Week 2: Lexeme formation I

English Morphology

Fernanda Barrientos

2024-10-29

Kinds of morphemes

  • Consider the words: chair, presuppose, and prettify.
  • Morphemes such as suppose, pretty, and chair can stand on their own (i.e. they can form a word by themseves). These are free morphemes.
  • Morphemes such as pre- and -fy are called bound morphemes.
    • One kind of bound morpheme are affixes:
      • Suffixes attach after a base
      • Prefixes attach before a base
    • Affixes attach to a base, which is usually (but not always) a free morpheme.

Important concept!

Lexemes that are formed with affixes that attach to a base are called derived words, in a process called derivation.

But:

  • Are all bases free morphemes?

Look at the following words. Can you divide them into morphemes?

  • Pathology
  • Psychopath
  • Dermatitis
  • Endoderm
  • Morphemes such as patho-, endo-, and -itis cannot stand on their own
  • However, they have “too much meaning” to be considered simply affixes
  • These are called bound bases.

Root vs. stem

  • The more inflection a language has, the less likely it is for it to have free bases
  • In such cases, we may find ourselves with words consisting of:
    • A root: or bound base.
    • A stem: consisting of the root + a morpheme with no meaning but that must be attached anyway,
    • The inflectional ending, which adds meaning such as tense, person, etc.

Root vs. stem

  • An example from Latin
    • First person singular, verb to love
Am + o ‘I love’
Root + inflection
  • But:
    • First person plural, verb to love
Am + a + mus ‘we love’
Root + morpheme + inflection

Stem + inflection

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.
Category un- -ness -ize -ify
Adjective
Noun
Verb

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.
Category un- -ness -ize -ify
Adjective yes
Noun no
Verb yes

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.
Category un- -ness -ize -ify
Adjective yes yes
Noun no yes
Verb yes no

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.
Category un- -ness -ize -ify
Adjective yes yes yes
Noun no yes yes
Verb yes no no

Affixation

  • We can’t attach any affix to any base: there are rules for this!
  • These rules are mostly based on the word category.
Category un- -ness -ize -ify
Adjective yes yes yes yes
Noun no yes yes yes
Verb yes no no no

Affixation: restrictions

  • There are also some semantic (meaning) restrictions:
    • The prefix un- only works for bases with neutral or positive meanings so they produce a negative.
  • Phonological restrictions may also apply
    • Suffixes -ize and -ify depend on number of syllables and stress placement
  • Affixation may result in a category change: see -ize and -ify

Word structure

  • Words can be represented as trees
  • Nodes are named after the category
    • N = Noun
    • A = Adjective
    • V = Verb
    • P = Preposition

N N A A N:s--A ness ness N:s--ness A1 A A:s--A1 un un A:s--un happy happy A1--happy

What do affixes mean?

  • Affixes that can form agent nouns are called personal or participant: painter (active), trainee (passive).
  • Affixes that designate a place are called locative: bakery, orphanage
  • Abstract affixes create nouns that may denote qualities, statuses, etc. happiness, boredom
  • Affixes that mean “no” are called negative (unhappy, noncompliant). Those that mean “without” are called privative (clueless)
  • Prepositional and relational affixes relate to ideas of space and time: preschool, overdone
  • Quantitative affixes denote amount or collection: spoonful, rewrite
  • Diminutive and augmentative (i.e. evaluative) affixes refer to size: smaller and bigger respectively, e.g. booklet, megastore. They often convey a sense of affection, or may have a pejorative meaning.

Difficult cases: Formatives

  • Consider the following table. Can you fill in all the cells by combining the parts?
  • The problem about them is that
    1. They come from Latin (or Latin via French), and
    2. native speakers no longer know what they mean, unless they learned Latin
in- ex- con- re- trans- de-
-port
-mit
-ceive
-duce
-cede
-fer
-scribe
-gress
-sist

Difficult cases: cran morphs

  • Think of words such as:
    • Cranberry
    • Lingonberry
    • Huckleberry
  • Surely berry is a morpheme, but cran-, lingon-, and rasp- mean… what? Can we attach them to other morphemes?

Difficult cases: extenders

  • Think of words such as:
    • Platonic
    • Tobacconist
    • Spasmodic
    • Egotist
  • The highlighted bits appear somewhat at random (compare platonic with heroic) and don’t mean anything.

Difficult cases: sound symbolism

  • Think of words such as:
    • Snot
    • Sniffle
    • Snort
    • Snout
  • The sequence /sn/ seems to evoke the idea of a nose, but we can find it in different words that have nothing to do with noses (e.g. snail)

Difficult cases: splinters

  • Think of words such as:
    • Flexitarian
    • Fishtastic
    • Bootylicious
  • The highlighted bits are likely from other words ( vegetarian, fantastic, delicious), which then attach to other morphemes.

Compounding I: definition

  • Compounding is NOT derivation
  • Compounds are built by two or more bases, roots, or stems. In English, compounds with free bases are the most common.
  • In English, spelling does not help (as it does in German).
  • A better criterion is to look at the stress pattern: gréenhouse is not the same as green hóuse
  • Even better criterion: can you insert something else between the two bases that form a compound? (e.g. green lovely house works only for the non-compound green house).

Compounding II: structure

N N N1 N N:s--N1 N2 N N:s--N2 hard hard N1--hard hat hat N2--hat

Compounding II: structure

  • However, we can have more than two bases, which might result in ambiguities.
  • In such cases, the different meanings yield different trees

N N N2 N N:s--N2 N3 N N:s--N3 N4 N N2:s--N4 N5 N N2:s--N5 container container N3--container paper paper N4--paper cat cat N5--cat

N N N2 N N:s--N2 N3 N N:s--N3 paper paper N2--paper N4 N N3:s--N4 N5 N N3:s--N5 cat cat N4--cat container container N5--container

Compounding III: types of compounds - the traditional way

  • According to whether the role of the second lexeme, we have two types of compounds:
    • Synthetic (or deverbal) compounds: the second morpheme is derived from a verb, and the first lexeme is an argument of the verb: dog walker, hand washing
    • On the other hand, when there is no semantic relationship between a second lexeme being a derived verb and the first one, we talk about root compounds: hard hat, ice cold

Compounding III: types of compounds - by category

  • We can classify compounds by the categories within the compound and the final result:
compound lexemes resulting category examples
N + N \(\rightarrow\) N dog bed, coffee machine
N + A \(\rightarrow\) A stone cold, bone dry
A + A \(\rightarrow\) A icy cold, blue-green
A + V \(\rightarrow\) V ugly cry, hot glue

Compounding III: types of compounds - by semantic relationship

  • Attributive compounds: the non-head (first lexeme) modifies the head (second lexeme), i.e. it gives it a characteristic: snail mail (mail that is a slow as a snail), windmill (a mill activated by wind).

  • In coordinative compounds, both lexemes have the same “weight”, semantically speaking, e.g. doctor-patient, producer-director

  • In subordinative compounds, one element is the argument of the other, and the second element is a verb or derived from a verb:

    • With -er : truck driver, asylum seeker
    • With -ing: meal prepping, cat sitting
    • With -ation: home invasion, business administration
    • With -ment: cost containment, student assessment

Compounding III: types of compounds - by headedness

Important concept!

By head we mean the element that determines (a) the part of speech, and (b) the semantic kind denoted by the compound. English compounds are always right-headed.

  • Endocentric compounds: the referent of the resulting compound is always the same as the referent of its head: a windmill is a type of mill, icy-cold is something very cold, and truck driver is a driver.

  • Exocentric compounds denote something different from the head:

    • Attributive: metal head, scumbag
    • Coordinative: parent-child (relationship)
    • Subordinative: pickpocket

Conversion

  • Sometimes, a word can change its category without affixing anything to it:
    • N to V: fish \(\rightarrow\) to fish
    • V to N: to kick \(\rightarrow\) a kick
    • A to V: cool \(\rightarrow\) to cool
  • Conversion can also be interpreted as zero affixation

V V N N V:s--N empty ∅ V:s--empty chair chair N--chair

Interactions

  • In English, it is possible to find words with more than one affix:

    • Multiple prefixes: micronanosecond
    • Multiple suffixes: institutionalize
    • Multiple prefixes and suffixes: reinsititutionalization
    • Suffixes on compounds: basketballer
    • Prefixes on compounds: ex-ballplayer
    • Converted compounds: to blacklist

Other minor processes

  • Coinage: Mostly from brands, e.g. Kleenex, Xerox
  • Backformation: burgle, liaise
  • Blending (also portmanteau): mansplaining, spork
  • Acronyms and initialisms: STEM, FBI
  • Clipping: info, blog, fridge

Summary

  • There are different types of morphemes:
    • Free vs. bound
    • Bases vs. affixes (which can be prefixes or suffixes). However, affixes do have a meaning too
  • There are word formation rules that native speakers know (albeit largely unconsciously)
  • Word structure can be represented as tree diagrams
  • Compounding may include several lexemes
    • Compounds can be classified by category, headedness, and semantic relationship
  • Conversion may be refered to as zero affixation
  • Different word formation processes may interact

Next week

  • Read Lieber, Ch. 3
  • Attend the tutorial

English Morphology | Week 2: Lexeme formation I | Barrientos