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Appunti morfosintassi piotti, Appunti di Linguistica Inglese

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Brescia (UNICATT BS)Linguistica Inglese
Prof. Sonia Rachele Piotti

Appunti piotti morfosintassi parziale

Tipologia: Appunti

2023/2024

Caricato il 16/06/2024

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!
FACTS ABOUT ENGLISH
English world-wide: !
spoken in different forms or varieties by people all over the world !•
Beginning of 21th century: most important language used in international communication !•
About 1.5 billion people have some command of English today: !•
ENL (English as native language): North America, British Isles, Australia, New Zealand !
ESL (English as a second language): former British colonies and the Commonwealth. In certain
educational, commercial or governmental contexts (French-speaking Canada, India, Nigeria…)!
EFL (English as a foreign language): very heterogeneous group of speakers in terms of actual
language command.!
!
Estimates of number of speakers of English at the beginning of 21th century:!
L1 speakers: 400 million > spread over 4 continents: Europe (Britain and Ireland), Australia, America
(USA and parts of Canada), Africa (South Africa)!
L2 speakers: 400 million !
Foreign language speakers: 600/700 million !
!
REGIONAL AND SOCIAL VARIATION
Dialect (variety)= differences between language of different groups. !
In terms of a geographical distribution of English (where English is spoken) we have different
varieties of English: !
Regional: determined by geographical distribution of certain linguistic forms!•
> National varieties: BrE, AmE, SAE, Canadian E, Australian !
> New Englisher: new varieties of English that have a contact with non-native English and the native
language (Jappanish= Japanese + English)!
Social (sociolects): determined by social groups speakers typically belong to.!•
All these varieties can be distinguished in sense of spelling, grammar and speaking (accents).!
There is no official institution that takes decision about how English should be used BUT there is a
standard English (used as a model of foreign language teaching, for grammar)!
!
HISTORICAL VARIATION
1st written record of English language: late 7th century !
“M’lord” > contraction form “My lord” from Wodehouse !
Shakespeare’s Macbeth: modern English > in spelling difference between “v” and “u” wasn’t
marked (“haue” read as “have”)!
3rd person singular present tense of ‘have’ > hath (17th century in Britain)!
From the late 17th century the ‘s’ (=inflection of the 3rd person singular present tense) began to
spread also to other parts of England from the south. It came from the Scandinavian languages.!
Past simple “Ask’d” today in writing is represented in full form “ed”, from the 17th century!
Chaucer: spelling close to present English spelling but pronunciation is totally different.!
!
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH
1) OLD ENGLISH (600-1100): full inflections, relatively homogeneous vocabulary of predominantly
Germanic origin!
2) MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1500): levelled inflection, big change in vocabulary (large number of
words of French origin)!
3) EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1500-1750): lost inflections, Great vowel shift, standard language
gradually emerged !
4) MODERN ENGLISH (1750-today) sometimes ‘Late modern English’ (1750-1900) and ‘Present
day English (1900-today)!
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Scarica Appunti morfosintassi piotti e più Appunti in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity!

FACTS ABOUT ENGLISH

English world-wide:

  • spoken in different forms or varieties by people all over the world
  • Beginning of 21th century: most important language used in international communication
  • About 1.5 billion people have some command of English today: ENL (English as native language): North America, British Isles, Australia, New Zealand ESL (English as a second language): former British colonies and the Commonwealth. In certain educational, commercial or governmental contexts (French-speaking Canada, India, Nigeria…) EFL (English as a foreign language): very heterogeneous group of speakers in terms of actual language command. Estimates of number of speakers of English at the beginning of 21th century: L1 speakers: 400 million > spread over 4 continents: Europe (Britain and Ireland), Australia, America (USA and parts of Canada), Africa (South Africa) L2 speakers: 400 million Foreign language speakers: 600/700 million REGIONAL AND SOCIAL VARIATION Dialect (variety)= differences between language of different groups. In terms of a geographical distribution of English (where English is spoken) we have different varieties of English:
  • Regional: determined by geographical distribution of certain linguistic forms > National varieties: BrE, AmE, SAE, Canadian E, Australian > New Englisher: new varieties of English that have a contact with non-native English and the native language (Jappanish= Japanese + English)
  • Social (sociolects): determined by social groups speakers typically belong to. All these varieties can be distinguished in sense of spelling, grammar and speaking (accents). There is no official institution that takes decision about how English should be used BUT there is a standard English (used as a model of foreign language teaching, for grammar) HISTORICAL VARIATION 1st written record of English language: late 7th century “M’lord” > contraction form “My lord” from Wodehouse Shakespeare’s Macbeth: modern English > in spelling difference between “v” and “u” wasn’t marked (“haue” read as “have”) 3rd person singular present tense of ‘have’ > hath (17th century in Britain) From the late 17th century the ‘s’ (=inflection of the 3rd person singular present tense) began to spread also to other parts of England from the south. It came from the Scandinavian languages. Past simple “Ask’d” today in writing is represented in full form “ed”, from the 17th century Chaucer: spelling close to present English spelling but pronunciation is totally different. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH
  1. OLD ENGLISH (600-1100): full inflections, relatively homogeneous vocabulary of predominantly Germanic origin
  2. MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1500): levelled inflection, big change in vocabulary (large number of words of French origin)
  3. EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1500-1750): lost inflections, Great vowel shift, standard language gradually emerged
  4. MODERN ENGLISH (1750-today) sometimes ‘Late modern English’ (1750-1900) and ‘Present day English (1900-today)

Traditional classification of languages:

  • Typologically (language typology)
  • Genealogically (language genealogy: genetic relatedness) LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY Features that languages share: Morphology, Syntax, Grammar (no reference to language origin) 2 main categories:
  1. Synthetic (inflecting and agglutinating) languages= grammatical categories, relations and verb inflections (person, number, tense, mood) expressed through case markers (inflections or endings). Synthesise (=combine) grammatical morphological and syntactic relationships in one word trough endings and affixes, root modification (vowel and cons)
  • Fusional (foot-feet, sing-sang-sung)
  • Agglutinating/inflecting (dog-dogs)
  1. Analytic languages (isolating)= grammatical and syntactic relations expressed through words order and functional/grammatical words (prepositions and auxiliaries). Few or no endings affixes. Analyse (=break up) English has moved from being a highly inflected language (Old English) to being predominantly (NOT TOTALLY) an analytic language (PDE) PDE has become less synthetic than OE BUT more synthetic since the early modern period. GENETIC RELATEDNESS Has to do with the origin of the language, classification on historical principles (origins, historical parentage). Some languages share a common linguistic ancestor. Family tree: several language families_._ All the languages have in common a parent(al) language (case of English the language family is Germanic, NOT German > German is a language, Germanic is the language family that includes German). All the languages are said to be daughter languages, sister languages= all the languages which have a characteristic in common. Genetically, english belongs to the Germanic family > one of the major groups of the Indo-European linguistic family. Indo-European languages (IE)= extended group of languages (10) spread from Asia up to Northern Europe. Subfamilies: Celtic, Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Baltic, Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian, Indo- Aryan (Indic)} Indo-Iranian. Germanic is divided in:
  • North Germanic: Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
  • East Germanic: Modern High German, Yiddish (Gothic: doesn’t exist anymore)
  • West Germanic: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Modern low German, Frisian All Germanic languages:
  1. genetically related through their common origin and joint developed at early stages of history
  2. share some linguistics features
  3. their external history shows where and when they acquired their common features and how they developed into modern languages. Common origin: Germanic > All languages that belong to the Germanic subfamily share a common ancestor= the Proto-Germanic= an entirely pre-historical language, reconstructed in the 19th century by methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages (there was no evidence of it in any written form). Ex. Comparing English and German to Swedish,

SYNTAX

Most complex area of Germanic Languages. Word order in English is quite fixed: SVO + complements In all Old Germanic languages and OE word order was very flexible (in PD German is still flexible) OE SYNTAX:

  • word order= flexible
  • Morphological elements (inflectional endings) showed how words function in a sentence
  • Syntactic structure and morphological structure intertwined (intrecciate)
  • Flexibility: lost in PDE, maintained in German, why?
  1. verb in 2nd position after time adverb: when a sentence started with a time-up verb in all Germanic languages, verb (finite or non-finite) was in 2nd position (TIME ADVERB- VERB) If English maintained flexibility in terms of word order = ‘Today can we little about the future say’ (PDE= ‘today we can say little about the future)
  2. verb in final position in main clauses if an auxiliary is in 2nd position (after a subject/time adverb) English= ‘We have in Berlin met’ (PDE: We met in Berlin)
  3. verb in final position in subordinate clauses: English= ‘I didn’t know that you so smart were’ (PDE= ‘ I didn’t know that you were so smart’)
  4. auxiliary in final position in subordinate clauses: English= ‘Have you the lamp, that you yesterday seen have, bought?’ (PDE= ‘did you buy the lamp that you saw yesterday?’ > In terms of syntax and especially word order English has lost a lot comparing to other languages in the Germanic family (especially comparing to German). Is word order flexible or fixed in PD German? FLEXIBLE Is word order flexible or fixed in PDE? FIXED (even if there are some exceptions)
  5. all Germanic languages (OE) had the past participle forms formed with -ge in front of them (perfective ge)
  6. Prefixation of particles to verbs (present day german: more frequent than English > intake, upload, download…) BASIC VOCABULARY History of language: we distinguish external and internal history External history= historical events (invasions) Internal history= language events that have changed a language (language phenomena) Invasions influenced most the area of vocabulary, in PDE even though the basic vocabulary is Germanic, lots of words that we use daily don’t have Germanic origins (borrowed by English from foreign languages) Loan words that are not English:
  • City: Anglo-Norman (northern French variety= cite ). OE: tūn (PDE: town)
  • They: old-Norman peir. OE: hī Interplay between Anglo-Saxon, french and Latin/greek is evident in kinship terms:
  • Anglo-Saxon origin= father, mother, husband, wife, son
  • Hybrid formations (old English+ foreign languages)= grandmother/father
  • French/latin origin= aunt, uncle, nice, nephew, family PDE grammar and syntax Word stress fixed on the root > syllables following the root always unstressed and weak > English began to lose inflectional endings (all the vocalic endings)
  • Grammar/syntax/morphology= purely inflected language from purely synthetic to predominantly analytic
  • Vocabulary= from purely Germanic to hybrid borrowing (foreign influence from languages contact) WHERE DO ENGLISH WORDS COME FROM
  1. NEW WORDS VIA BORROWING
  • Primary source of genuinely new words in English
  • Result of language contact (when 2 or more languages get in contact with each other)
  • External cause of lexical innovation In addition to external causes of lexical innovation, each language presents its own internal causes External= processes which rely on foreign material Internal= rely on native material that each language possesses Borrowing affects not only single words but actually foreign influence affects several faces of language (evident in some graphemes or spellings conventions still used in PDE):
  • -ch: grapheme introduced by Anglo-Normans tribes with the Norman conquest in OE: when they tried to write in English, they relied on their own alphabet to represents the sounds of the new language (adapted their own graphemes)
  • -ie: Anglo Norman tribes, used to represent a long vowel sound Foreign influence is also shown in the morphology of a language: several suffixes and prefixes still used in PDE are the result of the language contact between English and other languages (mostly French and Latin) Borrowing also affects vocabulary and syntax The term ‘borrowing’ is used to describe the result of language contact, but it’s not the best because whenever we think of the borrowing process we think of something that, after a period, is given back. It is an imperfect metaphor, we should think of borrow in sense of ripping and copying something. Vocabulary: foreign influence shows in 2 major categories of words:
  1. Loan words (prestiti)= a word adopted from a foreign language and then incorporated into another language without translation. Ex. City (A.N. citee), they (O.N.), take (O.N. taka), beef, datum/ data, alcohol, Arabic, pizza, maquiladora, vuvuzela 1st step: adopting the new word and then adapting the foreign material to the target language (particularly to the phonological, orthographic and morphological features). Sometimes the words borrowed didn’t go through any process of adaptation (NO adaptation). OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: monumental tool which consists of many volumes and contains the entire history of the English language from the OE period up to the present time.
  2. Loan translations/shift/calques= a word/phrase whose meaning is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words of recipient language. Ex. Fine settimana= weekend. There is a donor language and a recipient language. Over 120 languages all over the world are recorder as sources of the vocabulary of PDE. They involve the whole history of the language. Composition of the lexicon:
  • Romance languages 30,2% (French 28,4%, others 1,8%, Latin 28,3%) More than 50% of PDE vocabulary is not actually of English (not Anglo-Saxon) origins > Romance languages (French, Latin) have always played a major role in the development of English vocabulary. At the time of the Norman conquest, 2 varieties of French:
  • Norman Franch (Northern France)
  • Central/Parisian French (continues in modern French) French= huge impact on PDE vocabulary. Beginning of French dominance on the British Isle, Norman French represented the language of prestige in England (Norman conquest - up to beginning of 13th century). After the early 13th century: shift from Norman French to Parisian and

Beef (borrowed from french) - cow (Anglo-Saxon origin) Veal - calf Mutton - sheep Originally, these words shared the exact same meaning (synonyms). When the french word entered in English had the same meaning as the Anglo-Saxon one. Ex. Beef was used to reference the animal (as cow) but then it specialised to refer to the edible flesh of the animal. A quite widespread pattern in European languages= loan-word synonym of an indigenous expression develops some semantic difference from the native word. English borrowed entire words or expressions from foreign languages but also prefixes and suffixes. In PDE we have some words which contain suffixes/prefixes of Anglo-Saxon/of foreign origins. Non-native suffixes (foreign affixes + native bases/roots) -ess (goddess), -ment (enlightment), -age (shortage), -ance (hindrance), -ous (mourderous), -(e)ry (bakery), - (i)ty (oddity), -(i)fy (scarify) Most of these suffixes combine with roots of Anglo-Saxon origins (native= origine anglosassone) Scandinavian (Old Norse) loans: 8th century > Vikings invaded the British isles and about 2000 Scandinavian words came into English. Most of them replaced OE words (dirt, egg, skirt, leg, skin, sky, window). > Velare che precede o segue un suono vocalico anteriore:

  • si palatizza se la parola è di origine anglosassone
  • Non si palatizza se è di origine germanica
  1. NEW WORDS VIA MEANING CHANGE SURLY - SIR - SENATOR > some relativeness Meaning change is flexible (shows a variety of processes) BUT there are a few recognisable paths of change:
  • Widening of the original meaning= new words in English appear on a daily basis by simply changing the meaning of the original word (type of lexical innovation). Spelled and pronounced like the original word but different meaning. It occurs when a word meaning pass from a more specific concept to a more inclusive one (Ex. Bird ‘young fowl’ > ‘all fowl both old and young’, Manage ‘handle a horse’ > ‘handle anything difficult successfully’). Sometimes it involves the shift from an original and concrete meaning to a new abstract one (physical to metaphorical)
  • Narrowing (opposite of widening)= a word with a more inclusive concept is narrowed to mean something more specific. An original word narrows its meaning because a different word comes along and takes over the meaning of the original. Limited in its meaning to reference something more specific (Deer ‘animal’ > ‘large four-legged wild animal which eat grass and leaves’ in this case the narrowing is the result of the influence of the French word). Amelioration and pejoration have to do with new meanings that words get: they move either up or down words from a social or emotional perspective:
  • Amelioration= the meaning of a word is ameliorated because the word change its register > movement UP socially or emotionally (Nice ‘stupid, simple’ > PDE has a positive connotation, Fond ‘foolish, crazy, dazed’ > dazed with love > in love with > affectionate towards)
  • Pejoration= down movement (bully ‘lover, sweetheart’ > ‘abusive person’) ‘lover’ > ‘pimp’ > ‘abusive person’ : the processes responsible of pejoration of meaning are widening + pejoration. Register can change over time: a slang word can become a polite expression or from casual can become high statues (amelioration) or an high and polite word can become low and rude

(pejoration). Also terms for female role have undergone pejoration: Mistress/master, princess (very peaky person)/prince Are there words really new? NO AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY Morphology= branch of linguistic devoted to the study of internal structure of words. It deals with the correlation of form and meaning in the word. Concerned with questions such as:

  • how can words be analysed into smaller meaningful units?
  • What form function and meaning do these units have?
  • How do the form and meaning of each unit correlate within the word? Beggar, friend, lord, man, mother, neighbour, woman > all mean ‘person’ of some kind (relationship in meaning) but this semantic relationship is not reflected in any shared form
  • man/woman (pronounced differently)
  • Beggar/mother (same pronunciation ‘schwa’ but the sound is spelled differently) Even though these words share some semantic features (semantic relatedness), they don’t share any morphological structure. Beggarly, friendly, lordly, manly, motherly, neighbourly, womanly - assembly, belly, early, hopefully, lily, silly > these 2 sets of words have a relationship in form (phonological/orthographic relatedness) BUT they DON’T share any meaning (no morphological relationship) Shopkeeper, party-goer, singer > NOMINA AGENTIS Relationship in form or meaning? YES Relationship in form: all end in -er Relationship in meaning: -er > this morphological and phonological relatedness is reflected in the meaning, these words refer to the person who performs the action represented by the verb (shopkeeper: person who keeps a shop, party-goer: person who goes to party) Attention! Stretcher: -er references the tool used to stretch, cooker: -er references the tool the man who cook BUT hammer: has nothing to do with ham, corner: has nothing to do with corn > these words have a relationship only in form thanks to the addition of -er BUT don’t have meaning in common. Morphology is interested in phenomena and processes where likeness in structure is meaningful (likeness in structure - formal and phonological relatedness - is also associated with some constant meaning) = la somiglianza nella struttura è significativa (correlazione formale e fonologica) ma è anche associata a un significato costante. 2 sub-branches:
  • INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY= deals with the correlation of form and meaning within the inflected words of a same lexeme (or within word-form of a lexeme) > noun inflection: dog - dog’s > verb inflection: write - wrote - is writing… > adj. and adverb inflection: high - higher - more likely… > pronoun inflection: I - me - mine > determiner inflection: this - these - those
  • DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY= deals with the correlation of form and meaning within words which are derived by original words: new lexemes created from existing ones by word-formation

into nouns (not all nouns, only the ones with Latin origins) Functions:

  • change the grammatical category of the original word
  • Change the meaning DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
  • either prefixes or suffixes (re-/un-/-ly/-ness)
  • optionally more than one word
  • attach to a limited number of free morphs (-ment/-(c)ation/-al/-ance/-ence for V>N)
  • 2 functions: 1) convert one part of speech to another (V>N, A>N/ A/N>V) 2) change the meaning of original word
  • Precede the inflectional suffix INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
  • only suffixes (-s/-er/-est/-ed/-ing/-‘s)
  • Only one per word
  • Attach to all (or more) members of a word class (-s for sing>plural nouns, -ed for past simple/past participle tenses or weak verbs)
  • 1 function: indicate grammar meaning (number, tense, aspect, degree, case)
  • Follow derivational suffix(es) Specific rules for prefixes or suffixes attaching:
    • ness tend to be added to adj. of Latin origins which ends in -able
  • prefixes in-/un- > revert the meaning of the free morph to which they are added. In- has Latin origins= tends to be added to words of Latin origin, Un- has Germanic origins= tends to combine mostly with words of Germanic origins but also with a limited number of free roots oh Latin origin Prefixes and suffixes= disciplina della morfologia che studia le restrizioni rispetto a quali morti liberi si legano. Desinenze= si applicano a tutti i membri di una stessa categoria (a parte i plurali irregolari: fossili linguistici. Tutto ciò che entra ora nella lingua ora se è un aggettivo segue le flessioni regolari. Productive inflectional affixes of modern English
  • -s: plural number, possessive case, present tense 3rd person singular (not past)
  • -ed: past tense/past participle
  • -ing: present participle
  • -er: comparative degree (adj./adv.)
  • -est: superlative degree Productivity= associated with the extent which a specific affix is used to inflect words (in the case of inflectional affixes) or to coin new words (derivational affixes) Ex. Child > children: the inflectional affix -en is no longer productive in PDE as an inflectional affix to turn nouns into their plural. Productive= still used to coin new inflected forms of a lexeme. -s= the only productive inflectional suffix to turn English nouns into their plural form. If a plural is represented by an inflectional suffix different from -s, it means that the word is entered the language as a borrowing in an earlier stage of the history of English. (Se hanno una coniugazione/flessione diversa rispetto alla tabella sopra= o sono fossili linguistici oppure sono stati presi da una lingua straniera e ancora non si sono integrati nella lingua inglese, hanno ancora le caratteristiche formali della lingua e continuano ad essere percepiti come elementi stranieri).

What remains of the verb inflection of the OE verb inflection? Irregular verbs. Whenever a new verb is coined in PDE/enters the language through a source language (via borrowing) it is only inflected according to the regular system of verb inflection in PDE. Hood “head covering”, Ship “seagoing vessel” > in PDE we also use these words as suffixes (motherhood, hardship) > they exist in PDE both as independent lexeme but also as suffixes. They have a relationship in form but they do not share any meaning at all, the fact that they’re spelled in the same way is accidental, as a result of the history of language. They were originally (in OE) independent words: -hood indicava uno stato, -ship una forma (nothing to do with “head covering” or “seagoing vessel”, but they had come through a process called GRAMMATICALIZATION.) How many morphs can there be? English has an upper normal limit of 6 morphs. ‘Anti dis establish ment arian ism’ (longest word in English) THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS: MORPHS VS MORPHEMES Root= central part in a word Affixes= all bound and can be further subdivided into:

  • Prefixes= function: coin new lexemes from existing ones (only derivational)
  • Suffixes= derivational when used to create new lexemes from existing ones, inflectional when used to create new word-forms of a lexeme. There are some suffixes which are both.
  • Infixes= only derivational, very small number of them in English compared to other languages.
  • Endings (inflectional suffixes)= suffixes whose function is only inflectional (to create new word- forms of the same lexeme). Affixes can be productive or non-productive. “Explorationists”= multimorphemic word, can be segmented in 4 morphs:
  • explore > to conduct a systematic search
  • -ation- > action/process of ‘X’ing > the action or process of explor(e)-ing > -ation is added to verbs to reference action or process represented by the verb to which -ation is added
  • -ist- > one that perform an action ‘Y’ > one person that performs the action of exploration
  • -s > indicates that there is more than one ‘Z’ > more than one explorationist (-s whenever added to a noun references a plural number) Each morph in any multimorphemic word has its own function and meaning= morphs have meanings. Morpheme= each meaning/peace of information that a morph can provide Morphs can have 2 types of meanings:
  • lexical meaning > lexical morphemes
  • grammatical meaning > grammatical morphemes (number, gender, tense, person, degree, case…) Roots (bound or free) only possess a lexical meaning. Grammatical morphemes:
  • represents a close set
  • Correspond to grammatical categories motivated by grammar/syntax of the language > Number: countable nouns, demonstratives, personal/possessive/reflexive pronouns, 3rd person of present tenses, past tense of TO BE > Case: nominative, genitive, objective, for personal/interrogative/relative pronouns > Person: personal/possessive/reflexive pronouns, possessive determiners, sing. present tense, indicative of verbs

Morphemes of past tense and past participle, in PDE verbs can be classified in:

  • regular verbs= form the past tense and past participle by adding -ed (work -work#ed - work#ed) > # used in linguistic to define the boundary (confine) between morphs. Whenever a new word enter in PDE, it forms the past tense and pp like a regular verb.
  • irregular verbs= no predictable pattern of paste tense and pp (sing - sang - sung > changes in terms of vowels= root vowel mutation (NOT simply adding a bound morph)) Cut - cut - cut > paste tense and pp look and sound at the same way as the present and the infinitive > the morphemes of paste tense and pp are not distinguish, realised by no morph. Ex. She cut her finger > the morphemes of past tense and pp exist but they are not realised by any evident morph. The morpheme of plural number is realised on plural nouns:
  • Dog > dog#s (adding the bound morph -s)
  • Tooth > teeth (changing the root vowel)
  • One fish > two fish {fish} + {pl.} ZERO MORPH Ø ZERO RULE= a morpheme that has no overt (evidente) realisation in particular members of a word class (noun, verb, adj. etc) but in most other members of the class it has concrete realisation (past tense on English verbs…) Ex. She caught a taxi to the station yesterday Caught: {catch} + {past tense} > 1 morph, 2 morphemes If you turn this sentence to the present tense > She catches a taxi to the station Catches: 2 morphs (catch + -es), 4 morphemes (lexical morpheme ‘catch’ + present tense + 3rd person + number singular) The difference is the lack of the person and the number morphemes > ‘catches’ and ‘caught’ are different in terms of morphs and of morphemes. Apart from the only exception TO BE (fossil from OE), the morphemes of person and number in the past tense are NEVER realised. A morpheme is never realised as a morph in any word of the relevant class, English never has concrete realisation (=we don’t have to consider them when we analyse these words into morphs and morphemes) Ex. {positive degree} on adj. and adverbs, {singular number} on nouns, {infinitive form} on verbs (- are, -ere, -ire in Italian), {present tense (person and number)} on verbs (BUT 3rd person singular), {past tense (person and number)} on verbs (BUT TO BE) NULL REALISATION RULE= whenever a morpheme is never realised as a morph in any word of a class. (Questi morfemi non esistono in inglese quindi non possiamo dire in che misura possono essere realizzati (produttività) perché non si applicano alla lingua) THE MORPHEME OF GENDER ON ENGLISH NOUNS Ex. Lord-lady, boy-girl, colt-filly (young male-female horse) The morpheme of gender is not generally represented by an inflectional suffix. Even though they are usually represented by separate forms of masculine or feminine gender, there are some exceptions > formed by means of derivational suffixes or compounds. Ex. Actor/actress= derivational suffixes, chair-man/chair-woman= derivational suffixes, girlfriend/boyfriend= compounds
  • Men’s > ex. of how morphological realisation morphs can also be combined 2 morphs: men + -s Morphemes: MAN + plural number + bound morph which represents a grammatical morpheme (possession) glued to MEN by means of the agglutinative= FUSIONAL RULE + AGGLUTINATIVE

RULE.

SUM UP OF MORPHOLOGICAL RULES:

  • Agglutinative: 1 morph > 1 morpheme (taller)
  • Fusional: 1 morph > 2+ morphemes (caught/wrote, he, teeth…)
  • Null (realisation): 0 morphs > 0 morphemes (person on English verbs…)
  • Zero: 0 morphs > 1+ morphemes (cut, put - past tense)
  • Fusional and agglutinative (men’s) COMPOSITIONALITY BETWEEN WORDS The meaning of an entire word can be worked out by simply putting together the meaning of each component/morphemes. Compositional words= words that display the principle of compositionality > the meaning of the word is made up of the meaning of the components. Non-compositional words= their meaning cannot be predicted by simply putting together the morphemes (berry words) Ex. Cranberry - raspberry - blueberry - blackberry > unlike ‘blue’ and ‘black’ that have a meaning on their own, CRAN and RASP are meaningless morphs in English CRAN-MORPHS (in linguistics)= meaningless bound morphs. Ironically, after linguists named ‘cran-morph’ this particular kind of unproductive meaningless bound morphs, marketers started using them to form juice names: cran-tropical/cran-apple. To sum up: Morph= a concrete segment/subpart Morpheme= information realised though morphs: grammatical and lexical. They are abstract elements (lexemes, phonemes). ALLOMORPHS IN ENGLISH Allomorph= a predictable variant morph of the same morpheme. Same morphemes can be realised by several different morphs (process that can be observed on verbs, adj., nouns…) Some of these are predictable from the phonetic environment= when this occurs the allomorph is called allophone. Allophone= when the allomorph is phonetically conditioned, conditioned from environment > the allomorph is turned into an allophone. Sometimes it is not conditioned by phonetic environment= unpredictable from a phonetic point of view > unpredictable phonologically. Past simple/pp realisation > -ED Plural number realisation > -(E)S Irregular plurals:
  • OX-OXEN > addition of inflectional suffix -en, the root is not affected
  • CHILD-CHILDREN > -en suffix (bound morph) + root vowel mutation/root allomorphy
  • WOMAN-WOMEN > -en suffix + root allomorphy
  • GOOSE-GEESE > no suffix added + root allomorphy
  • MOUSE-MICE > root allomorphy
  • SHELF-SHELVES > -en suffix + root allomorphy (not the vowel but the -f)
  • SHEEP-SHEEP > zero morph > all these examples are allomorphs which are not predictable from the phonetic environment of the original word_._ All linguistic fossils.
  • BUY-BOUGHT > dental suffix -t + root allomorphy

• REDUPLICATION

• COMPOUNDING

• BLENDS

• ACRONYMS

• ABBREVIATIONS

• BACK FORMATIONS

• ROOT CREATION

Some of these phenomena are more productive than others Compounding= 2 morphs glued together (bookshelf) Derivation= free morph (nail) and a suffix (-fie) > nailfie (=selfie which shows the nails) Zero-derivation= creating new words from existing ones without affecting the form but simply assigning a new meaning (to google/google) Reduplication= either the exact same repetition or repetition of the original word with a minor change in the root vowel (criss-cross, zig-zag, fifty-fifty) Acronyms= we read letters as a whole word (NATO, AIDS, BOGOF= buy one, get one free) Abbreviation= letters read as independent words (GMO) Blends= 2 words fused together, difficult to identify word boundary (Frenemy= friend + enemy) Back-formation= opposite of derivation (offshoring > offshore) Combining forms= look like prefixes but they are NOT prefixes, extremely productive (hyper-, mega-, cyber-, euro-, e-/E-) Which one are still productive in 20th century English?

  • Compounding has become one of the mainstay of lexical creativity in English
  • Zero-derivation (conversion) between the Late Middle English period and the early Modern English this process moved from a marginal role to a central position
  • Acronyms and verb-to-verb compounds have become impressively productive since the early 20th century (more recent than other processes)
  • Semantic change/shift (old form, new meaning) includes: > Metonymy (Brussels, Westminster) > Metaphor (inflation, off-shore, power ‘country’, zap ‘move quickly’= keep changing TV programmes with a remote control) > Euphemism (Ladies, Gents) > Slang (pig ‘person’) WORD FORMATION: DERIVATION DERIVATION: includes both Prefixation and suffixation= creates new lexemes starting from existing ones by adding either prefixes or suffixes Derivation affixes:
  • prefixes and suffixes
  • natives (derived from OE) vs borrowed (from other languages)
  • Very limited productivity vs highly productive vs no longer productive in PDE PREFIXATION Prefix (bound lexical morph before a free lexical morph (root or base)) + free morph Ex. Complete (adj.) > in-complete (adj.), to use (verb) > re-use (verb), smoker (n) > non-smoker (n) English prefixes:
  • class maintaining: most prefixes in English do not change the grammatical category of the original word. Exceptions: enlarge, ensure, befriend, betoken, abroad.
  • Systematically affect meaning of the word to which they are attached
  • Do not affect orthography (unlike suffixes)
  • Do not produce phonological change Semantic taxonomy of English prefixes:
  • Pejorative (miscalculate, dislike)
  • Degree or size (overconfident, mini-skirt)
  • Attitude (pro-Obama, antiwar)
  • Spatial relation, both concrete and abstract (international, subnormal)
  • Time and order (postmodern, ex-president)
  • Numeric value (bilingual, multitasking)
  • Repetition (rewrite, rebuild)
  • Reversal (undo, unfasten) Verbal Prefixation= new verbs created by simply adding a prefix (very productive process from OE to Middle English) Ex. ‘To upset’, ‘overthrow’ (OE, highly productive the Prefixation) vs ‘To set up’, ‘throw over’ (PDE, Phrasal verbs) BUT ‘upload’, ‘upgrade’ > quite recent addition to the English vocabulary, during the years the productivity has decreased but never disappeared and now is coming back after centuries of decline. English= from being an inflectional language to an analytic language. SUFFIXATION Free morph + suffix (bound lexical morph after a free lexical morph (root/base)) Ex. beauty (n) > beauty-(i)fy (verb), happy (adj.) > happ(i)ness (n), unhappy (adj) > unhappy(i)ness (n) English suffixes:
  • class changing (-ful, -ly, -ify, -al)
  • Class maintaining (-ess, -let, -hood, -kind, -ship, -ism)
  • Affect meaning
  • Affect orthography (deny/denial)
  • Produce a phonological change in the root (sometimes word stress is also affected) Ex. Reduce/ Reduction, clear/clarity, electric/electricity Semantic taxonomy of English suffixes:
  • diminutives: -ling, -let, -y, -ie (piglet, daddy, hoodie)
  • Feminine suffixes: -esse, -ette, -rix, -ine (actress, heroine)
  • Abstract suffixes: -ship, -hood, -ism (friendship, neighbourhood)
  • Suffixes denoting people: -(i)an, -ist, -er (librarian, Texan, Marxist)
  • Meaning ‘nearly, not exactly’ (coldish)
  • Expressing ‘resemblance’ (lonely, childish) Grammatical taxonomy of English suffixes:
  • Noun suffixes (largest category): -(a)tion, -dom, -ee, -ess, -ette, -hood, -ism, -ity, -let, -ness, -ment, -ship
  • Adj. suffixes: -i/-able, -al/-ial, -ar, -ary, -ed, -esque, -ful, -ic, -ish, -less, -like, -ly, -ous, -some, -y
  • Verb suffixes: -ate, -en, -ify, -ise/-ize
  • Adverb suffixes: -ly, -wise Some suffixes are very productive, other non productive at all (unproductive) and also some with a very limited productivity. Productive suffixes: -able, -er, -ist, -ism, -ize, -ic, -y, and among them there are some recent ones > Recently suffixes:
  • -(el)fie > from ‘selfie’ spoken and informal > nailfie, dogfie
  • -(a)holic > from alcoholic, spoken and written > workaholic
  • -ish > in brand names and websites > Bookish
  • -escape > from landscape > cityscape
  • -gate > from watergate, in newspapers > Cartergate, Camillagate Unproductive suffixes: -th (warmth, length), -dom (kingdom) Limited productivity: -ship, -hood
  • legal (adj.) > to legalise (verb) ‘to make something legal’
  • Atom (noun) > to atomize (verb) ‘to so something using atoms’
  • To bake (verb) > baker (noun) ‘someone who bakes’ ZERO-DERIVATION:
  • Clean (adj.) > to clean (verb) ‘to make something clean’
  • Skype (noun) > to Skype (verb) ‘to do something using skipe’
  • To cook (verb) > a cook (noun) ‘someone who cooks’ Zero derivation is typical of the English language and it is the result of loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. Recently very productive thanks to adverting in social media. DIRECTIONALITY: In zero-derivation there is a problem of directionality between the original word and the converted one, 2 clues:
  • Semantic clue= the converted word (verb) necessarily includes the meaning of the original word (noun) > noun > verb BUT: To butter (verb) < butter (noun) if we accepted the semantic clue ‘to butter’ (verb) includes the meaning of the original word from which it has been converted ‘butter’ but ‘to butter toast with marmalade’ non c’entra nulla con burro. To garage (verb) < garage (noun) ‘to garage the car in the shed non c’entra nulla con garage
  • Morphological clue= the converted form generally follows the regular productive inflection of the category it belongs to: ‘highlight’ in English is both a verb and a noun > If originally a noun (noun>verb)= verb regular inflection: highlight-highlighted-highlighted ‘Ring’ (transitive)= to provide with a circle (circondare): ring-ringed-ringed= zero-derivation from noun to verb ‘Ring’ (intransitive)= to call: ring-rang-rung= original verb > Ring (transitive) is the result of zero-derivation converted from the noun ‘ring’ BUT ‘ring’ (intransitive) is an original word (che non c’entra nulla con cerchio). FURTHER EXAMPLES OF ZERO-DERIVATION IN ENGLISH
  1. Word stress= large set of converted forms:
  • Phrasal verb > noun (take over - takeover, make up - makeup)
  • 2 syllable verbs (stress on the 2nd syllable) > noun (condùct - cònduct, rebèl - rèbel, recòrd - rècord)
  1. Commonization = proper noun (real/fictional person or place) > common word (noun, verb, adj.): noun > noun (cashmere, sandwich, bourbon, china)
  2. Secondary shifts= when a word that belongs to one subclass is converted into another word in the same word class but with a different meaning
  • mass nouns > count nouns (the American press - meet the press, how many press (journalists) were there?)
  • Transitive verbs > intransitive verbs with a passive meaning (She sells second hand cars (intransitive) - the book sells well (intransitive) - the novel has sold million copies (=a million copies of the novel has been sold)) SHORTENING AND COMPOUNDING Shortening processes: all based on shortening where the new lexeme (that has been created out of the old one) is shorter than the original one.
  • Back-formation
  • Clipping
  • Acronyms and abbreviations
  • Blending BACK FORMATION= process whereby new words/lexemes are created by mistake from existing ones. By mistake= the part that is left out is a presumed derivational suffix and not a derivational suffix.
  1. The noun is the original word, the verb is the derived lexeme (editor > to edit, typewriter > to typewrite, babysitter > to babysit, burglar > to burgle)
  2. Transcription > to transcript, television > to televise, orientation > to orientate
  3. New words created from adjectives ending in ‘Y’ (greedy > greed, foggy > fog) 3 main stages:
  • Original lexeme= a noun/adjective that contains a sound sequence that sounds and looks like a derivational suffix BUT IS NOT a derivation suffix (=presumed derivational suffix)
  • Whenever speakers come across words like these, they strip off the presumed derivational suffix
  • What remains is a totally new lexeme to which the speaker invents a new meaning obtained by simply subtracting the meaning of the presumed suffix from the original word. CLIPPING= process whereby new lexemes are created out of existing ones (they are shorter than the originals). Occurs whenever a multisyllabic word is reduced in size, usually to 1/ syllables. New words are created by economising. Ex. Fiche clipped form of Microfiche, Phone < telephone, glam < glamorous, limo < limousine, spite < despite, venture < adventure, flu < influenza > some have been created by leaving out the initial part of the original word, other by living out a final part, and others by leaving out both the initial and final part. How can we identify the clipped word if we don’t know the original word they come from? We can’t, because clipping is a particular social phenomena that occur in very informal social settings. 3 main stages:
  • a word comes into more common usage (its frequency count increase)
  • Speakers find out that, since this word is very frequent, they don’t need to use the full original word anymore to identify the concept.
  • They create a more quickly and easily pronounced version of the original word by simply relying on the longest syllable possible according to the phonological rules of English language. 3 types of clipping:
  • Front clipping (tele)phone
  • Back clipping glam(orous)
  • Mixed clipping (in)flu(enza) ATTENTION! English word ‘hamburger’ comes from the German word ‘hamburger’ (coming from ‘Hamburg’= city). La parola inglese passa attraverso un processo di ellissi per il quale tutte le volte che si parlava di hamburger ci si riferiva all’hamburger steak. Poi si è passati a usare il termine burger con un cambio di significato= carne macinata. English grammar: ham + burger > ‘ham’ sounds and looks like the word ‘prosciutto’ but it has nothing to do with the type of meat hamburger are made of. According to English grammar rules, native speakers started to isolate ‘ham’ from ‘burger’, splitting the word in its component, English grammar deduces that: ham-burger > burger > veggie/beef/ cheeseburger What is the difference between Back-formation and Clipping? Back formation= pays attention to morph boundaries > the left out part is a sound sequence that look and sounds like a derivational suffix, that is a bound morph. Clipping= does not rely on morph boundaries BUT pays attention to phonological boundaries > what remains in clipped words is the longest possible syllable according to English phonological rules.