Types of Morphemes as Determined by Their Distribution

The distribution of morphemes differentiates a great many classes of morphemes and combinations of morphemes: a) bound vs. free, b) roots vs. nonroots, c) roots vs. stems, d) nuclei vs. nonnuclei, e) nuclear vs. peripheral, ... j) closing vs. nonclosing.

a) Bound vs. Free Forms

Bound morphemes never occur in isolation, that is are not regularly uttered alone in normal discourse. Such bound forms include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, replacives ..., and some roots. Free morphemes are those which may be uttered in isolation, e.g. boy, girl, man. They always consist of a root. Stems, which consist of a root or a root plus some other morpheme, are by definition always bound, e.g. -ceive (cf. receive) and recep- (cf. reception), manli- (cf. manliness) and formaliz- (cf. formafizer). A distinction may be made between potentially free, actually free, and bound morphemes. For example, the word boy is actually free in such an utterance as Boy! (an exclamation of enthusiasm or a vocative, depending upon the intonation), but it is only potentially free in such a word as boyish. ‘Actual freedom’, however, always involves some combining intonational morphemes. What we usually mean to indicate by distinguishing free morphemes from bound morphemes is the potential freedom of forms, not their actual free occurrences. Some morphemes are always bound, e.g. -ceive, whereas others may have a bound allomorph, e.g. [әbil-] (the bound allomorph of [eibәl] in ability [әbiliti).

b) Roots vs. Nonroots

Roots constitute the nuclei (or cores) of all words. There may be more than one root in a single word, e.g. blackbird, catfish, and he-goat, and some roots may have unique occurrences. For example, the unique element cran- in cranberry does not constitute the nucleus of any other words, but it occurs in the position occupied by roots; cf. redberry, blueberry, blackberry, and strawberry. All other distributional types of morphemes constitute nonroots.

It is not always easy to distinguish between roots and nonroots. This is because some roots become nonroots and vice versa. For example, the nonroot -ism in such words as fatalism, pragmatism, fascism has become a full root, e.g. I’m disgusted with all these isms. We may say that ism fills the position of both a root and a nonroot. As a suffix it is a nonroot, and as a noun it is a root. Conversely, the root like became the bound form -ly. Historically, a form such as man-like became manly, but a new formation man-like was reintroduced. There is no difficulty in this instance, because there is so little phonetic-semantic resemblance between like and -ly, and hence we consider them two morphemes. But in the words disgraceful and bucketful we recognize elements which have phonetic-semantic resemblance to the root full. There are actually three allomorphs: 1) [ful] full, 2) [fәl] -ful having secondary morphological stress and combined with the preceding word with an open juncture as in [pein-fәl] painful, [b∧kәt-fәl] bucketful and 3) [fәl] with zero stress and combined with close juncture, as in [disgreisfәl] disgraceful. Allomorph 1 occurs in syntactic constructions, and allomorph 2 combines in the same way as do compounding roots, but allomorph 3 combines in the same formal and structural manner as do suffixes, and hence it is a suffix. Combinations with allomorph 2 result in nouns, e.g. bucketful, handful, cupful, spadeful (typical root-plus-root constructions), but constructions with allomorph 3 result in adjectives, e.g. plentiful, bountiful, careful, tasteful, spiteful (typical root-plus-nonroot constructions). ...

c) Roots vs. Stems

All bound roots are stems, but not all stems (they are all bound) are roots. A stem is composed of 1) the nucleus, consisting of one or more roots, or 2) the nucleus plus any other nonroot morphemes, except the last ‘structurally added’ morpheme that results in a word. The form man- in manly is at the same time a root and a stem. The form breakwater is the stem of breakwaters, but it is not a single root. There are two root morphemes, break and water. The stem [әbil-] in ability is a bound alternant of a root morpheme [eibәl ∞ әbil-]. A form such as men’s may never constitute a stem since the genitive morpheme -s always closes any morphological construction in English.

d) Nuclei vs. Nonnuclci

The nucleus of a morphological construction consists of 1) a root or 2) a combination of roots (including possible nonroots attributive to respective roots). The nonnucleus is made up of nonroots. In the construction boyishness the element boy is the nucleus and -ishness constitutes the nonnucleus. In breakwaters the nucleus breakwater consists of two roots. ...

e) Nuclear vs. Peripheral Structures

A nuclear structure consists of or contains the nucleus, or constitutes the head of a subordinate endocentric construction. A peripheral morpheme usually consists of a nonroot and is always ‘outside’ of the nuclear constituent. In the word formal the nuclear element is form-and the peripheral element -al. In the word formalize the nuclear structure is formal- and the peripheral element is -ize. ‘Nuclear’ and ‘peripheral’ are simply names for the immediate constituents. ...

j) Closing vs. Nonclosing Morphemes

Certain morphemes ‘close’ the construction to further formation. For example, in English the use of a genitive suffix closes the noun to further suffixation. No suffix follows the genitive.

 

Ø How does E. Nida define a morpheme?

Ø What does the procedure of discovering morphemes consist in?

Ø What are the criteria of allomorph identification?

Ø Why is it linguistically relevant to speak of the zero allomorph of the plural suffix?

Ø What relationships can underlie allomorphic sets?

Ø What is the ground for considering the allomorph [-әz] as phonologically basic?

Ø What are the criteria of qualifying a morphologically defined allomorph basic?

Ø What are the linguistic implications of the significant zero? What is an allomorphic zero?

Ø What is the difference between a morphemic zero and an allomorphic zero?

Ø What are the main types of distributionally defined morphemes, according to E. Nida?

 

Text 3

Aleksandrova O., Komova T. Modern English Grammar: Morphology and Syntax

Morphological processes

Processes affecting grammatical form

The units of morphological level do not function in isolation in a flow of speech, since they – morphemes as well as word-forms – are only the constituent elements, the former for the words, the latter for the sentences, both types forming a kind of hierarchy of subservient structural elements.

When carrying out a grammatical-morphological analysis two concepts were found to be of great help and worth noting. Juncture is a way of joining elements, amalgamating them into one global whole, while diarheme is away of cutting them, breaking them, keeping them apart, these two terms are most fruitfully exploited in Syntax. For the purposes of morphological analyses two main processes play a considerable role in inflexional morphology, or morphology of synthetic word-forms. Within grammatical inflexional morphology what we are interested in are the processes that characterise morpheme-structure proper and morpheme boundaries. Morphonology of these units concentrates on discovering and formulation the rules for the transformation of phonological sequences into morphological ones. The phonological non-identity of the different sound (and orthographic) complexes signals their functional morphological identity. It applies the analysis of the inner structure of the grammatical expression of the plural number in nouns, 3-d person singular of Present Tense forms in verbs, Past Tense forms in verbs. It is well known that if the stem ends in a strong (fortis) consonant, the inflexional morpheme is always [-s]; in the case of the weak (lenis) consonant it is [-z]. After sibilants the same morpheme has an altogether different sound envelope [-iz], where -i- element is regarded as an interfix, a connecting element, which belongs neither to the stem, nor to the inflexion, and is regularly inserted when the phonetic realisation of a given sequence is antropophonically impossible …. On morpheme boudaries not all the distinctive features of the sound are realised, some sound properties may become weakened, neutralised, some other strengthened, thus leading to fusion. In our case the archiphoneme <z> which functions as the grammatical morpheme of 3 person, singular in verbs is a bundle of distinctive features of fricative, groove, alveolar. Functionally speaking the semiological function of the positional variants of the corresponding morpheme is based on a single distinctive feature – the opposition of strong versus weak, as in, f. ex.:

A. Her taste in music coincides with her husband's. If you want to go by bus it suits me fine. He digs all his information out of books and reports. She takes her children to school by car.

B. One of the gang blabbed to the police and they were all arrested. He swiped at the ball and missed. I really sweated over this essay.

Fusion can as well be seen on word-form boundaries in the flow of speech, as in When I was eleven I was sent to the secondary school. I'm missing you so much, you know?, etc. Agglutination does not presuppose any change in the quality and the quantity of the neighbouring sounds within a word-form or on the boundaries of the morphemes, like in come + ing, cry + ing, stick + ing, miss + ing, etc. or in rapid + ly, scarce + ly, main + ly, etc.

Derivative morphology is basically agglutinative. Besides, there can take some other changes that accompany form-building in Modern English, especially in the verbal and nounal systems. Thus in the negative verbal forms like (will) — won't, (shall) — shan't, (can) — can't, (do) — don't we observe agglutinatively added negative particle not with dropping of a vowel and a qualitative change of the vowel in the verbal stem; in cases of ‘ll go, ‘ll say, ‘ll write, ‘ll analyse and alike ‘ll [l] is agglutinatively added both to the left-hand, and to the right-hand neighbouring morphemes (preceding pronoun, noun, adverb in the function of the subject and following the stem of the main lexical verb): I'll go there myself, There'll be no news, etc. It can be said that [l] functions as a grammatical prefix, equal to a grammatical inflexional morpheme in the structure of the grammatical form of The Future Tense.

The formation of the plural in nouns is accompanied by the alternation of a final consonant in calf — calves, elf — elves, half — halves, sheaf — sheaves, thief — thieves, turf — turves, wife — wives, wolf — wolves. It can be as well accompanied by vowel-change as in: foot —feet, goose — geese, woman — women, louse — lice, mouse — mice, tooth -teeth. Another type of grammatically pertinent variation is observed in the following word-pairs:

[ei]	[æ]	[ai]	[i]
sane	sanity	divine	divinity
vain	vanity	sublime	sublimity
[ou]	[ɔ]	[i:]	[e]
cone	conic	serene	serenity
atrocious	atrocity	meter	metric

Although in all these cases we deal with the lexical units (and lexical morphenes) the observed regularities are not of lexical nature, they step out from the domain of lexis and approach Grammar; functionally they help to differentiate the lexical-grammatical properties of the whole classes of words — nouns and adjectives, thus, the meaning of those changes is of a more abstract general character. These cases may be regarded as borderline ones between compounding (snow-white, catlike) and inflexion proper (hopes, ideas, stepped out, regarded, etc.).

 

Ø What is the difference between juncture and diarheme according to the authors?

Ø What are the characteristically features of fusion?

Ø What are the characteristically features of agglutination?

Ø What other changes can accompany form-building in the verbal and nominal systems in Modern English?

Ø Comment on the character of regularities that can be observed in the word-pairs like sane-sanity; cone-conic.

 

Text 4

B. Ilyish: Morphology. Types of Word-Formation

 

These fall under two main headings, (a) those limited to changes in the body of the word, without having recourse to auxiliary words (synthetic types), (b) those implying the use of auxiliary words (analytical types). Besides, there are a few special cases of different forms of a word being derived from altogether different stems.

Synthetic Types

The number of morphemes used for deriving word-forms in Modern English is very small (much smaller than either in German or in Russian, for instance). They may be enumerated in a very short space.

There is the ending -s (-es), with three variants of pronunciation, used to form the plural of almost all nouns, and the endings -en and -ren, used for the same purpose in one or two words each, viz. oxen, brethren (poet.), children.There is the ending –‘s, with the same three variants of pronunciation as for the plural ending, used to form what is generally termed the genitive case of nouns. For adjectives, there are the endings -er and -est for the degrees of comparison. For verbs, the number of morphemes used to derive their forms is only slightly greater. There is the ending -s (-es) for the third person singular present indicative, with the same three variants of pronunciation noted above for nouns, the ending -d (-ed) for the past tense of certain verbs (with three variants of pronunciation, again), the ending -d (ed) for the second participle of certain verbs, the ending -n (-en) for the second participle of certain other verbs, and the ending -ing for the first participle and also for the gerund. Thus the total number of morphemes used to derive forms of words is eleven or twelve, which is much less than the number found in languages of a mainly synthetical structure. It should also be noted that most of these endings are mono-semantic, in the sense that they denote only one grammatical category and not two or three (or more) at a time, as is the case in synthetic languages. For example, the plural -s (or -es) denotes only the category of plural number, and has nothing to do with any other grammatical category, such as case. It would, however, mean oversimplifying matters if we were to suppose that all English inflectional morphemes are monosemantic. This is certainly not the case with the -s (-es) of the third person singular. It expresses at least three grammatical categories: person (third), number (singular), and mood (indicative). In certain verbs it also expresses the category of tense: thus, in the form puts only the -s shows that it is a present-tense form.

Sound Alternations

By sound alternations we mean a way of expressing grammatical categories which consists in changing a sound inside the root. This method appears in Modern English, for example, in nouns, as when the root vowel [æ] of the singular form man is changed into [e] to form the plural men, or similarly the root vowel [au] of mouse is changed into [aı] in mice, and a few more cases of the same kind.

This method is much more extensively used in verbs, such as write – wrote – written, sing – sang – sung, meet – met – met, etc. On the whole, vowel alternation does play some part among the means of expressing grammatical categories, though its part in Modern English has been much reduced as compared to Old English.

Analytical Types

These consist in using a word (devoid of any lexical meaning of its own) to express some grammatical category of another word.

There can be no doubt in Modern English about the analytical character of such formations as, e. g., has invited or is invited, or is inviting, or does not invite. The verbs have, be, and do have no lexical meaning of their own in these cases. The lexical meaning of the formation resides in the participle or infinitive following the verb have, be or do. 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, and will are what we call auxiliary verbs, and as such they 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 nowadays universally recognised. The question whether such formations as more vivid, the most vivid, or, again, more vividly and most vividly are or are not analytical forms of degrees of comparison of vivid and vividly, is controversial. We can only say here that if these formations are recognised as analytical forms of degrees of comparison, the words more and most have to be numbered among the analytical means of morphology.

Suppletive Formations

Besides the synthetical and analytical means of building word forms in Modern English, there is yet another way of building them which stands quite apart and is found in a very limited number of cases only. By a suppletive formation we mean building a form of a word from an altogether different stem. Examples in point are, the verb go, with its past tense went; the personal pronoun I, with its objective case form me, the adjective good with its comparative degree form better, and a few more. We consider, for instance, go and went as, in a way, two forms of one word, because in the vast majority of verbs the past tense is derived from the same stem as the present or infinitive, e. g. live – lived, speak – spoke, etc. It is against this background that the units go and went come to be considered as forms of one word, formed from different stems. In the morphological system of Modern English suppletive formations are a very insignificant element, but they concern a few very widely used words among adjectives, pronouns, and verbs.

Such, then, are the means of deriving the forms of words in Modern English. We shall have to ascertain the exact meaning and function of each of them as we proceed on our survey of the parts of speech.

 

Ø What are the types of word-formation in English pointed out by Ilyish?

Ø What is the difference between synthetic and analytical types?

Ø What is meant by sound alternations and what part does alternation play among the means of expressing grammatical categories?

Ø What are the peculiarities of suppletive formations as a means of building word-forms in English?