Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

In reader, we have a morpheme -er attached to a word read. However, we cannot split read itself into smaller morphemes. This means that we can say that the word read is itself a single morpheme. A morpheme which can also stand as a word is called a free morpheme. By contrast, -er/-or and re- are unable to function as free-standing words and these are called bound morphemes. The verbs read, print and illustrate are the starting point for the derivation of reader, printer and illustrator in the sense that these verbs specify the activity undertaken by the person to whom reader, etc. refers. We therefore assume that -er/or and re- are attached to the morphemes read, print and illustrate to form the derived words. The ultimate starting point for deriving a word, that is, the most basic morpheme in a word, is its root. A morpheme such as -er/or added to the right of a root is a suffix. One added to the left of the root, such as re-, is a prefix. The general term covering suffixes and prefixes is affix.

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Building words

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We often find more than one affix added to a word. Consider indecipherability.

The root is the noun cipher. From this, we form a verb de-cipher from which the adjective de-cipher-able is formed. This is then negated by the prefix in- to give in-de-cipher-able, and finally we create a noun from the adjective by adding -ity (and making a change to -able-, of which more later, pp. 151f.): in-de-cipher-ability. The structures of the items in this sequence can be represented by labelled bracketings as in (104) (see section 9, exercise 5):

(104)

a.

[N cipher]

b.

[V de [N cipher ] ]

c.

[A [V de [N cipher] ] able ]

d.

[A in [A [λde [N cipher ] ] able ] ]

e.

[N[A in [A [V de [N cipher] ] able ] ] ity]

In (104), we have explicitly indicated paired brackets using double-headed arrows, although it should be noted that such arrows are not part of the conventional labelled bracketing notation. Taking (104c) for illustration, we have [A marking the beginning of the adjective decipherable and its paired unlabelled bracket marks the end of this word; [V marks the beginning of the verb decipher and the paired unlabelled bracket marks the end of this word; and [N marks the beginning of the noun cipher, the end of which is indicated by the paired unlabelled bracket.

Alternatively, we can represent the same information using the tree diagrams in (105):

(105)

a.

N

cipher

b.

V

N

de

cipher

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words

c.

A

V

N

de

cipher

able

d.

A

A

V

N

in

de

cipher

able

e.

N

A

A

V

N

in

de

cipher

able

it y

To illustrate the interpretation of such trees, take (105c). This tells us that cipher is a noun (N), that decipher is a verb (V) formed by adding the prefix de- to the noun cipher and that decipherable is an adjective (A) formed by adding the suffix -able to the verb decipher.

Although English has a fair number of affixes, it also makes use of a morphological process whereby, without any affixation, a word of one syntactic category is used as though it belonged to a different category. This commonly happens when we treat nouns as verbs, as in the examples in (106):

Building words

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(106) a.

Smith motored along for three hours

b.

Mary codes her messages skilfully

c.

The tourists are fishing near the bridge

Furthermore, we are equally likely to find examples of verbs being used as nouns in such phrases as a splendid catch, a dangerous run, a fitful sleep. This process is known as conversion, and in some cases it is difficult to tell which is the original category. For example, is rain basically a verb (107a) or a noun (107b), or is it more appropriate to regard it as having dual-category status, with neither the noun nor the verb being derived from the other?

(107) a.

It rained every day on our holidays

b.

This rain is good news for the farmers

Morphological processes – derivation and inflection

One of the key concepts in morphology is that of ‘word’. Up to now,

we have taken this concept for granted, but at this point we are going to have to be a little more careful. Note first that the term ‘word’, as it is used in ordinary language, hides an important ambiguity, which we must understand before we can proceed. Consider the following examples:

(108) a.

cat

b.

cats

(109) a.

cat

b.

dog

How many words are illustrated in (108) and in (109)? The answer seems clear: two in each example. However, while it is obvious that this is the only answer for

(109), there is a sense in which only one word appears in (108). This is the word CAT, with (108a) being its singular form and (108b) the plural. This second sense of ‘word’ is the one we intend to convey when we say ‘this dictionary contains 50,000 words’ or ‘I know 5,000 words of Greek.’ The term we use for this more abstract notion of ‘word’ is lexeme, and when we wish to make it clear that we are discussing a lexeme, the convention is to write it with capital letters. Thus, (108)

illustrates only the lexeme CAT, while (109) illustrates the two lexemes CAT and DOG. What, then, of cat and cats in (108)? These are the singular and plural forms of the lexeme CAT, and we say that (108) illustrates two word forms of one lexeme. The singular and plural forms of a lexeme are examples of inflections, and we say that CAT inflects for the plural by taking the suffix -s. In (109), we again have two word forms (cat, dog), but these are the singular forms of two lexemes, CAT and DOG. From the point of view of meaning, different lexemes

refer to distinct concepts, whereas this is not so for word forms of the same lexeme.

Up to this point, then, we have replaced the problematic ‘word’ with two distinct notions: lexeme and word form.

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words

Returning now to the processes with which we introduced this section, we can ask about the status of read and reader with respect to the lexeme/word form distinction. Clearly, both read and reader are word forms, but in addition they refer to rather different (though related) concepts, one a process and the other a physical object taking part in that process. Thus, adding -er to a verb creates a new lexeme and READER and READ are distinct lexemes. Of course, each of them

has a number of word forms: reader and readers in the case of READER, and read (/riːd/), read (/rεd/), reads, reading in the case of READ. Moreover, the new lexeme is of a different syntactic category from that of the original lexeme (a verb has become a noun). The creation of new lexemes is the province of derivational morphology (or ‘derivation’). Of the major lexical categories from section 9, prepositions (P) do not participate in derivation in English (or most other languages for that matter), while adverbs (ADV) are often derived, but only from adjectives, by the suffixation of -ly (bad ~ bad-ly, noisy ~ noisi-ly, etc.). The other three categories (N, V and A) can, however, readily be derived from each other.

We have already seen that verbs can give rise to nouns via -er/-or suffixation, and to other verbs via re- prefixation. The third possibility for verbs is illustrated by the suffix -able. Suffixed to verbs, this gives words such as read-able, print-able, illustrat-able, etc., which are adjectives with the meaning ‘such that can be Verb-ed’. This suffix is also spelt -ible in cases such as convert-ible. Starting with adjectives, in happi-ness, sad-ness, disinterested-ness, etc., we create nouns by suffixation of -ness. We also find cases in which an adjective is turned into a verb, e.g. by suffixation of -en as in short-en, weak-en, wid-en, etc.; and the negative prefix un- creates a complex adjective from another adjective as in un-happy.