MORPHOLOGY AS A BRANCH OF LINGUISTICS

THE TRADITIONAL (STRUCTURAL) APPROACH TO LANGUAGE PHENOMENA

o A language as a hierarchical structure of interrelated ‘layers’

o The syntactic, lexical, morphological and phonological ‘layers’

o Grammar: Morphology and Syntax

o Morphologyas part of grammar:

Derivatology (Lexical Morphology) and Morphology proper(Word grammar)

 

o The main objectives of Morphology proper:

- to study the internal structure of the word and means of word form building in relation to the abstract meanings they express

- to study general grammatical characteristics of words which enable them to make up sentences

- to classify words into a few basic classes

o a hierarchy of units of morphological analysis:

- a morpheme

- a word form

o A morpheme is a unit of a lower rank. It is an element of a word which signals a certain abstract (grammatical) meaning. The defining characteristics of the morpheme

 

o What kind of meaning does a morpheme express? → a lot of controversy

 

o Types of morphemes

Segment ↓ root morphemes

morphemes ↓ affixes: - functionally: 1a. derivational affixes 1b. form building (= word formation) affixes - positionally: 2a. prefixes 2b. postfixes (inflexions, suffixes) 2c. interfixes

Non-segment morphemes     - the ‘zero morpheme’   - operational morphemes: 3a. meaningful alteration, e.g. vowel interchange 3b. stress shift

 

o A word form is the main morphological unit. It is a linguistic unit which carries grammatical information which is identified through contrast with other forms of the same word. The word’s lexical meaning is irrelevant for identifying the type of its word form.

 

o The whole set of grammatical forms of a word constitutes its paradigm.

 

o In the aspect of a word’s structure, the grammatical info is expressed in a word form

- synthetically, i.e. in the same word which expresses its individual lexical meaning → asynthetic word form, or

- analytically, i.e. in an auxiliary word which together with the word which expresses a lexical meaning constitutes an analytical word form

 

o → Synthetic and analytical languages

 

 

o Means of word form building: English vs. Russian

English	Russian
(a) synthetic means
o Affixes   o very few in number ≠   o homonymy of affixes = o 1 affix – 1 meaning ≠	o Affixes: - Inflexions, Suffixes, Prefixes o Inflexions have a highly elaborate system of paradigms with a few types of noun declension, verb conjugation o homonymy of inflexions o one inflexion can express a few grammatical meanings at the same time
(b) analytical means
o very commonly used o a number of patterns ≠ o homonymy ≠	o not very commonly used
(c) irregular forms
o limited though stable classes ≠	o very numerous
↓ o A mostly analytical language ≠ o Without a context, a word doesn’t give much grammatical info → semantic and syntactic info is needed	↓ o A mostly synthetic language

 

o Lexical and grammatical meanings are closely interrelated. The same notion / abstract meaning can be expressed by grammatical (morphological or syntactic), or lexical, or phonological means, or by a combination of any of them, both within a certain language and in different languages, e.g.:

Meaning	morphological means	syntactic means	lexical means
Relation	Case inflexions in synthetic languages	Prepositions, word order in analytical languages
Time relations	Tense verb forms	Time subordinate clauses in complex sentences	Time adverbs
Modality	Mood forms of a verb	Predicative base ‘Subject + Predicate’	Modal words and expressions

 

o → The use of morphemes to express certain meanings is optional; it’s only a question of the language structure, as different languages can use different means to express their meanings.

 

o → By what is commonly referred to as ‘grammatical meanings’ we understand meanings that are typically expressed by grammatical means in a certain language. Similar meanings can be expressed by other, non-grammatical means in the same language and other languages.

 

o Approaches to word analysis in Grammar and Lexicology

 

o A grammatical category is a set of meanings which are arranged on the principle of opposition to express the same general notion, and which are systematically realised by a paradigm of grammatical word forms.

 

o Types of morphological oppositions:

- binary vs. three-member (tertiary)

- privative vs. gradual vs. equipollent

 

 

THE FUNCTIONAL-SEMANTIC APPROACH TO LANGUAGE PHENOMENA

 

o A Functional-Semantic category / field is an arrangement of various – morphological, syntactic, lexical, derivational – means of a language which express the same universal notion / abstract meaning or perform the same function.

 

o The field structure of a linguistic field: the centre and the periphery

→ central elements have all of the defining characteristics of the class

→ peripheral elements share some but not all of the defining characteristics of the class