LECTURE 3. THE MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH WORD

Plan

1. Morphemes.

2. Root morphemes.

3. Affixes (prefixes, suffixes).

4. Stems.

5. Structural types of English words:

1. Morphemes

The problem associated the definition of the word unit have always been most complex and remain disputable in the analysis of linguistic structure in our day. Determining the word unit involves considerable difficulties for the criteria employed in establishing it are of different character and each language presents a separate system with its own patterns of vocabulary items, its speckle types of structural units and its own way of distinguishing them. The feet of the matter is that words being the most elementary unities of sound and meaning ("a naming meaningful unit of "(N.M. Rayevskaya), nevertheless fall into smaller meaningful structural units or morphemes and phrases.

Distinction must be made between a word and the other fundamental linguistic unit, a morpheme.

The word "morpheme" is one more term which linguistics owns to Greek (morphe - form + -eme); the Greek suffix -eme has been readily adopted to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature (Cf.: phoneme, sememe, lexeme, grammeme, opposeme).

Morpheme is the smallest unit with meaning into which a word can be divided, e.g. "run-s" contains two morphemes and "un-like-ly" contains three morphemes.

Morphemes may be identified as an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern but they are not independent, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units.

2. Root morphemes

From the semantic point of view all morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: root morphemes (roots) and affixational morphemes (affixes).

The root is the primary element of the word, its basic part, which conveys its fundamental lexical meaning (it's the lexical nucleus of a word). It shows the main significance of the word. It is common to a set of words that make up a lexical word-cluster, e.g. act in act, actor, action, active, inactive; theor- in Iheory, theorist, theoretician, theoretical, etc. There exist many roots, which coincide with root-words, e.g. man, son, desk, tree, black, red, see, look, etc.

3. Affixes

Affix is a letter or a group of letters added to the beginning or the end of a word to change its meaning or the way it is used. Thus, affixes modify the meaning of the root morpheme.

The affixes, in their turn, fall into prefixes, which precede the root (unhappy, rewrite, discover, impossible, misbehaviour, etc.) and suffixes, which follow the root (friendship, peaceful, worker, teaching, realize, calmly, etc.

4. Stems

A part of a word, which remains unchanged in all forms of its paradigm (a set of all the different forms of a word: verb paradigms), is called a stem (which is more of grammatical nature). According to Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary a stem is the main part of a word that remains the same when endings are added to it.

"Writ" is the stem of the forms "writes", "writing" and "written"; "girl"- in "girls", "girl's"; "darken" - in "darkens", darkened", "darkening".

All sorts of inflections (endings) when added to the stem influence its grammatical meaning and make a word form; a stem joined to another stem makes a compound word. It stands to reason that one and the same root can produce many stems, e.g. act - acting, active, activity, actor, actress, actual, actuality).

Not all affix morphemes have equal power. Suffixes have a part-of-speech-forming force while prefixes mostly modify the meaning of words; but there are instances when prefixes serve to make another part of speech (e.g. rich-enrich, slave-enslave, large-enlarge, etc.).

Stems that coincide with roots are known as simple or root stems, e.g. boy's, trees, reads, etc.

Stems that contain one or more affixes are derived stems. The potential meaning of suffixes modifies the meaning of the root, the lexical nucleus. E.g. teacher's, misfires, governments, undecipherable, etc.

Binary stems comprising two simple or derived stems are called compound stems, e.g. machine-gunner's, ex-film-star, gentlemanly, school-boyish, etc.

From the structural point of view morphemes fell into three types: free morphemes, bound morphemes, and semi-bound morphemes.

A free morpheme can stand alone as a word, e.g. friendly, friendship (cf. a friend).

Bound morphemes occur only as constituent parts of words. In other words, they cannot function as words. E.g. freedom, greatly, poetic, depart, adrift, enlarge, dishonest, misprint; conceive, deceive, receive; desist, resist, subsist, etc.

Semi-bound morphemes can function both as affixes and as free morphemes (i.e. words). Cf. after, half, man, well, self and after-thought, half-baked chairman, well-known, himself.

In Modern English one can often meet morphemes of Greek and Latin origin, which have definite lexical meaning though are not used as autonomous words, e.g. tele - "far", scope - "seeing", graph - "writing", etc.

Such morphemes are usually called combining forms or bound root morphemes.

Positional variants of a morpheme are known as allomorphs. Thus the prefix in (intransitive, involuntary) can be represented by allomorph il- (il?legal, illiteracy), im- (immortal, impatience), ir- (irregular, irresolute).

Several morphemes are polysemic, i.e. a certain form, being a component of words, which belong to the same part of speech, can express different meanings. Cf. bluish (a.):: Spanish (a); baker (n.):: boiler (n); sculptor (n):: reactor (n.).

Homonymic morphemes have the same form and different meaning, being components of words that belong to different parts of speech, e.g. quickly (adj.):: lovely (a.); soften (v.):: silken (a.). One should distinguish between the homonymy of derivational affixes, on the one hand, and the homonymy of such affixes and inflexions, on the other, e.g. worker (n.):: longer (comp. d. of a.); golden (a.):: taken (Past part).

5. Structural types of English words

English words fall into four main structural types:

a)simple words (root words) which have only a root morpheme in their structure, e.g. sky, go, look, bright, long, etc.;

b)derived words (affixational derivatives) which consist of a root and one or more affixes, e.g. joyful, remake, undo, childhood, disagreement, reproductive, indifference, etc.;

c)compound words (compounds) in which two or more stems are combined into a lexical unit, e.g. classroom, whitewash, salesgirl, snow-white,
speedometer, forget-me-not, blacklist, etc.;

d)derivational compounds in which phrase components are joined together by means of compounding and affixation, e.g. long-legged, black-
eyed, oval-shaped, bald-headed strong-willed etc.

There exists a more complicated classification of the structural types of words. It takes into account the varieties of root morphemes, the positions of affixes as regards the root, and some other factors.

1. Simple words

1.R- big, tank, stop, now.

2.R(fr) - zoo, (zoological), lab (laboratory), pop (popular).

//. Derived words

3.R+ S -baker, friendship, acceptable, realize.

4.R (fr) + S - combo (combination), psycho (psychic).

5.R (b) + S - theory, barbarism.

6.P + R - outdo, rewrite, mistrust.

7.P + R (b) - receive, perceive, deceive.

8.P+R+S - disagreeable, discouragement, misinterpretation.

III. Compound words

9. R+R-time-table, schoolgirl, jet-black.

10.R (fr) + R (fr) - smog (smoke + fog), brunch (breakfast + lunch).

11.R (b) + R(b) - telescope, microphone, telegraph.

12.R+I+R - handicraft, gasometer, statesman.

13.(R+S) + R- safety-belt, wedding-finger, writing-table.

14.R+(R + S) - sky-jumping, vote-catching, pen-holder.
15.R+ F + R- stay-at-home, fly-by-night, hide-and-seek.

IV. Derivational compounds

16. (R +R) + S - light-minded, snub-nosed, long-legged.

Conventional signs:

R - root; R (fr) - root fragment; R (b) - bound root; S - suffix; P - prefix; I - interfix; F - function word.

Morphological structure of words can be determined by the special synchronic method known as the analysis into immediate and ultimate constituents (ICs and UCs). This method is based on the binary principle. It means that the analysis proceeds in stages, and at each stage the word or a part of it is segmented into two immediate constituents. Such successive segmentation results in ultimate constituents that defy any further division, e.g.:

Denationalize

1. denationalize de / nationalize;

2. nationalize national / ize;

3.national ?► nation / al.

Hence, the UCs of the word denationalize are: de / nation / al / ize.

REVISION MATERIAL

1. Be ready to discuss the subject matter of morphological structure of English words.

2. Tell about root morphemes.

3. What do you know about affixes?

4. Give examples to show different types of sterns.

5. What are the main structural types of English words?

6. What can you tell about simple or root words.

7. Comment on the derived words.

8. Give comment on the compound words.

9. How can you explain the formation of compound-derived words in English?

EXERCISES

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 662