2 CLOSEENCOUNTERSOF A MORPHEMICKIND 63) clildsh hopeless soones mended elephants re-bail unsafe ex-wife You would have to give ifferen answer. You would need fo tell your inerogator, who by now would te geting increasingly bewildered, thatthe words in [32 canbe divided into smaller unis of meaning as shonin [33 Bai child. sh hope ess scencer mended lephantsrebi nsateer-wile ‘The part of the word that is not italicised can function as ‘an independent word in the grammar. Indeed cach ofthe nonitalcised chunks i a word (i. vocabulary item) that is listed as such in the dictionary. By contrast, the italicised bis, though meaningful (and their meanings can be indicated as shown in (34) cannot function on their own in the grammar. 4) ish “having the (cbjectionable qualities of childish “having the qualities of chi less “without” hopeless ‘without hope" ‘moe xX Sooner" tmore soon ed ‘pat smended= ‘mend in the pst” pla elephans= "more than one eepant re eg wt ex forme" What we have done tothe words in [3.4] can be done to thousands of other words in English. They canbe decomposed into smaller units of meaning (eg. re-“agun') or grammatical function (ed “pas. ‘The tem MORPHEME is used to refer the smallest uni tha has meaning or serves a grammatical function ina language. Morphemes are te tons with which words are bull. It is wo possible o fad sub- morphic ui that are thtscvesmcaningt lor have a grammatical funtion, Thus, iven-lss or ui ‘would make no sense to try to assign some identifiable meaning to any pata thes forms. Of cous, it is possible to isolate the individual sounds /-s/ or /-n, ut those sounds in themselves do not mean anything. ‘We have now established that words are ade up of morphemes. But how do we recognise morpheme when we sce one? Onr definition of the morpheme 2s the smallest unit of meaning (or grammatical function) willbe the guiding principle: Any chunk of a word with 2 particular meaning willbe said to represent a morpheme. That is how we proceeded in 3.3] and 3] above ‘Morphemes tend to have a snl stable meaning which they bring to any word in wich they appear. I ve tae re- and ua for example they mean ‘again’ and not respectively—not jus inthe words we have listed above, but also in thousands of ether words. Usually morphemes are wsed again and agin to form differen words, Thus re- meaning “e-do whatever the Verb means’can be attached before most verbs fo yield a new word with-a predictable meaning (eg re-run, re-ake, re-build). In ike: manner, un ‘meaning ‘not X" (where X stands fr whatever the adjective means) canbe attached to various adjectives, (e.g mr-rea, unclear, an-happy et.) to yield anew word with predictable negative meaningENGLISH WORDS. 17 Evidently, the postion of words in a sentence is not rigidly fixed. They can, and often do, get moved around ifthe communicative needs of the speaker or writer require it. However, th interior of a word is @ ‘no-go area fr syntactic rules. They are rity bared from manipulating elements ound inside a word. AS far as syntax is concerned, words are indivisible units that cannot be split and whose internal units are inaocesile (cf. Baur 1988, Mathews 1991, Lyons 1968, Di Sciullo and Wiliams 1987), ‘The word as a grammatical unit shows stability (or INTERNAL COHESION). The order of elements inside a word sig fixed, I he elements of a sentence ae sified certain meaningful units (n his case recisiced and fort-ate) all move en blo, and their cede abvays remains unchanged. Tho internal structure ofthe word cannot be tampered with, Weare no allowed to perform operations that would yield won like Yed-vist-re, “ate-frtume-y te. We will tum to this point on p. 3 below. ‘Te definition of the word incudes the term “minima” for a good reson. This is intended to separate ‘words fom phrases like this old industria, Like word, phrases can occur in isolation and they can be moved from one postion to anther as we have seen in (2.19), But he expression hold industrialists ‘ot minimal form since it contains smaller forms capable of occuring independently namely, is old and industrialist. Furthermore, the sequence this old industrialist doesnot have the kindof internal cohesion found in words, I cam be interrupted by oer words eg his wealthy old idustrilis hs very wealthy, old, benevolent industrial, ‘The assumption that the grammatical werd i a minimum fee forma’ works wells are of thumb, But it encounters iffclies when confronted hy a COMPOUND WORD like wheelbarrow which contains the ‘words wel and bavrow which can stand alone In such cases itis clear that the word isnot the smallest ‘meaningful unit that can be used on its own. Itis For this reasom that the definition of the word as the unit on which purely syntactic operation canbe perfrmed is preferable. nthe case of compounds this definition ‘works, The interior of a compound is a syntactic no-go area, Syntactic rules are not allowed to apply separately to words that make up a compound. Thus, fr example although the noun whee! and barrow can be modified by the adjective big [big barren, [big wheel} and although we can talk of /big wheelbarrow), in which case big modifies the entire compound, theres no posibilty of saying wie [big barrow], with the adjective only modifying the second clement of the compound word. 23 SUMMARY In this chapter we have established that normaly, the term “word” is used ambiguously. To avoid the ambiguity, we need to distinguish between three different types of word: (i) a word-form (i.e. a particular ‘physical manifestation of one or mare lexemes in speech or writing): (i) a vocabulary item (ie. lexeme): and (it) unit of grammatical structure that has certain morphological and syntactic properties. We will revisit the distinction between lexemes, grammatical words and wor-forms mainly in Chapters T and 11. In Chapter 7 our main concern will be the realisation of words in speech and in writing. In Caper 1. we wil show that this distinction is not an artefact of the Linguists analysis. Rae, itis a distinction that is well supported by studies in the way in which we store words in the mind and retrieve them for use in communication in rea fife In the coming chapters. in cases where the relevan sense of the term ‘word is clear from the context I Will not spell out whether itis the word as-a voeabulay item, grammatical word, phonological or cxthostapic form thats being dealt with, But where its mot clear, [wil indcatethe sense in which Lam sing this texm. Weare now ina poston to consider in deal the intemal structure of words, Tats the task of the next chapterOn the Ning Nang Nong On the Ning Nang Nong Where the cows go Bong! And the Monkeys all say Boo! ‘There’s a Nong Nang Ning Where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo. ‘On the Nong Ning Nang All the mice go Clang! ‘And you just can’t catch "em when they do! So it’s Ning Nang Nong! ‘Cows go Bong! Nong Nang Trees go Ping! Nong Ning Nang! ‘The mice go Clang! What a noisy place to belong, Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong! SPIKE MILLIGANENGLISHWORDS 27 ‘Those morphemes that ate allowed to occir om their own in sentences as words are called FREE. MORPHEMES while those morphemes that must occur in the company of some other morphemes are called BOUND MORPHEMES. In (3.12 the bound morphemes ae italicised (AQ) pest pestipcide moder Posen child fui pack pre-packed laugh laughing ‘The free morphemes in (312] can all be manipulated by syntactic rules: they can sland on their own as ‘words, By contrast, its impossible to use the forms cde, post; ~s, ih, pre, ed of ing. independently ‘Sofa llthe examples of fee morphemes tat function as roots that we have encountered have been Content words (seep. 14). However, not all free morphemes are content words. Some are employed to indicate grammatical functions and logical relationship rather than to convey’ lexical ot cognitive meaning in'a seitence, Hence such words ae called FUNCTION WORDS, They include words such asthe following: A) anil: alan, the emotive’: this, hat thee and hase proavans: 8 You, we, they, my, your, ses, who ee reposiions: gi, imo, ona a, ome {In oninary language use such words are exiremely common, But on their own they would not convey 2 lotof information, If you received a telegram like Bur it my on to the in you might suspect that the sender eather hada strange sense of humour or was not mentally sound, 35 ‘SOUND SYMBOLISM: PHONAESTHEMES AND ONOMATOPOEIA Inthe vast majority of words, the relationship between sound snd meaning is arbitrary (see p 2). There is no ‘reason why a particular sound, or group of sounds, should be used to represent a particular word. with a particular meaning If someone asked you wit (bin bed or (st) in strange meant, you would think they ‘were asking avery dd question, Asa rue, sounds qua sounds do not mein anything, ‘Homer. the general pnnciple that says that the lnk between sound and meaning in words is arbitrary is cocasionally dented. This happens in two sets of circumstances, First, certain individual youn, or groups of sounds, which do not representa specific enough meaning tobe called mioephs nevertheless appear to be ‘vaguely associated with some kindof meaning. Such sounds are Called PHONAESTHEMES, ‘As our first example of a phonaestheme, let us tke the RP vowel (_] (which is historically descended from (U], the vowel that is stil used in words like dull and hur inthe north of England), This phonaestheme is found in words associated with various kinds of dullness or indistnctness, eg dll. hud, thunder. dusk,26 CLOSEENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHENIC KIND table asa container for cut res lowers. She calls hers a lagon, for thats what she is wsing its, You call yours vase, Here are the questions now: are these object ‘lagos"o vases"? Which one of youis right fam nt being evasive if Tsay that both of you ae right Fr, although the two objects a identical a far as thei form, ther physical properties, is concemed, they are very diferent with regard to the Functions that hey’ seve in our two households, ‘There are numerous linguistic parallels. What is physically the same linguistic form canbe used to represent distinct morphemes. In order for forms to be regarded as allomorphs belonging tothe same ‘morpeme, itis not sufficient for them to have the same form —to be pronounced or writen inthe same way, They must also have the same grammatical or semantic function, The significance ofthis point was hinted at im the discussion of wn-in unlocked and univ when we showed tht the same morph can represent different morphemes. It should become even more obvious when you consider the form -er inthe following: Bat) 8. think ~ tinker hive ~ diver wwe ~ wnier sing = singer sep = sweeper sell seller b. cook cooker stein ~striner teccive~ receiver ‘compute ~ computer propel ~ propeller ese ~ rier «London = Londover north ~ nother cast ~easterer ‘The samie form, er, represents three different meanings and hence has wo be assigned to three distinct smorphemes n 3.11} forms an agentive noun fom a verb, withthe meaning ‘someone who doesX (Le ‘whatever the vert means), In (3.11b] the same -er forms an instrumental noun from a verb, with the ‘meaning someting used to X* (Le, to do whatever the verb means) Finally, in [3.11 the same -er form is attached toa noun refering toa pace to mean ‘an inhabitant of. ‘Cletl, the same form does serve diferent functions here. So, i eases diferent morphemes. This is further evidence that shold quickly disuse uso the assumption that merphemes ae made up of morphs. Not only cana single morpheme have several allomerphs (as inthe case ofthe plural morpheme), the same smotph (eg. -r) can represent diferent merphemes. Theres no simple one-o-one machin of morphemes with morphs, a4 FREEDOM AND BONDAGE ‘When we classify morphemies in terms of where they are allowed to appear, we find that they fall nto two ‘jor groupings. Some morphemes are capable of occuring on their own as words, while other morpheries are only allowed to occur in combination with some other morpheme(s) but they cannot be used by themselves asindependemt words,