objective
reality, different languages may have the same categories. But the
system and character of grammatical categories are determined by the
grammatical structure of a given language.

Lecture
Two

THE
STRUCTURE OF WORDS. MEANS OF FORM-BUILDING

1. A word and a morpheme. The
   notion of allomorphs.

2. Synthetic means of
   form-building.

3. Analytical forms.

As the object of morphology is
the structure, classification and combinability of words, let’s
define what the word is. There exist many definitions of the term
word and none of them is generally accepted.

The word is the smallest
naming unit.

According
to Maslov: The word is the minimal unit possessing a certain
looseness (in reference to the place in a sequence – Away
he ran. He
ran away. Away ran he.).

According to Ivanova: The word
is the smallest unit of language capable of syntactic functioning and
the biggest unit of morphology.

Linguists
point out as most characteristic features of words their
isolatability (a word may become a sentence: Boys!
Where? Certainly.),
uninterruptibility (a word is not easily interrupted by a
parenthetical expression as a sequence of words may be: compare –
black – that is
bluish-black birds where bluish-black cannot
be inserted in the middle of the compound blackbird),
a certain looseness in reference to the place in a sequence.

A. Martinet (A Functional View
of Language, Oxford, 1962) states that: “As a matter of fact,
inseparability is one of the most useful criteria for distinguishing
what is formally one word from what is a succession of different
words.

Words are divided into
morphemes. A morpheme is one of the central notions of grammatical
theory. Definition of a morpheme is not an easy matter, and it has
been attempted many times by different scholars. We may briefly
define the morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit.

Morphemes are commonly
classified into free (those which can occur as separate words) and
bound. A word consisting of a single (free) morpheme is
monomorphemic, its opposite is polymorphemic.

According to their meaning and
function morphemes are subdivided into lexical (roots),
lexico-grammatical (word-building affixes) and grammatical
(form-building affixes or inflexions).

In grammar we are concerned
with the grammatical or structural meanings of root morphemes, which
are necessarily lexical, and as to word-building morphemes, we are
only interested in them in so far as they are grammatically relevant,
and that is the case if they show that the word belongs to a certain
part of speech, and if they serve to distinguish one part of speech
from another.

This
grammatical significance of derivation morphemes is always combined
with their lexical meaning. For instance, if we take this pair of
words: gamble –
gambler, the
derivative morpheme –er
has a grammatical significance, as it serves to distinguish a noun
from a verb, and it has its
lexical meaning, as
the lexical meaning of the noun
gambler is different
from that of the verb gamble.

Inflection
(grammatical) morphemes have no lexical meaning or function. There is
not the slightest difference in the way of lexical meaning between
give and gave, or
between house
and houses.
However an inflection morpheme can acquire a lexical meaning in some
special cases, for instance, if the plural form of a noun develops a
meaning which the singular form does not have. Thus, the plural form
“colours” has a meaning “flag” which the singular form
“colour” does not have. These are cases of lexicalization.

There
is in modern English a case where a boundary line between inflection
and derivation is hard to draw, and a morpheme does duty both ways.
This is the morpheme –ing
with its function of a suffix deriving verbal nouns and of an
inflection serving to form a gerund and a participle (homonymy),
which are non-finite verb-forms.

This appears to be quite a
special case in English, and it does not seem to find any parallel in
Russian.

Two
or more morphemes may sound the same but be basically different, that
is they may be homonyms. Thus the –er morpheme indicating the doer
of the action as in gambler
has a homonym – the morpheme –er
denoting the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs as in
longer.
Which of the two homonymous morphemes is actually there in a given
case can only be determined by examining the other morphemes in the
word.

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 –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 allomorphs
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 J
)graphically, oo
and ee).
Thus, the morpheme in this case, has three allomorphs, -s,
-en,
[H]
¬
[J].

Morphemic
variants are identified in the text on the basis of their
co-occurence with other morphs, or their environment. The total of
environments constitutes the distribution.

There
may be three types of morphemic distribution: contrastive,
non-contrastive, complementary. Morphs are in contrastive
distribution if their position is the same and their meanings are
different: charming
— charmed.
Morphs
are in non-contrastive distribution if their position is the same and
their meanings are the same: learned — learnt. Such morphs
constitute free variants of the same morpheme. Morphs are in
complementary distribution if their positions are different and their
meanings are the same: speaks
— teaches.
Such morphs are allomorphs of the same morpheme.

Grammatical
meanings may be expressed by the absence of the morpheme. Compare:
book
— books.
The meaning of plurality is expressed by the morpheme -s.
The meaning of singularity is expressed by the absence of the
morpheme. Such meaningful absence of the morpheme is called
zero-morpheme.

Will
is a kind of contradiction. Formally it is a word, since it has the
looseness of a word (You
will come. You will certainly come. Will you come?).
As to its content it is not a word, but a grammatical morpheme:

1. unlike
   a word, it has no lexical meaning in

He
will arrive tomorrow;

1. the
   meaning of –ed
   in arrived
   and that of will
   in will
   arrive
   are homogeneous;

2. The
   meaning of will
   is relative like that of grammatical morphemes. Will
   invite
   shows the “future” meaning when it is opposed to invite
   with
   the “present” meaning. But when it is contrasted with shall
   invite,
   it shows the meaning of the second and third person;

3. The
   meaning of will
   is only indirectly connected with reality, through the word it is
   linked with. It does not denote futurity in general, but the
   futurity of the action denoted by invite,
   arrive,
   etc.

Since
will
has the properties of both a word and a grammatical morpheme, we
shall call it a
grammatical word-morpheme.
Units
of the will
invite
type containing grammatical word-morphemes are treated as analytical
forms.

English
possesses also free lexico-grammatical morphemes, or
lexico-grammatical word-morphemes. Units of the give
in
type containing lexico-grammatical word-morphemes are treated as
composite
words.

2. Means of form-building and
grammatical forms are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic forms are built with
the help of bound morphemes, analytical forms are built with the help
of semi-bound morphemes (word-morphemes).

Synthetic means of
form-building are affixation, sound-interchange (inner — inflexion),
suppletivity.

Typical features of English
affixation are scarcity and homonymy of affixes. Another
characteristic feature is a great number of zero-morphemes.

Though English grammatical
affixes are few in number, affixation is a productive means of form
-building.

Sound
interchange may be of two types: vowel- and consonant-interchange. It
is often accompanied by affixation: bring
— brought.

Sound interchange is not
productive in Modern English. It is used to build the forms of
irregular verbs.

Forms
of one word may be derived from different roots: go
— went,
I
— me,
good
— better.
This means of form -building is called suppletivity. Different roots
may be treated as suppletive forms if:

1) they have the same lexical
meaning;

2) there are no parallel
non-suppletive forms,

3) other words of the same
class build their forms without suppletivity.

Suppletivity, like
inner-inflexion, is not productive in Modern English, but it occurs
in words with a very high frequency.

3.
Analytical forms are combinations of the auxiliary element (a
word-morpheme) and the notional element: is
writing.

Analytical
forms are contradictory units: phrases in form and word-forms in
function.

In
the analytical form is
writing
the auxiliary verb be
is lexically empty. It expresses the grammatical meaning. The
notional element expresses both the lexical and the grammatical
meaning. So the grammatical meaning is expressed by the two
components of the analytical form: the auxiliary verb be
and the affix —ing.
The word-morpheme be
and the inflexion -ing
constitute a discontinuous morpheme.

Analytical
forms are correlated with synthetic forms. There must be at least one
synthetic form in the paradigm. Analytical forms have developed from
free phrases and there are structures, which take an intermediary
position between free phrases and analytical forms: will
go. more beautiful.

Some
doubt has been expressed about the formations shall
invite and
will
invite.
There is a view that shall
and will
have
a lexical meaning. We will not go into this question now and we will
consider shall
and will
as verbs serving to form the future tense of other verbs. Thus, have,
be, do,
shall,
will
are auxiliary verbs and as such constitute a typical feature of the
analytical structure of modern English.

While
the existence of analytical forms of the English verb cannot be
disputed, the existence of such forms in adjectives and adverbs is
not universally recognized. The question, whether such formations as
more
vivid, the most vivid,
or more
vividly
and most
vividly
are or are not analytical forms of degrees of comparison of vivid
and
vividly,
is controversial.

The
traditional view held both by practical and theoretical grammars
until recently was that phrases of this type were analytical degrees
of comparison. Recently, the view has been put forward that they do
not essentially differ from phrases of the type very
vivid.

Roughly
speaking, considerations of meaning tend towards recognizing such
formations as analytical forms, whereas strictly grammatical
considerations lead to the contrary view.

If that
view is adopted the sphere of adjectives having degrees of comparison
in Modern English will be very limited: besides the limitations
imposed by the meaning of the adjectives (relative – deaf,
wooden),
there will be the limitation depending on the ability of an adjective
to take the inflections –er
and –est.

Lecture Three

PARTS OF SPEECH

1. Principles of
classification. Possible ways of the grammatical classification of
the vocabulary.

2. Notional and functional
(formal) parts of speech.

Parts of speech are
grammatical classes of words distinguished on the

basis of three criteria:
semantic, morphological and syntactic, i.e meaning, form and
function.

MEANING
(Semantic Properties).

Each
part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an

abstraction from the lexical
meanings of constituent words. The general

meaning
of nouns is substance, the general meaning of verbs is process, etc.)
This general meaning is understood as the categorial meaning of a
class of words, or the part-of-speech meaning.

Semantic
properties of a part of speech find their expression in the
grammatical properties. To
sleep, a sleep, sleepy, asleep
refer to the same phenomenon of objective reality, but they belong to
different parts of speech, as their grammatical properties are
different.

So
meaning is a supportive criterion which helps to check the purely

grammatical criteria, those of
form and function.

FORM (Morphological
Properties).

The formal criterion concerns
the inflexional and derivationaJ features of words belonging to a
given class, i.e. the grammatical categories (the paradigms) and
derivational (stem-building, lexico-grammatical) morphemes.

Nouns have the categories of
number and case. Verbs possess the categories of tense, aspect,
voice, mood, person, number, order, posteriority. Adjectives have the
category of the degrees of comparison. That’s why the paradigms of
lexemes belonging to different parts of speech are different.

The formal criterion is not
always reliable as many words are invariable and many words contain
no derivational affixes. Besides, the same derivational affixes may
be used to build different parts of speech.

-ly
can end an adjective, an adverb, a noun: a
daily:
)

-tion
can end a noun and a verb: to
position.

Because of the limitation of
meaning and form as criteria we mainly rely on a word’s function as a
criterion of its class.

FUNCTION (Syntactic
Properties)

Syntactic properties of a
class of words are the combinability of words (the distributional
criterion) and typical functions in the sentence.

We
distinguish between lexical, grammatical and lexico-grammatical
combinability: between lexemes (a
wise man
but not milk),
between grammemes (students
sing
but not sings),
between parts of speech (sing
beautifully, a beautiful singer
but not beautifully
singer).

When speaking of the
combinability of parts of speech, lexico-grammatical meanings are to
be considered first. Owing to the lexico-grammatical meanings of
nouns (“substance”) and prepositions (“relation of substances”)
these two parts of speech often go together.

Parts
of speech are said to be characterized by their function in the
sentence. A noun is mostly used as a subject or an object, a verb
usually functions as a predicate, an adjective – as an attribute,
etc. To some extent, this is true. But the subject of a sentence may
be expressed not only by a noun, but also by a pronoun, a numeral, a
gerund, an infinitive, etc. On the other hand, a noun can (alone or
with some other word) fulfill the function of almost any part of the
sentence. Besides, the typical functions of student and student’s
are not the same. Now, prepositions, conjunctions, particles are
usually not recognized as fulfilling the function of any part of the
sentence, so with regard to them the meaning of the term “syntactical
function” is quite different.

The three criteria of defining
grammatical classes of words in English may be placed in the
following order: function, form, meaning.

Parts
of speech are heterogeneous classes and the boundaries are not
clearly cut especially in the area of meaning. Within a part of
speech there are subclasses, which have all the properties of a given
class and subclasses, which have only some of these properties and
may have features of another class. So a part of speech may be
described as a field, which includes both central, most typical
members, and marginal, less typical members. Marginal areas of
different parts of speech may overlap and there may be intermediary
elements with contradictory features (statives, modal words,
pronouns). Words belonging to different parts of speech may be united
by a common feature and constitute a class cutting across other
classes (for example, determiners). So the part-of-speech
classification involves overlapping criteria and scholars single out
from 9 to 13 parts of speech in Modern English.

Alongside
of the three-criteria principle of dividing words into grammatical
classes there are classifications based on one principle,
morphological or syntactic.

The
founder of English scientific grammar H. Sweet finds the following
classes of words: “declinables” — noun-words, adjective -words,
verbs and “indeclinables” — particles. The term
particles
denotes words of different classes which have no categories.

Alongside
of this classification H. Sweet suggests a grouping based on the
syntactical functioning of certain classes of words. Thus, the group
of noun-words includes, besides nouns, noun-pronouns, noun-numerals,
infinitive and gerund; the group of adjectives, besides adjectives,
includes adjective-pronouns, adjective-numerals, participles. The
verb group includes finite forms and verbals; here the morphological
principle seems to dominate again: all non-finite as well as finite
forms possess the categories of tense and voice. Thus, verbals –
infinitive and gerund — turn to belong to noun-words owing to their
syntactical function, and to verb-words, owing to their morphological
properties.

As
far as the group of indeclinables is concerned, H. Sweet attributes
to it quite different elements: adverbs which may be parts of
sentences and conjunctions, prepositions and interjections which
can’t be parts of sentences: prepositions, functioning within
predicative units, and conjunctions, linking predicative units.

O.
Jespersen, the Danish linguist, (Philosophy of Grammar) was fully
aware of the difficulty to reconcile 2 main principles – form and
function, morphology and syntax. He states that if we take the
morphological principle (“declinables” and “indeclinables”),
then such words as must, the, then, for, enough must be attributed to
one class – this is the weakest point of Sweet’s classification.

The
opposite criterion, distributional, is used by the American scholar
Ch. Fries. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions
in the sentence, which are defined by substitution testing.

As
a result of distributional analysis Ch. Fries singles out four main
classes of words, roughly corresponding to nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs.

As
Ch. Fries indicates, any words, taking the position before the words
of class 2, belong to class 1. Thus, the words man,
he, the others,
another
are referred to class 1, because they can take the position before
the word of class 2 (was,
remembered,
went).

Besides
4 classes, Ch. Fries distinguishes 15 groups. Here he again resorts
to the positional principle and these groups include words of various
types. For example, group A contains all words which can take the
position of the:
the,
no, your, their, both, few, much, John’s, four, twenty,
etc. There are groups including one or two words (group C – not;
group H – there,
there is,
group N – please).

Morphological
properties, as you see, are completely neglected, but syntactical
functions are not taken into account either: because modal verbs are
separated from class 2 (notional verbs), but modal verbs of group B
also perform the predicative function like notional verbs.

Thus,
CH. Fries’s classification does not achieve its aim. His division
turns out to be very confusing, classes and groups overlap one
another and one and the same word seems to belong to different
subdivisions. But at the same time, his material gives interesting
data concerning the distribution of words, their syntactical valency
and the relative frequency of classes and groups. Groups containing
mainly function words possess high frequency.

Thus,
all attempts to create a classification of lexemes based on one
principle failed. The traditional classification is not worse and has
the advantage of being well — known at least.

2.
Both the traditional and the syntactico-distributional
classifications divide parts of speech into notional and functional.
Notional parts of speech are open classes — new items can be added
to them, they are indefinitely extendable. Functional parts of speech
are closed systems, including a limited number of members. As a rule,
they cannot be extended by creating new items.

The
main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected by
derivational relations: strength
— strengthen,
strong
— strongly.

Functional
parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, particles.
The distinctive features of functional parts of speech are: I) very
general and weak lexical meaning; 2) their practically negative
isolatability, preventing the use of substitutes 3) obligatory
combinability; 4) the function of linking and specifying words.

Lecture Four

THE VERB. CATEGORIES OF TENSE,
ASPECT, CORRELATION (ORDER)

1. Time
   and linguistic means of its expression. Time in Russian and English
   compared.

2. The
   problem of the future and future – in – the past. The category
   of posterioriry (prospect).

3. The
   place of continuous forms in the system of the verb. The category
   of aspect.

4. The
   place of perfect forms in the system of the verb. The category of
   order (correlation, retrospect, taxis).

1.
We should distinguish between time as a universal non-linguistic
concept and linguistic means of its expression (grammatical and
lexical).

The
time of events is usually correlated with the moment of speaking. The
three main divisions of time are present (including the moment of
speaking), past (preceding it), and future (following it).

Events may be also correlated
with other events, moments, situations (for example: in the past or
in the future). They may precede or follow other events or happen at
the same time with other events.

Accordingly
time may be denoted absolutely (with regard to the moment of
speaking) and relatively (with regard to a certain moment).

Languages differ as to the
means of the grammatical expression of time. Time may be expressed by
one category, the category of tense (Russian) or by several
categories (English).

In Modern Russian the category
of tense denotes time both absolutely and relatively:

1. Он работает на
   заводе.

2. Он сказал, что
   работает на заводе.

In
sentence (1) the present form denotes an action, correlated with the
moment of speaking. In sentence (2) it denotes an action, correlated
with a moment in the past. In both sentences the action includes the
moment with which it is correlated.

In Modern English the category
of tense denotes time only absolutely:

(3)
He
works at a plant.

(4)
He
said that he worked at a plant.

In both sentences the action
is correlated with the moment of speaking. In sentence (3) it
includes the moment of speaking. In sentence (4) it precedes the
moment of speaking.

So
the category of tense in Modern Russian denotes the relation of
an
action
to the moment of speaking or to some other moment.

The category of tense in
Modern English denotes the relation of an action to the moment of
speaking. Relative time is expressed by special forms
(future-in-the-past, perfect forms, sometimes continuous forms),
which are very often also treated as tenses.

2. The two main approaches to
the category of Tense in Modern English are: 1) there are three
tenses: present, past, future; 2) there are two tenses: present and
past (O.Jespersen, L.S.Barkhudarov).

According
to the second
view
shall,
will+ infinitive
cannot be treated as analytical forms, as shall
and will
preserve their modal meaning. There are proofs that shall
and. will
may denote pure futurity (B.A.Ilyish), so they may be regarded as
auxiliary verbs.

However the recognition of the
analytical forms of the future does not mean the recognition of the
three-tense system, because in Modern English there arc two
correlated forms, denoting future actions: future and
future-in-the-past. Future-in-the past correlates an action not with
the moment of speaking but with a moment in the past, so it cannot be
included into the system of tenses. Moreover, if it is treated as a
tense-form, there will be two tenses in one form (future and past),
which is impossible. On the other hand, future and non-future forms
constitute an opposition:

comes — will come

came
— would
come

This
opposition reveals a special category, the category of posteriority
(prospect). Will
come
denotes absolute posteriority, would
come —
relative posteriority.

3. English verbs have special
forms for expressing actions in progress, going on at a definite
moment or period of time, i.e. for expressing limited duration —
continuous forms.

When
I came
in
he was writing.

Continuous forms have been
traditionally treated as tense-forms (definite, expanded,
progressive) or as tense-aspect forms.

Consider
the opposition:

comes
— is coming

Members
of the opposition are not opposed as tenses (tense is the same). They
show different character of an action, the manner or way in which the
action is experienced, or regarded: as a mere fact or as taken in
progress. The opposition
common
—
continuous
reveals the category of aspect.

Tense and aspect are closely
connected, but they are different categories, revealed through
different oppositions:

comes — came

comes
— is
coming.

The
fact that the Infinitive has the category of aspect (to
come — to be coming)
and has no category of tense also shows, that these are different
categories.

The
category of aspect is closely connected with the lexical meaning. R.
Quirk divides the verb into
dynamic
(having the category of aspect) and stative
(disallowing the continuous form). Stative verbs denote perception,
cognition and certain relations: see,
know, like, belong.
Dynamic verbs may be
terminative (limitive),
denoting actions of limited duration: close,
break, come,
and
durative (unlimitive),
denoting actions of unlimited duration: walk,
read, write, shine.
With durative verbs the aspect opposition may be neutralized.

When I came in he sat in
the corner.

When I came in he was
sitting in the corner.

4.
In Modern English there are also special forms for expressing
relative priority — perfect forms. Perfect forms express both the
time (actions preceding a certain moment) and the way the action is
shown to proceed (the connection of the action with the indicated
moment in its results or consequences). So the meaning of the perfect
forms is constituted by two semantic components:
temporal
(priority) and aspective
(result, current relevance). That is why perfect forms have been
treated as tense -forms or aspect-forms.

Consider the oppositions:

comes
— has
come

is
coming
— has
been coming

Members of these oppositions
are not opposed either as tenses or as aspects (members of each
opposition express the same tense and aspect). These oppositions
reveal the category of order (correlation, retrospect, taxis).

Tense and order are closely
connected, but they are different categories, revealed through
different oppositions:

comes
—came

comes
— has
come.

The
fact that verbals have the category of order (to
come
— to
have come, coming
— having
come)
and have no category of tense also shows the difference of these
categories.

The meaning of perfect forms
may be influenced by the lexical meaning of the verb
(limitive/unlimitive), tense-form, context and other factors.

So temporal relations in
Modern English are expressed by three categories:

tense (present — past)

prospect (future —
non-future)

order (perfect —
non-perfect)

The central category, tense,
is proper to finite forms only. Categories

denoting
time relatively, embrace both finites and verbals.

The
character of an action is expressed by two categories: aspect
(common— continuous) and order.

Lecture Five