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THE ENGLISH WORD AS A STRUCTURE
Problems for discussion
1. The morphemic structure of the word.
2. The difference between the morpheme, the phoneme and the word. 3. Types of morphemes. 4. The stem and its types. 5. Synchronic and diaсhronic approaches to the analysis of the stem of the word. 6. Wordformation. 7. Diaehronic and synchronic study of wordformation. 8. Types of wordformation. 9. Affixation and its subdivision. 10. The difference between suffixes and prefixes. The.morphemic structrure of the word. Most of the words have a composite nature and they are made up of morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest indivisiable, two- faced language unit.
The term morpheme is derived from Gr morphe «form» + -eme. The Greek suffix -eme has been adopted by linguists denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a form. A form in these cases is a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter also called ending or outer formatives.
Morphemes might be divided into phonemes. But if we divide morphemes into
phonemes, phonemes unlike morphemes have no meaning, (ex. T/ea/ch/er - teacher). Phonemes are used to make up morphemes. So the difference between morphemes and phonemes is that morphemes have meaning but phonemes have not. A morpheme differs from a word too. Unlike a word a morpheme does not occur separately in speech. It occurs in speech as a constituent part of a word.
Morphemes are divided into two; free and bound. Free morpheme is a morpheme which is identical with the word form. Ex. In the word "denationalize" only nation can be said as a free morpheme, as it is like a word form and can be used in isolation, de-.-al; -ize are bound morphemes because they cannot be used separately and do not coincide with word forms.
According to the number of morphemes words are divided into monomorphemic and polymorphemic. Monomorphemic words consist of one root -morpheme.
Ex. Boy, girl, dog. cat. Polymorphenic words consist of more than two or more morphemes.
Ex. Teacher. Unreasonable.
Morphemes are arranged in the word according to certain rules. The relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are called derivational relations. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.
The stem is a part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm In the word forms «talk, talks, talked. talking)) we can receive the. stem «talk». There are three structural types of stems: simple, derived and compound. A stem is a part of the word which is identical with a root morpheme and to which the grammatical elements are added.
Ex. Book, tram, teach, table, girl, boy. A derived stem is such a stem which can be divided into a root and affix: girlish, agreement, acceptable, teacher.
But derived stems are not always polymorphemic. Compound stems are stems which consist of two or more stems. Ex. match-box, paintbox, play-boy, book-case, door handle etc. We must differ two approaches to the analysis of word structure: diachconic and synchronic words like «kingdom», «childhood», «friendship» are called words which have a derived stem because in modern English the element-dom». «hood», «ship» are suffixes. However they consisted of two root morphemes in old English and they were compound words. Synchronically the word «lord» has a simple stem but diachronically it had a compound stem. (O.E. hiatweard). The verbs “misappoint”, “return”, “remark” and others have no derived stems but simple stems because in modern English these words are not divided into return, disappoint etc because there are semantic relations between ((disappoint)) (dis-appaint) and “return”, and return etc.
Wordformation.
Wordformation is the creation of new words from the elements existing in the language. Every language has its own structural patterns of wordformation. Words like (writer), (worker), (teacher), (manager) and many others follow the structural pattern of wordformation (w+er). Wordformation may be studied synchronieally and diachronically. Synchronically we study those of wordformation which characterize the present-day English linguistic system, while diachronically we investigate the history of wordformation. The synchronie type of wordformation does not always coincide with the historical system of wordformation. Ex. The words (return) and (turn) historically had semantic relation and (return) was considered as a word derived from (turn). But synchronically these words have no semantic relations and we cannot say that (return) is derived from turn.
Synchronically the most important and the most productive ways of wordfomation are: affixation, conversion, wordcomposition. Beside them there are other types of wordformation such as: shortening, soundinterchange, blending, bakformation. Two types of wordformation may be distinguished: word-derivation and-word- composition. Word formed by word- derivation have only one stem and one or more derivational affixes (ex. Kindness from kind). Some derived words have no affixes through conversion (ex. To paper from paper). Words formed by word composition have two or more stems (ex. Bookcase, note-book). Besides there are words created by derivation and composition Such words are called derivational compounds (ex. Longlegged).
So the subject of study of wordformation is to study the patterns on which the English language builds words.
Affixation.
A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivate in a different part of speech or a different word class (Ex. Hand + full).
A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and. modifying meaning (Ex. Un + like). Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the stem meaning
i.e. the prefixed derivative mostly belongs to a different part of speech. Ex. like(v.)- dislike (v). kind(adj) - unkind (adj). But suffixes transfer words to a different part of speech Ex. teach - teacher.
Suffixes have been classified according to their origin, parts of speech they served to form, their frequency, productivity and other characteristics.
Within the parts of speech suffixes have been classified semantically according to lexico - grammatical groups, and last but not least, according to the types of stems they are added to.
In English there about 25 prefixes which can transfer words to a different part of speech» Ex - head(n) - behead(v): bus(n) - debus(v) brown(adj) - embrown(v), large(adjj) - enelarge(v)
An infix is an affix placed within the word, like - n- in stand. There are different classifications of affixes in linguistic literature. Affixes may be divided into dead and living.
Dead affixes are those which are no longer felt in Modern English as component parts of words. They can be singled out only by an etymological analysis. Ex. Admit (from ad + mittere): dead, seed, (d ) flight, bright) (t)
Living affixes are easily singled out from a word. Ex. Freedom, childhood, marriage.
Living affixes are traditionally in their turn divided into productive and non-productive. Productive affixes are those which are characterized by their ability lo make new words. Ex. - er (baker; lander — косм корабль); - ist (leftist - левый) - ism. -ish (badlish), -ing, -ness, -ation. -ее. -ry, -or, -once, -ic are productive suffixes,
- re-, un, -non-, anti- etc arc productive prefixes. Non -productive affixes arc those which are not used to form new words in Modern English: ex. -ard, -cy, -ive, -en, -dom, -ship, - ful. -en, -ify, etc. There are non productive suffixes, -in (if),-ir (im), mis-, dis are non - productive prefixes. Some linguists distinguish between two types of prefixes:
1) Those which are like functional words (such as prepositions or adverbs) (ex. out-, over-, up-, etc)
2) Those which are not correlated with any independent words (ex. Un- . dis-. re- mis, etc)
QUESTIONS:
I. What is a morpheme9
2. What is the difference between a morpheme and a phoneme? A morpheme and a
word?
3. What types of morphemes do you know?
4. What is the stem? What types of stems do you know?
5. What are the synchronic and diachronic approaches to the analysis of the stem?
6. What is the subject - matter of wordformation?
7. What can you say about the types ofwordformation?
8. What do you understand by affixation'.'
9. What is affixation subdivided into?
10. What is a prefix and a suffix?
I1. What do you understand by dead and living affixes?
12. What difference can you see. between productive and non-productive affixes?
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE
1. I.V. Arnold. The English word. M., 1986
2. R.S. Ginzburg et.al. A Course in Modem English Lexicology. M.,1979 .V J. Buranov, A.
Mummov A practical course in English Lexicology
4. О.Д. Мешков. Словообразование современного английского языка. М. наука
1976
5. П.М. Каращук Cловообразование английского языка. М., Высшая школа, 1977
