Distributional classification of morphemes

As a result of the application of distributional analysis to the morphemic level, different types of morphemes have been discriminated which can be called the "distributional morpheme types".

On the basis of the degree of self-dependence, "free" morphemes and "bound" morphemes are distinguished. Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as component segmental parts of words: -s in dogs; de- in detoxify; -ness in happiness. As different from this, free morphemes can build up words by themselves, i.e. can be used "freely": dog, walk, berry, yes.

There are very few productive bound morphemes in the morphological system of English. Being extremely narrow, the list of them is complicated by the relations of homonymy. These morphemes are the following:

1) the segments -(e)s [-z, -s, -iz]: the plural of nouns, the possessive case of nouns, the third person singular present of verbs;

2) the segments -(e)d [-d, -t, -id]: the past and past participle of verbs;

3) the segments -ing: the gerund and present participle;

4) the segments -er, -est: the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs.

The auxiliary word-morphemes of various standings should be interpreted in this connection as "semi-bound" morphemes, since, being used as separate elements of speech strings, they form categorial unities with their notional stem-words.

On the basis of formal presentation, "overt" morphemes and "covert" morphemes are distinguished. Overt morphemes are genuine, explicit morphemes building up words; the covert morpheme is identified as a contrastive absence of morpheme expressing a certain function. The notion of covert morpheme coincides with the notion of zero morpheme in the oppositional description of grammatical categories (see further).

For instance, the word-form clocks consists of two overt morphemes: one lexical (root) and one grammatical expressing the plural. The outwardly one-morpheme word-form clock, since it expresses the singular, is also considered as consisting of two morphemes, i.e. of the overt root and the covert (implicit) grammatical suffix of the singular. The usual symbol for the covert morpheme employed by linguists is the sign of the empty set: 0.

On the basis of segmental relation, "segmental" morphemes and "supra-segmental" morphemes are distinguished. Interpreted as supra-segmental morphemes in distributional terms are intonation contours, accents, pauses.

The said elements of language, as we have stated elsewhere, should beyond dispute be considered signemic units of language, since they are functionally bound. They form the secondary line of speech, accompanying its primary phonemic line (phonemic complexes). On the other hand, from what has been stated about the morpheme proper, it is not difficult to see that the morphemic interpretation of suprasegmental units can hardly stand to reason. Indeed, these units are functionally connected not with morphemes, but with larger elements of language: words, word-groups, sentences, supra-sentential constructions.

On the basis of grammatical alternation, "additive" morphemes and "replacive" morphemes are distinguished.

Interpreted as additive morphemes are outer grammatical suffixes, since, as a rule, they are opposed to the absence of morphemes in grammatical alternation. Cf. look+ed; small+er, etc. In distinction to these, the root phonemes of grammatical interchange are considered as replacive morphemes, since they replace one another in the paradigmatic forms. Cf. dr-i-ve — dr-o-ve — dr-i-ven; m-a-n — m-e-n; etc.

It should be remembered that the phonemic interchange is utterly unproductive in English as in all the Indo-European languages. If it were productive, it might rationally be interpreted as a sort of replacive "infixation" (correlated with "exfixation" of the additive type). As it stands, however, this type of grammatical means can be understood as a kind of suppletivity (i.e. partial suppletivity).

On the basis of linear characteristic, "continuous" (or "linear") morphemes and "discontinuous" morphemes are distinguished.

By the discontinuous morpheme, opposed to the common, i.e. uninterruptedly expressed, continuous morpheme, a two-element grammatical unit is meant which is identified in the analytical grammatical form comprising an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix. These two elements, as it were, embed the notional stem; hence, they are symbolically represented as follows:

be ... ing — for the continuous verb forms (e.g. is going); have ... en — for the perfect verb forms (e.g. has gone); be ... en — for the passive verb forms (e.g. is taken)

It is easy to see that the notion of morpheme applied to the analytical form of the word violates the principle of the identification of morpheme as an elementary meaningful segment: the analytical "framing" consists of two meaningful segments, i.e. of two different morphemes. On the other hand, the general notion "discontinuous constituent", "discontinuous unit" is quite rational and can be helpfully used in linguistic description in its proper place.

Morphological changes

Internal changes

A range of morphological processes involve not the addition of some element (such as a suffix) but rather some change in the stem.

In English, some irregular inflections involve internal changes of this type -- for example, the past tense and past participle. Many verbs, such as wear / wore / worn, show a combination of pure internal change (for the past tense) and irregular suffixation (for the past participle). A small number of noun plurals also have internal changes.

Category-changing derivation

Some derivational affixes that create new words also happen to preserve the syntactic category.

-DOM added to a noun creates a noun: king, king-dom; -STER added to a noun similarly creates a noun: gang, gang-ster.

But -dom can also be added to other parts of speech, as in freedom and boredom; and -ster can be added to verbs, as in spinster; in all cases the result is a noun, in which case the part of speech may change.

Lexicalization

Because the words that result from a derivational process are new words, different from the original word, they can take on a life of their own. This process is often termed lexicalization, which essentially refers to becoming an independent word.

dis+comfort means essentially "lack of comfort"

but dis+ease no longer means simply "lack of ease"

quick+ly means "in a quick manner"

but fair+ly most often means "to a moderate degree" (originally from an older meaning of fair), e.g. fairly expensive doesn't mean "expensive in a way that I consider fair"!

It's because derivation creates new words that this lexicalization is possible. Clearly, speakers of a language must memorize them as independent words with potentially independent meanings. You don't find this sort of lexicalization with inflectional morphology: walked can't refer to a different kind of movement than walks. That's not surprising if these are both forms of the same word WALK, with a single basic meaning. he only time this happens with inflectional morphology is when older, irregular forms can take on a special meaning after they've been replaced by a new, typically regular form. Here are some examples in English.

basic word regular inflection old, irregular inflection

brother brothers brethren

old older elder

late latest last

bereave bereaved bereft

Regularization

A type of morphological change that affects both inflectional and derivational morphemes is regularization.

Children learning a language often regularize forms that don't follow the general pattern, e.g. goed. Over time irregularities tend to be eliminated, even in adult speech, or if retained they shift to a more limited function as brethren did.

For example, some irregular verb forms have been abandoned today, but were used by Shakespeare, in what is termed Early Modern English.

crew as the past tense of crow, now regular crowed, which is also found (in one use, as a past participle)

A similar trend can be found in modern colloquial usage such as the following.

The general distinction in form between past tense and past participle, absent from regular verbs such as walk, is being eliminated from many irregular verb paradigms as well.

It should be noted as well, however, that sometimes regular verbs can become irregular by analogy with existing irregularities.

Note that dove is an American innovation; dived is still the standard in Britain (as it remains the norm in America for the past participle, i.e. have dived).

The same attention to subregularities is responsible for the nonstandard bring :: brang, which is a stronger pattern with more examples, especially ending "ng" (sing :: sang, ring :: rang) than standard bring :: brought.

Reduplication

A special kind of affixation involves the repetition of all or part of the root and is known as reduplication. Reduplication is widespread in English derivation, for example, ack-ack. It often involves modification of a part of the base, as in raggle-taggle, but may also be total, without changes of the root. As with other forms of affixation, reduplication may not only be initial in roots but also medial or final, for example ping-pong, marry-shmarry.

APPENDIX A