Word structure. Morphemic analysis of English words

Non-semantic grouping is used in all branches of applied linguistics in the alphabetical organization,inverted andpart of sp,by length,by frequancy

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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.

ü root-morphemes - is the lexical nucleus of a word, 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.

ü 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.

2. Structurally morphemes fall into three types:

ü 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.CAN USE SEPARATEBLY

ü 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.ИХ БОЛЬШЕ

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

1) polyradical words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots.

Polyradical words fall into two types:

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

ü 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.

2. Monoradical words fall into two subtypes:

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

ü radical-prefixal words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, e.g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton, etc. and

ü 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.Teacher

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(Hamlet) 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.=BYNARY PRINCIPL 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 and degree

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. duti ful, dutiful ly; day-dream, to day-dream, daydream er.

Derivationally the stems may be:

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

ü derived stems are semantically and structurally motivated, and are the results of the application of word-formation rules (girlish-girlishness)

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

2) bases that coincide with word-form(gerund?participle); e.g. paper- bound, un smiling, un known. This class of bases is confined to verbal word-forms,phrases

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. Degree

12. affixation-formation of new word by adding derivational af. To derivational bases. According to the number of words they can create af. Can be devided into PRODUCTIVE(un-,re-,er-,-ish)& NON-PRODUCTIVE(demi-,-ard,-hoood)

-by participation in word formation:ACTIVE&DEAD(for-,-d)

-by origin:NATIVE(dom,hood,ship)&BORROWED(able,it,ism)

-by motivation:MOTIVATED(like,some)&NON-MOTIVATED(er,ish)

-by functional characteristic:CONVERTIVE(horse-unhorse)&NON-CONVERTIVE(pressedint-ex-pres.)

-by number of consepts:MONOSEMANT(-al)&POLISEMANT(ist)

Af. Can also be homonimon(al,an,am).

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