What is word structure in english

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.

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Most
of the English lexicon is constituted by word which have several
morphemes. (75 % engl. Words – polymorphemic words).

In
ME most English vocabulary arises grows by making new lexemes out of
old one, by adding an affixation to previously existing forms
altering their words class and meaning by combining the existing
words (basis) to produce compounds: derivatives, derived words
(friendly
– unfriendly, teapot, bag bone).

The
contribution of word formation to the grows and development of
English lexicons is second to none, although a great deal belong to
borrowing and semantic derivation.

1. A
   complex word structure – the result of different word-formation
   process (illegal, discouraging, uninteresting)

2. A
   complex word structure may be connected with borrowing and further
   identification of certain morpheme in the system of language
   recipient.

Moreover
similar international structure may be the result of different word
formation process. E.g. discouraging
– discourage + ing; uninteresting – un + interesting
– morphologically(structurally) they are the same.

The
morphemic analyses and derived analyses they are differ in the aims
and basic elements.

To
eye – monomorphic (root word) It’s a derived word.A
morpheme
– the smallest meaningful language unit. Morphemes
may be classified:

1. from
   the semantic point of view.
   Semantically morphemes fall into two classes:

   • root-morphemes
     — is the lexical nucleus of a wщrd, it has an individual lexical
     meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. The
     root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words
     making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach-in
     to teach,
     teacher, teaching, theor- in
     theory,
     theorist, theoretical, etc.

non-root
or affixational
morphemes
include inflectional morphemes or inflections and affixational
morphemes or affixes. Roots and affixes make two distinct classes of
morphemes due to the different roles they play in word-structure.

Roots
and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the
difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words
helpless,
handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.:
the root-morphemes help-,
hand-, black-, London-, -fill are
understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic
constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable.

Affixes
are classified into prefixes
and suffixes:
a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it.
Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the
part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.

1. Structurally morphemes fall into three types:

   • A
     free
     morpheme
     is defined as one that coincides with the stem or a word-form. A
     great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the
     root-morpheme friend
     —
     of the noun friendship
     is
     naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with
     one of the forms of the noun friend.

   • A
     bound
     morpheme
     occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are,
     naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word,
     e.g. the suffixes -ness,
     -ship, -ise (-ize), etc.,
     the prefixes un-,dis-,
     de-, etc.
     (e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise; unnatural, to displease,
     to decipher).

Many
root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes which
always occur in morphemic sequences, i.e. in combinations with ‘
roots or affixes. All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound
morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor-
in
theory,
theoretical, etc.,
barbar-in
barbarism,
barbarian, etc.,
-ceive
in
conceive, perceive,
etc.

• Semi-bound
  (semi-free)
  morpheme
  are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an
  affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morpheme well
  and
  half
  on
  the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and
  the word-form in utterances like sleep
  well, half an hour,” on
  the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like
  well-known,
  half-eaten, half-done.Speaking
  of word-structure on the morphemic level two groups of morphemes
  should be specially mentioned.

To
the
first
group
belong morphemes of Greek and Latin origin often called combining
forms,
e.g. telephone,
telegraph, phonoscope, microscope, etc.
The morphemes tele-,
graph-, scope-, micro-, phone- are
characterised by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar stylistic
reference: tele-
means
‘far’, graph-
means
‘writing’, scope
— ’seeing’, micro-
implies
smallness, phone-
means
’sound.’ Comparing words with tele-
as
their first constituent, such as telegraph,
telephone, telegram one
may conclude that tele-
is
a prefix and graph-,
phone-, gram-are
root-morphemes. On the other hand, words like phonograph,
seismograph, autograph may
create the impression that the second morpheme graph
is
a suffix and the first — a root-morpheme. These morphemes are all
bound root-morphemes of a special kind and such words belong to words
made up of bound roots. The fact that these morphemes do not possess
the part-of-speech meaning typical of affixational morphemes
evidences their status as roots.

The
second
group
embraces
morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate
position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.

According
to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic
and
polymorphic.

Monomorphiс
or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small,
dog, make, give, etc.

Pоlуmоrphiс
words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into
two subgroups:

• polyradical
  words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots. Polyradical
  words fall into two types:

1)
polyradical
words
which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes,
e.g. book-stand,
eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc.
and

2)
words which contain
at least two
roots
and one
or more
affixational
morphemes,
e.g. safety-pin,
wedding-pie, class-consciousness, light-mindedness, pen-holder, etc.

• Monoradical
  words fall into two subtypes:

radical-suffixal
words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more
suffixal morphemes, e.g. acceptable,
acceptability, blackish, etc.;

2)radical-prefixal
words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal
morpheme, e.g. outdo,
rearrange, unbutton, etc.
and 3) prefixo-radical-suffixal,
i.e. words which consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal
morphemes, e.g. disagreeable,
misinterpretation, etc.

Three
types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished:
complete,
conditional
and
defective.

Complete
segmentability is characteristic of a great many words the morphemic
structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual
morphemes clearly stand out within the word lending themselves easily
to isolation.

Conditional
morphemic segmentability characterises words whose segmentation into
the constituent morphemes is doubtful for semantic reasons. The
morphemes making up words of conditional segmentability thus differ
from morphemes making up words of complete segmentability in that the
former do not rise to the full status of morphemes for semantic
reasons and that is why a special term is applied to them in
linguistic literature: such morphemes are called pseudo-morphemes
or quasi-morphemes.

Defective
morphemic segmentability is the property of words whose component
morphemes seldom or never recur in other words. One
of
the component morphemes is a unique morpheme in the sense that it
does not, as a rule, recur in a different linguistic environment. A
unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the
constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational
meaning. The morphemic analysis of words like cranberry,
gooseberry, strawberry shows
that they also possess defective morphemic segmentability: the
morphemes cran-,
goose-, straw- are
unique morphemes.

Morphemic
analyses – the
aim is to state the number and type of morphemes the word possess.

The
procedure generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words
into the constituent morphemes is the method of Immediate
and Ultimate
Constituents.
This method is based on a binary principle, i.e. each stage of the
procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into.
At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate
Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn
broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is
completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further
division, i.e. morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are
referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs). For example the noun
friendliness
is
first segmented into the IC friendly
recurring
in the adjectives friendly-looking
and
friendly
and
the -ness
found
in a countless number of nouns, such as happiness,
darkness, unselfishness, etc.
The IC -ness
is
at the same time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any
smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC
friendly
is
next broken into the ICs friend-and
-ly
recurring
in friendship,
unfriendly, etc.
on the one hand, and wifely,
brotherly, etc.,
on the other. Needless to say that the ICs friend-and
-ly
are
both UCs of the word under analysis.

The
morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carried out on
the basis of two principles: the so-called root
principle
and
the
affix principle.
According to the affix
principle
the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based
on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of
words; for example, the identification of the suffixational morpheme
-less
leads
to the segmentation of words like useless,
hopeless, merciless, etc.,
into the suffixational morpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a
word-cluster; the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the
words agreeable,
agreement, disagree makes
it possible to split these words into the root -agree-
and
the affixational morphemes -able,
-ment, dis-. As
a rule, the application of one of these

11.
Derivational analyses.

The
nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word is known as its
derivative
structure.
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big
classes: simple,
non-derived words and complexes
or derivatives.
Simplexes
are words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs.
Derivatives
are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that
motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the
structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with
the meaning and the structure of the source word.

The
basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are:
derivational
bases,
derivational
affixes
and
derivational
patterns.
The relations between words with a common root but of different
derivative structure are known as derivative
relations.
The derivative and derivative relations make the subject of study at
the
derivational
level
of analysis;
it aims at establishing correlations between different types of
words, the structural and semantic patterns words are built on, the
study also enables one to understand how new words appear in the
language.

Derivational
base: is
defined as the constituent to which a rule of word-formation is
applied. Structurally derivational bases fall into three classes: 1)
bases
that coincide
with
morphological
stems
of different degrees of complexity, e.g. dutiful,
dutifully;
day-dream,
to day-dream, daydreamer.

Derivationally
the stems may be:

1. simple,
   which consist of only one, semantically non motivated constituent
   (pocket,
   motion, retain, horrible).

b) derived
stems are semantically and structurally motivated, and are the
results of the application of word-formation rules (girl
– girlish, to weekend, to daydream)

c) compound
stems are always binary and semantically motivated (match-box,
letter-writer)

2)
bases
that coincide with
word-forms;
e.g. paper-bound,
unsmiling,
unknown.
This class of bases is confined to verbal word-forms
— the
present and the past participles.

3)
bases
that coincide with
word-grоups
of different degrees of stability, e ,g. second-rateness,
flat-waisted,
etc. This class is made of word-groups. Bases of this kind are most
active with derivational affixes in the class of adjectives and
nouns, e.g. blue-eyed,
long-fingered, old-fashioned, do-gooder, etc.

Derivational
affixes: Derivational
affixes are ICs of numerous derivatives in all parts of speech.
Derivational affixes possess two basic functions: 1)
that
of stem-building
and 2)
that
of word-building.
In most cases derivational affixes perform both
functions
simultaneously. It is true that the part-of-speech meaning is proper
in different degrees to the derivational suffixes and prefixes. It
stands out clearly in derivational suffixes but it is less evident in
prefixes; some prefixes lack it altogether. Prefixes like en-,
un-, de-,
out-,
be-,
unmistakably possess the part-of-speech meaning and function as verb
classifiers. The prefix over-evidently
lacks the part-of-speech meaning and is freely used both for verbs
and adjectives, the same may be said about non-,
pre-, post-.

Derivational
patterns: A
derivational
pattern
is a regular
meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes rigid rules on the
order and the nature of the derivational bases and affixes that may
be brought together.

There
are two types of DPs — structural that specify base classes and
individual affixes, and structural-semantic that specify semantic
peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of the affix. DPs
of different levels of generalisation signal: 1)
the
class of source unit that motivates the derivative and the direction
of motivation between different classes of words; 2)
the
part of speech of the derivative; 3)
the
lexical sets and semantic features of derivatives.

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The study of word structure is called morphology. Understanding word structure helps us:

• improve spelling
• expand vocabulary

In studying word structure, we start by looking at a few key concepts first:

• root words
• prefixes
• suffixes

Root words are words, or parts of words, that can usually stand alone. The following are all root words:

• elbow
• fast
• nudge

Most root words can be changed in various ways by adding additional elements to them:

• elbows
• faster
• nudged

Each of the examples above has been altered by adding an element at the end. The elements at the end, namely -s, -er, and -ed, cannot stand alone. These elements are called suffixes.

Sometimes, elements are added to the beginning of a word:

• expose → underexpose
• appear → disappear
• take → overtake
• event → non-event

The elements added to the beginnings of the words above cannot stand alone, and are called prefixes.

Sometimes, when we add a prefix or suffix to a word, we create a new word. This process is called derivation.

• appear → appearance

The two words above are definitely two different words — the first is a verb, the second a noun. Their meanings and uses in sentences are different. In a dictionary, we would have to look them up separately, even though they have a common root word.

Sometimes, when we add a suffix, we don’t create a new word at all. This process is called inflection.

• cat → cats

In the above example, we really have just one word — the first is singular, the second plural. In a dictionary, we might look for cat, but we wouldn’t look for a separate entry for cats.

When words are built from a common root word, or a common ancestor in history (often a Latin word), we call the group of words a word family.

• grammar, grammatical, grammatically, ungrammatical, ungrammatically

The terms above are all built from a common root word, grammar. This word family includes a noun, adjectives, and adverbs.

The terms below are built from a common ancestor, the Latin word spectare, meaning ‘to look’:

• inspect, spectacle, spectacular, inspection

This word family includes verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

WORD-STRUCTURE AND WORD-FORMATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

How do we guess the meanings of the words we have never encountered before? Attachment: attach (root morpheme) + -ment (suffix) attachment – smth. you add to a document ? Attachmeant ? to mean – meant // -ment N-forming suffix v the file you meant to attach to your email but did not

This is one of the central questions of lexicology: the structure of words and the ways of building new words Lexicology studies the internal structure of words and the rules of word-formation, the formation of new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with the borrowing, wordforming provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Morphemes What is the smallest meaningful unit of the language? Sound / phoneme? ? ? Word? ? ? ring > ringlet MORPHEME! Morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit. Morphemes are not independent, they occur only as parts of words, although a word may consist of a single morpheme (love, house, red, cry).

Types of words from the morphological point of view simple derived (friend) (friendly) words compound (girl-friend) compoundderived (eco-friendly)

Phonetically conditioned positional variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs. The negative prefix in- has the following allomorphs: im- (impossible), ir- (irregular), il- (illegal). Morphemes can be classified: a) from the semantic point of view; b) from the structural point of view.

a) Semantically morphemes fall into: roots the lexical nucleus of a word, shared by other members of the word-family and does not admit any further analysis into ultimate constituents non-roots inflexions (functional) prefixes affixes (derivational) infixes suffixes

b) Structurally morphemes fall into: free rain bound rainless cranberry morphemes cranberry, receive semibound half-rain

Morphemic and word-formation analysis The procedure employed for segmenting words is morphemic analysis based on the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on a binary principle. At each stage two components are singled out (referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs)). Each IC at the next stage of the analysis is broken into two smaller meaningful units. The analysis is complete when we arrive at further unsegmentable units, i. e. morphemes. They are called Ultimate Constituents (UCs).

joyfully joyful joy -ly -ful

Structural word-formation analysis proceeds further, studying the structural correlation with other words. It is done with the help of the principle of oppositions, i. e. by studying the partly similar elements, the difference between which is functionally relevant. In our case joyfully and joyful are members of a morphemic opposition. Their distinctive feature is the suffix -ly, like in other oppositions of the same kind: joyful dreadful beautiful joyfully dreadfully beautifully Observing this proportional opposition we may conclude that there is a type of derived adverbs consisting of an adjective stem and the suffix -ly.

Structural morphemic analysis is helpful in distinguishing compound words formed by composition from the ones formed by other wordformation processes. to daydream to whitewash composition or composition + conversion? day (N) + dream (N) = daydream (N) composition daydream (N) > to daydream (V) conversion white (ADJ) + to wash (V) = to whitewash (V) composition

Word-formation A characteristic feature of all human languages is the potential to create new words. The categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb are open in the sense that new members are constantly being added. The most common types of word formation are derivation (affixation), composition (compounding), conversion. The minor types of word formation are clipping, blending, back-formation, abbreviation, sound-imitation, soundinterchange, distinctive stress.

Affixation (Derivation) Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words or derivatives. Prefixes seldom affect the basic lexico-grammatical component of the stem meaning. A simple word and its prefixed derivative usually belong to the same part of speech: read — reread (v); happy — unhappy (adj. ), but be- + adj. > v (belittle), en- + n > v (encase). Suffixes mostly form a different part of speech and usually modify the lexical meaning of the base: free (adj. ) + -dom > n (freedom) but ring (n) + -let > ringlet (n)

Classifications of affixes according to their origin (native and borrowed) Native suffixes: -er (worker), -ness (loneliness), -ing (feeling), -hood (brotherhood), -ship (friendship), -th (truth), -some (handsome), -en (darken), -ful (colorful) Native prefixes: a- (awake) Borrowed suffixes: -ant (deodorant) (Latin), (parentage) -age, -able (readable), -ance (clearance), ard (Spaniard) (French), -ist (linguist), -ism (communism) (Greek) Borrowed prefixes: pre- (prehistoric), post- (postwar), non- (nonhuman), anti- (antiaircraft) (Romanic and Greek) Words that are made up of elements derived from different languages are called hybrids: readable

according to their semantic characteristics: polysemantic, synonymous and homonymous Polysemantic: -у 1) composed of, full of (bony, stony), 2) characterized by (rainy, cloudy), 3) having the character of (bushy, inky). Synonymous affixes: 1) doer of the action: -er, -ist, -ant (lover, journalist, defendant), 2) collectivity: -age, -dom, -(e)ry (officialdom, peasantry), 3) diminutiveness: -ie, -lit, -ling ( birdie, girlie, wolfling) Homonymic: -ly: 1) Adj. + -ly > Adv. (quickly), 2) N + -ly > Adj. (lovely)

Affixes can also be classified into productive (living) and non-productive (dead). Productive: 1) N-forming suffixes: -er, -ing, -ness (blogging, facebooker) 2) V-forming: -ize, -ate (napsterize) 3) Adj. — forming: -y, -ish, -ed, -able, -less (hay-smoked, proceedable, multitalentless) 4) Adv. -forming: -ly (muchly) 5) Prefixes: un-, re-, dis/de- (unfollow, retweet, defriend) Non-productive: 1) N-forming: -th, -hood 2) Adj. -forming: -ly, -some, -en, -ous 3) V-forming: -en

Word-composition (compounding) Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language as free forms (blackbird). Compounding is highly productive in English. Mostly it can be found in nouns (doorstep), adjectives (winedark), and verbs (stage-manage). Among noun compounds the following types can be found: N + N > N (steamboat) V + N > N (crybaby) Adj + N > N (strongbox). Compound adjectives can be of the following types: Adj. + Adj. > Adj. (red-hot) N + Adj. > Adj. (bloodthirsty) N + V > Adj. (snow-covered).

The constituent members of a compound are not always equal. Some compounds are made up of a determining (basic part = determinatum) and a determined part (serves to differentiate the basic part = determinant). Thus, in steamboat , red in red-hot are determinants, because steamboat is a type of boat, redhot is a degree of hotness. When the meaning of the compound can be inferred from its parts it is called transparent (hairbrush, bedroom, dancing-hall) and non-transparent or idiomatic, when it cannot be inferred from the meaning of components (lazybones, football).

Criteria of differentiation b/w a compound word and a word-combination 1) Graphic — solid or hyphenated spelling airline, air-line, air line 2) Phonological – stress ‘ice-cream (compound) vs. ‘ice ‘cream (free phrase) but this rule does not hold with adjectives: ‘gray’green, ‘easy-‘going Besides, stress can differentiate the meaning of compounds: man’kind «the human race» and ‘mankind «men contrasted with women»

3) Semantic – a compound expresses a single idea which is not identical in meaning to the sum of the meanings of its components in a free phrase. Tallboy does not even denote a person, but a piece of furniture ! But the semantic criterion alone cannot prove anything as phraseological units also convey a single concept. 4) Morphological – a compound is stable a tallboy — a tall and handsome boy a tallboy – a tallestboy 5) syntactic – a compound has one function in the sentence: There is a tallboy in the corner. Ø In most cases, only several criteria can convincingly classify a lexical unit as either a compound word or a word group.

Conversion is an extremely productive way of forming words in Modern English (knife — to knife, to take — a take). It is treated differently in linguistic literature. Some linguists define it as a morphological way of forming words (Smirnitsky, Ginzburg), treating conversion as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm. Others (Arnold) consider it to be a morphological syntactic word-building method, because it involves the semantic change, a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic function of the word. A purely syntactic approach (functional approach) to conversion is popular with linguists in Great Britain and the USA. They define conversion as a kind of functional change.

1. Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs) can express: a) an action characteristic of the object: ape — to ape (behave as apes do); b) instrumental use of the object: screw — to screw (‘fasten with a screw’); c) acquisition or addition of the object: fish — to fish; d) deprivation of the object: dust — to dust (‘remove dust from something’), skin — to skin (‘strip off the skin’).

2. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal substantives) can express a) instance of the action: to jump — jump, to move — move; b) agent of the action: to help — help ‘a person who helps’; c) place of the action: to drive — drive ‘a path/road along which one drives‘; d) object or result of the action: to peel — peel ‘the outer skin of fruit taken off.

Some other patterns of conversion can be mentioned. 3. Adjectives > Nouns: supernatural, impossible, inevitable; 4. Participle > Adjectives: a standing man / rule, running water. But not all the pairs of such words can be formed by conversion. Some of them arose: (1) as a result of the loss of endings in the course of the historical developments of the English language: love, hate, rest, smell, work, end, answer, care, drink, (2) assimilation of borrowings: check, cry, doubt, change. Some linguists (Smirnitsky, Arbekova) call them patterned homonymy.

Minor types of word formation. Shortening While derivation and compounding represent addition, shortening, on the other hand, may be represented as subtraction, in which part of word or word group is taken away. Shortening can be called a process of wordcoining.

Clipping is a process of creating of a new word by shortening of the original polysyllabic word (prototype). According to what part is cut off we distinguish: final – doc (doctor), initial – net (Internet) medial clipping – poli-sci (political science).

Blending is combining parts of two words to form one. motel = motor + hotel brunch = breakfast + lunch, selectric = select + electric dancercise = dance + exercise. Sometimes only the first word is clipped, as in perma-press for ‘permanent-press’.

Back-Formation Back-formation is a process whereby a word whose form is similar to that of a derived form undergoes a process of deaffixation (the singling-out of a stem from a word which is wrongly regarded as a derivative). resurrect < resurrection enthuse < enthusiasm donate < donation orient < orientation A major source of back-formation in English is represented by the words that end with -er or -or and have meanings involving the notion of an agent, such as editor, peddler, swindler, and stroker. Because hundreds of words ending in these affixes are the result of affixation, it was assumed that these words too had been formed by adding -er or -or to a verb. So, edit, peddle, swindle, and stroke exist as simple verbs.

Abbreviation is the process and the result of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination. (a) If the abbreviated written form is read like a word it is called an acronym — AIDS, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), radar (radio detecting and ranging), (b) The other subgroup of abbreviations is pronounces like a series of letters (initialisms) — S. O. S. , NFL (National Football League), B. B. C. (the British Broadcasting Corporation), (c) The term abbreviation may be used for a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in a text for economy of space and effort (graphic abbreviation) — L. A. , N. Y. , B. A. for Bachelor of Arts, ltd for limited, Xmas for Christmas.

Sound interchange may be defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in phonemic composition of the root. The change may affect the root vowel: food N — feed V, root consonant: speak V — speech N, or both: life N — live V. It also may be combined with affixation: strong Adj. strength N, or with affixation and shift of stress: ‘democrat — de’mocracy. Distinctive stress: ‘conduct N — con’duct V, object, etc. Sound imitation is the formation of new words from sounds that resemble those associated with the object or action to be named, or that seem suggestive of its qualities: buzz, hiss, sizzle, cuckoo.

Thanks for attention!

This is my paper summary of English Morphology Class

2.1 WHAT IS A WORD?

The assumption that languanges contain word is taken for granted by most people. Even illiterate speakers know that therer are words in their language. True, sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treater as word.

2.1.1 The Lexeme

However, closer examination of the nature of the ‘word’ reveals a somewhat more complex picture than i have painted above. What we mean by ‘word’ is not clear. As we shall see in the next few paragraphs, diffuculties in clarifying the nature of the word are largely due to the fact the term ‘word’ ised in a variety of senses which usually are not clearly distinguished.

We shall refer to the ‘word’ in this sense of abstact of vocabulary item using the term lexeme.

we shoul all agree that :

The physical word form                      are realisation of                      the lexeme

See,sees,sleeing,saw,seen                                                                    SEE

Sleeps, sleeping,slept                                                                          SLEEP

Catch, catches, catching, caught                                                         CATCH

2.1.2 Word form

As we have just seen above,sometimes, when we use the term ‘word’, it is not the abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning,the lexeme, that we want to refer to. Thus we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different word we counting the number of word.

2.1.3 The Gramatical Word

The ‘word’ can also be seen as a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morpho-syntactic properties such as noun, adjective,verb, tense, gender, number, etc.

The same word-form cut, belonging to the verbal lexeme CUT, can represent two different grammatical words. In [2.3] cut represents the grammatical word cut [verb,present,noun 3rd person]. But in [2.3b] it represents the grammatical word cut [verb, past] which realises the past tense of CUT.

2.2 MORPHEMES : THE SMALLEST UNITS OF MEANING

Morphology is the study of word structure. The claim that words have structure might come as a suprise becayse normally speakers think of word as indivisble units of meaning. This is probably due to the fact that many word are morphologically simple. For example the,fierce, desk, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito,etc.

The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible unit of semantic content or grammatical function which word are made up of. By definition, a morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller units which are cither meaningful by themselves or mark a grammatical function like singular or plural number in the noun.

The form –er is attached to verbs to derive nouns with the general meaning, -ness is added to an adjective,it produces a noun meaning, -ette to a noun derrives a new noun which has the meaning, -ex and pre- derive nouns from nouns while mis- derive verbs from verbs.

2.2.1 Analysing Word

We have used the criterion of meaning to identify morphemes, where the meaning of a morpheme has been somewhat obscure, you have been encouraged to consult a good etymological dictionary.

Helicopter is a kind of non-fixed flying aircraft, pteropus are tropical bats, diptera are two winged flies, the words bible,bibliography and bibliophile have to do with books. But it is unlikely that anoyone lacking a profound knowledge of English etymology is aware that word bible is not just the name of  a scripture book.

2.2.2 Morphemes, Morps and Allomorph

At one time, establishing mechanical procedures for the identification of morphemes was considered a realistic goal by structural lingusts (cf.Harris, 1951). But it did not take long before most linguist realised that it was impossible  to develop a set of discovery procedures that would lead aitomatically to a correct morphological analysis.

Definition : the morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure. A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language, it is recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). Different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs.

2.2.3 Grammatical Conditioning, Lexical Conditioning and Suppletion

Distribution of allomorphs is usually subject to phonological conditioning,sometimes phonological factors play no role in the selection of allomorphs. Instead the choice of allomorph may be grammatically conditioned, i.e. it may be dependent on the presence of a particular grammatical element.

In other cases, the choice of the allomoprh may be lexically conditioned, i.e. use of a particular allomorph may be obligatory if a certain word is present. We can see this in the realisation of plural in English. There exist a few morphemes whose allomorphs show no phonetic similarity, example by the forms good/better which both represent the lexeme GOOD despite the fact that they do not have even a single sound in common, where allomoprhs of a morpheme aer phonetically unrelated we speak of suppletion.

2.2.4    Underlying Representations

Above we have distinguished between, on the one hand, regular, rulegoverned phonological alternation, this is standard in generative phonology. Merely listing allomorphs does not allow us to distinguish between eccentric alternations like good/better and regular alternations like that shown by the negative prefix in- or by the regular plural –s plurall suffix. A rule of suppletion or lexical conditioning only applies if a form is expressly marked as being subject to it. Similarly, a grammatically conditioned rule will only be triggered if the appropriate grammatical conditioning factor is present.

To bring out the distinction between regular phonological alternation, which is phonitecally motivated and other kinds of morphological alternation that lack a phonetic basis, linguists posit a single underlying representation or base form from which the various allomorphs of a moprheme are derived by applying one or more phonoligical rules. The stages which a form goes through when it is being converted from an underlying representation to a phonetic representation sonstitute a derivation. The term morphophonemic and morphophonolgy are used to refer conditioned allomorphs of morphemes.