Allomorph as a positional variant of a morpheme.
LECTURE № 4
THE MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH WORD
1. A word as a fundamental unit of a language.
2. Classification of morphemes.
3. Allomorph as a positional variant of a morpheme.
4. Structural t
5. ypes of words.
A word as a fundamental unit of a language.
The modern approach to word is based on distinguishing between the external and the internal structures of the word.
By the external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure,
e.g. in the word post-impressionalists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes –ion, -ist and the grammatical suffix of plurality –s.
All these morphemes constitute the external structure of this word (The area of Lexicology – Word-building).
The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is referred to the word’s semantic structure (The area of lexicology which is specializing in this problem is called semantics).
Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external (formal) unity and semantic unity. Formal unity of the word is sometimes interpreted as indivisibility. We can illustrate this aspect by comparing a word and a word-group comprising identical constituents.
e.g. a blackbird (this word possesses a single grammatical framing – blackbirds) and a black bird (each constituent of this word-group can acquire grammatical forms of its own (the blackest bird I’ve ever seen) Also other words can be inserted between the components (a black night bird)
The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity. In the word-group a black bird each component has a separate concept: bird – a kind of living creature; black – a colour. The word blackbird has only one concept – the type of bird. This is one of the main features of any word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many component morphemes it may have in its external structure.
A futher structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized. So far we have underlined the word’s major peculiarities which are shown in definition of the word.
The word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sound, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.
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Classification of morphemes.
The word is devided into smaller units called morphemes. The term “morpheme” is derived from Greek (morphe – form + -eme); the Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistics to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.
Morphemes don’t occur as free forms but only as constituent parts of words. They are not divided into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.
Structurally morphemes are divided into three classes: free, bound and semi-bound morphemes. Free morpheme is defined as one that coincide with the stem or a word form. Many root morphemes are free (wall, street, fact, man, sun). Bound morpheme occurs as constituent part of a word. Affixes are usually bound morphemes because they always make part of a word (e.g. suffixes –ness, -able, -ous, -ence; prefixes ill-, ir-, pre-). Root morphemes may be bound to all unique roots (e. g. theory, philosophy) because they don’t occur as independent words. Semi-bound morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic structure both as a free morpheme and as a bound one. They are in some cases free and in other – bound (e.g. free morphemes: to sleep well, the lesson is over; bound morphemes: overdone, well-known).
According to their role in constructing words all morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The root is a primary element of the word, its basic part conveys its fundamental lexical meaning. There are a great number of root morphemes which can stand alone as words, such as: act, fact, man, sun, etc. At the same time not all roots are free forms, but productive roots (capable of producing new words). They may be bound, e.g. include, exclude, occlude, preclude, According of the function and meaning affixes are divided into derivational and functional ones, the latter also called endings or outer formatives. They are usually bound forms.
A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, e.g. –en, -y, -less, in hearten, hearty, heartless. It is always important to distinguish between inflection and derivation. Inflections (also called inflectional suffixes) are morphemes conveying the grammatical meaning. Derivational suffixes are lexical morphemes,
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e.g. love – loves – loved – inflectional paradigm
love – lovely – loveliness – illustrate a derivational (lexical) paradigm and the words lovely, loveliness are derivatives of the word love.
A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying the meaning of the word, e.g. hearten – to dishearten.
Word without their grammatical morphemes (mostly inflectional suffixes, often called endings or inflections) are known as stems. A stem may consist of the root alone (child, room) or it may contain one or more affixes. This stem is called derived stem (childish, return).
Thus we distinguish:
a) lexical morphemes conveying the basic lexical meaning of the word (root morphemes);
b) grammatical morphemes having grammatical meaning;
c) lexico-grammatical morphemes (morphemes of dual nature), e.g. derivational affixes in word-making or postpositions in such verbs as to drink up, eat up, fall out, etc.
Allomorph as a positional variant of a morpheme.
An allomorph is a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and characterized by complementary distribution. This term came from Greek allos “other” and is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together constitute a structural unit of the language. For example, -ion, -tion, -sion, -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix. They do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme preceding stem.
Complementary distribution is said to take place when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment,
e.g. If the stem ends in a consonant (liberation), it’ll appear the suffix –ation; if the stem ends in pt, it’ll appear the suffix –tion (corruption). So these different positions of the same suffix are allomorphs.
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Another example is that in the past indefinite we pronounce the ending –ed as [d] after voiced sounds (e.g. gathered, called), [t] after voiceless sounds (e.g. locked, kissed) and [id] after –d and –t (e.g. ended, rested). So these varieties of pronunciation of the morpheme –ed are also known as allomorphs.
Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate. A prefix such as im- occurs before bilabials, its allomorph ir- before r (irregular), il- before l (illegal), in- before all other consonants and vowels (indirect, inability).
Structural types of words.
There are following structural types of English words:
1. Root words (simple words) which have only a root morpheme in its structure. This type is widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings (house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc) and in Modern English has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion, For example, to hand, v. formed from the noun hand; to pale from pale, etc.
2. Derived words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes). They are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary and produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation).
3. Compounds consist of two or more stems (a part of the word consisting of a root and an affix, e.g. dining-room, bluebell, mother – in – law, good-for-nothing. Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called composition.
4. Shortenings (contractions or curtailed) are produced by shortening (contraction), e.g. flu, pram, lab, H-bomb, etc.
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