Scarica English Word Formation: A Comprehensive Guide to Morphology and Lexical Change - Prof. Pio e più Appunti in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity!
WEEK ONE 24-28 February
This week's learning objective is Language Change and variation in English. We will discuss some central issues concerning the study of language change and variation in English which emerge in relation to their social and structural status at a given time (or synchronically ), and also occur along a historical continuum (or chronologically ). We will discuss types of language change and share some information about the history of English as a Germanic language. Several of the words we use in normal interactions and some of these on a daily basis, were indeed borrowed from another language, that means they entered the English language at a later stage through Vikings invasions. One of the words we use on an ordinary basis is the personal pronoun they , another word introduced via the Viking invasion which is the verb “to take”. It replaced the older word which meant to take. Sky, skin and skill share the same spelling in the sense that they all begin with a combination of graphemes s and k which is pronounced “sk” in all 3 words. Actually, we have to realize that very often in English the way we spell words tells us a lot about the origins of words and in particular about the language from which a specific word or groups of words were borrowed and we have to realize that most of the words that in modern English are spelled with a “sk” and wherever this combination is pronounced “sk”, that means that the word is a borrowing from Old Norse. In Italian scuola scoperta scapola, la sc viene pronunciata forte, mentre in scegliere, in sciare la stessa combinazione di grafemi è pronunciata debole. In Italian there’s differences in pronunciation which are not reflected in English. In English, whenever s is followed by k, it is pronounced sk forte.
WEEK TWO
This week's learning objective is Where English words come from. We'll learn about some word- formation processes such as Folk Etymologies, Acronyms and Abbreviations, Semantic Drift (or Meaning Change), and other processes responsible for other forms of language change such as Borrowing and Register change. Criteria for word hood. The English language This unit is meant as in introduction to the criteria used for distinguishing a word from a phrase. We all have an intuitive feel for the words of the language we speak and we think immediately of the written word- so what comes immediately to our mind is the written word. There must be some formal criteria for word hood which all speakers use. Which criteria do people use to divide phrases into words and to identify what comes as a word? Are the criteria Orthographic? Or Semantic? Is it Phonological? Or Morphological? Is it Grammatical? Or Syntactic? As you can see the criteria you may have used to identify the words are of various types.
- By the criteria of ORTHOGRAPY: a word is what occurs between spaces in writing.
- If the criteria we adopt is SEMANTIC: a word has semantic coherence; a word expresses so a unified semantic concept.
- According to the PHONOLOGICAL criteria: a word is what occurs between potential pauses in speaking , although in normal speech we generally not pause, we may potentially pause between words, but not in the middle of words. And again, according to the phonological criteria, a word spoken in isolation has one and only one primary stress.
- According to the MORPHOLOGICAL criteria: a word has an internal cohesion, and it’s indivisible by other units ; that means that a word may be modified only externally by suffixes and prefixes. (ex: we turn nouns to plural adding an s, not in the middle of the word but in
the end; similarly if we want to make a noun possessive, we add ‘s; if we want to make a verb at past, we add an - ed for regular ones).
- By the GRAMMATICAL criteria: word fall into particular classes.
- By the SYNTACTIC criteria: a word has external distribution or mobility; that means that a word is moved as a unit , not in parts. We can see the usefulness of these criteria in English if we look at some problematical examples of word delimitation. Examples:
- Supermarket → by the criteria of orthography, it’s a single word. But grocery store even if it has space, it’s a single word.
- Runner-up → it’s not a single word for morphology because the plural is runners-up.
- Forget-me-not → meet the syntactic criteria of wordhood, as single units. For the morphological criteria it’s a one word because the plural s is added at the end.
- Noteworthy → compound adjectives have 2 primary stresses, so that they are phonologically phrases. From the other criteria, it’s a single word.
- Try out → though having the quality of a phrase, phrasal verbs seem to represent a unified semantic notion. →what qualifies as a word in English is a sound-meaning connection so the only reliable criteria are stress, pauses and meaning. WHEN DO WE HAVE A NEW WORD? When do we have a new word and what qualifies a new word in English? The lexical inventory of English changes from year to year and there are several societies across the world whose main objective is to provide descriptions of how English is used around the world by focusing on how words change overtime and in different times and areas, according to what is happening culturally and in the news. One such society is The American Dialect Society , in their site each year this society selects new words and phrase that have become popular in the past 12 months. These words become popular may not be new but they usually are “newly prominent”, that means that the words and phrases became popular has attracted interest all around the world and from this words, the American Dialect Society selects the one that has attracted the greatest deal of interest and awarded it the title of “word of the year” or WOTY. According to the American Dialect Society, a woty is “ a word, or expression, that we can see has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Every year, candidates for Word of the Year are debated and one is eventually chosen that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance ”. In 2002 the American Dialect Society voted weapons of mass destruction as word of the year, but each year besides voting for this, it also chooses words and assigns them to particular categories. These categories include the words that are most likely to succeed, the most useful, the most creative, the most unnecessary, the most euphemistic… In 2002 this society voted “blog” the most likely to succeed and in 2004 “carb-friendly” won the most unnecessary category. Who decides which words become popular, which words fall out of fashion, which stay and which go? Obviously, it’s not the society because they’re just observing what has happened, not deciding what will happen. Society in general decides which word to create; most new words are created by some innovative manipulation of already existing words. It’s important to understand what counts as a genuinely new word→ the meaning of a particular word can change gradually over time, until the connection between original and modern meaning is so distant that it’s lost. We can say at this point that it’s not
named with long, unwieldly compounds and phrases, in particular in the US Army. Frank Delano Roosvelt , FDR initiated many programs in the 1930s with such names: the CCC, WPA, CWA, PWAP, FERA. These names are long gone, but floodgates were opened. The tendency of the American Arm Forces to initialize everything inside also had a big impact of common usage of this time, since a large percentage of the population was involved with the military in the 1940 →these initialisms entered the language during this period. Since 1940 initialisms have become completely accepted ways of referring to organization. Very often an organisation group would pick a phrase for the name based entirely on the world that we result when it is initialised. There are many: one is BIBLIA (Ben’s Incredible Big List of Initialisms and Acronyms). Many dictionaries contain many thousands of entries; this Biblia is specialized on relatively new type of initialisms that have coming to use primarily in electronic communications (some are more familiar, some less). Abbreviations and Acronyms are being formed on a daily basis by millions of Internet Users (most die the day they are coined, but a few will persist and the effect will be that new words enter the language). NEW WORDS IN ENGLISH VIA MEANING CHANGE (Pulcini pag.27-28) Looking at how the meaning of a word changes overtime can give us a little window on how the surrounding culture has changed. And as a result, can give us a historical understanding, not just lexical understanding. Why do we dial a phone number? Where does the word car come from? How is the word surly related to the word sir or senator? These are separated words in modern English, so the history of the meaning of nearly every word is a little cultural history and it’s an endlessly fascinating topic. Meaning change can be flexible by nature but there are a few recognisable paths of change that words can take. These are: widening , narrowing , amelioration , pejoration. WIDENING: a word’s meaning widens when it was formally used to describe a more specific concept and overtime comes to refer to a more inclusive concept. The word “bird” used to mean just “young fowl”, but it gradually came to have its broader range meaning which includes all fowl both young and old. Similarly, to manage used to mean “to handle a horse” but now it means to handle anything difficult successfully. Widening often happens as a result of metaphorical or fanciful application of a term, but when a learner hears such a word, and doesn’t recognize that it is metaphorical, they simply conclude that the word has a more inclusive meaning and that covers a broader range of situations. NARROWING : happens when a word without formerly broader application, is reanalysed by learners as having a more specific application. Sometimes it happens when a word with a similar meaning comes alone and it takes over the meaning of the original. One example is the word “deer” which in older English (OE) meant “ animal ” in the Middle English (ME) the word got the meaning that is “large four-legged wild animal which eats grass and leaves”. Because of the French borrowing beast came to be commonly used for the meaning “animal” and as a result, deer came to be restricted to its current meaning. Present English “beast” comes from French so it’s a borrowing from old French meaning “animal” so that in present English beast still means animal and this can be seen in the Italian “bestia”. The old English word “deer” which referred to animals in general than as a result of borrowing of the French beast then restricted its meaning to the meaning it now has. AMELIORATION AND PEJORATION : behind semantic change are these two. They have to do with the register of words: words can be polite, rude, neutral and suitable for formal or informal contents. Choosing a word from a particular register in the wrong context can lead to negative social consequences. We also know that a given word a notation for register can change overtime often from high to low and sometimes from low to high. A word that used to be polite may now be rude; sometimes a word that used to be casual might now represent the hight of sophistication. When a
word moves from a lower register to a higher one, or from having negative connotation to having positive connotation we can say it has undergone AMELIORATION. One such word is the adjective “nice” which used the negative meaning “stupid, simple” and now means “nice”. “Fond” in Shakespeare time meant “foolish, crazy, dazed”, overtime it came to mean “dazed with love” and from there it just came to mean “in love with” and then “affectionate towards”. PEJORATION is the opposite of amelioration, and it occurs when a word moves downwards, socially or emotionally. We saw that bully used to have a positive meaning “lover” and now it means “abusive person”. It goes there via a meaning extension from “lover” to “pimp” and from there the meaning widened to include not just “men control women’s body and behaviour for profits” but on “people who impose their will on weaker people” so we can say that bully underwent two processes: widening and pejoration at the same time. Pejoration is particularly revealing about the underlying attitudes of a given culture at a given time. Social linguistics of English have noted that terms that were originally neutral ways of referring to the female equivalents of male roles or entities acquired a negative overtone. Consider mistress/master, spinster/bachelor, princess/prince in each case there is at least one use of a feminine tone that has negative overtones, which masculine terms does not possess. Terms for female roles have undergone pejoration while the masculine hasn’t. It has been argued that it is symptomatic of societies underlying negative attitude towards women (results in negative connotations attached to the word referring to the group). There are cases in which the words have been created out of nothing, there are only a few cases of words really made up out of nothing. For instance, the inventor of a photographic process invented KODA out of nothing in 1888. The internet searching engine Google derive its name from another word made up out of nothing, the word 10 elevated to 100, is called googol. This kind of words are the exception rather that the rule and people usually get new words by modifying other words. New words in English via borrowing The borrowing process: some new words in English exist as a result of the borrowing process. If we adopt the definition of “new words” as “ any new sound and meaning combination ” we can easily realize why borrowing is considered as the primary source of genuinely new words in English. Because borrowing as a process occurs when a community that speaks one language comes into contact with a community that speaks another language and adopts a word from that community (as English has done with a huge variety of words, such as Italian spaghetti…). Depending on the history of a given language, borrowing can be a very important thing and in English it is a very important source of new words. A number of new words introduced to English by borrowing mix the combined number of new words added to English by all the previous methods. Borrowing is always the result of some language contact between two or more languages; borrowing results in some foreign influence on different aspects of the language and because of this it is often described as an external cause of lexical innovation. However, borrowing shows and affects all levels of a language and in English; in particular it has affected it in the spelling conventions and graphemes which exist now thanks to the contacts with other languages (for ex: “gh” comes from the continent thanks to the printing press; “ie” was introduced during the middle English period via Anglo-Norman tribes). Borrowing in English has also affected its morphology (ex: suffixes and prefixes still existing in English which are of foreign origins - ment…). The level where borrowing is particularly evident is vocabulary but also in its syntax. Borrowing may not be the best notion to use in terms of words and indeed borrowing represent a very imperfect metaphor because the verb “to borrow” means “ to take something from somebody and give it back later ” this is not the way borrowing works when it comes to a word and a language.
Free vs bound morphs, roots and stems in English Pulcini chapter 3 Explorationists : (word said by Bush in 2001) any adults speaking English can realize that this word is a complex word (because it consists in several parts: multimorphemic). It has different components: explore/ation/ist/s. Each of these sub-parts has its meaning:
- Explore= to conduct a systematic search.
- Ation= the action or process of doing something.
- Ist= one that performs an action.
- S= plural noun, more than one X. Splitting the word into its components, the English grammar deduces that: Explorationists: more than one of them. Exploration-ist: one that performs the action of exploration. Explor(e)-ation: the action or process of explor(e)—ing. Explore(ing): conducting a systematic search. →The meaning of each sub-parts fit together to the meaning of the others to give the meaning of the all. The meaning of the entire word is: “ more than one person performing the action of conducting a systematic search”. The same principle can be used with every word. The principle behind is compositionality → compositional words are the ones whose meanings can be derived by putting together the meanings of its components. MORPH: each component into which multimorphemic words can be segmented is called a morph, which is the smallest unit in morphological structure. We’ve got different types of morphs in a multimorphemic word: according to their function we have: o Root- Stem: o Prefixes- Suffixes- Endings: they depend on where they are put ROOT : is a central element of a word which cannot be further segmented (ex: explore). Other morphs: before the root: prefixes (un, mis, dis) and after the root: suffixes and endings (ation, ist, s) STEM: IMPRESSIVE → ive < impress COMPETITIVE → ive < compet it (which is the verb from which competitive is formed? Not compete). It’s COMPETIT but it’s not a verb in English. The meaningless morph IT attaches to compet to produce a STEM which is competit that allows other suffixes to attach (ive). Not in all English multimorphemic words the root is different from the stem; in most of them the stem and the root are the same. In terms of their distribution, morphs can be free, independent word on its own. Free morphs include content words as adjective, nouns, lexical verbs and adverbs as: write, money, child, hard, soon… most roots in English are free. In English we also have function words: prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs (for, at, in, and, did, been). All functions words in English are free. We also have bound morph : It cannot be an independent word on its own; it can only be attached to free morphs. They include derivational affixes (prefixes and suffixes) as ish, un, ly, re, but also inflectional affixes and endings like - ing, - ed, - s, - er, - est. Then we also have enclitics (contracted auxiliaries and contracted negatives). And then bound roots: es dental, dentist, denstistry→ they share a common part but it’s not a pre-morph. It is a root
because words containing dent has to do with one’s teeth. Indeed, dent comes from the Latin. Bound roots are often foreign borrowings, were free words in source language, but not in English. Derivational morphology : it converts parts of the speech (ex: adjectives to nouns, nouns to verbs). By doing so, you change the meaning of the first word. Inflexional affixes have the only function of indicating or providing grammatical meaning to the words they attach. PRODUCTIVITY: some bound words are still productive. Most suffixes in English are still productive. 2 suffixes which are no longer productive are hood and ship→ words which contain them are old words. NON-COMPOSITIONAL words: words which are multimorphemic but the meanings of the parts are not compositional (you cannot derive the meaning of the entire word by summing the meanings of his parts). Es: cranberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry. They are types for berries; but what does the other part mean? Blue and black are colours, but cran and rasp mean nothing- meaningless words which in linguistic are called “Cran-morphs”. Whenever we study morphology (that’s the branch of linguistics devoted to the study of internal structure of words aims to make this type of knowledge explicit ), that’s because this provides us a tool to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words by simply focusing on their subparts which a multimorphemic word consist of. We can basically predict with morphology what the meaning of the entire word is. Lexical vs grammatical morphemes, morphemic rules Pulcini chapter 3 Morphemic rules: how different morphs which realize different morphemes are put together. Morph: any concrete segment or component into which complex words can be segmented. According to the distribution, morphs can have a variety of forms:
- Root: the central part of word; most are free and some are bound.
- Stems : they don’t have a meaning on their own but they are all bound morphs.
- Affixes : they are all bound, and they are distinguished in prefixes (word initial) and suffixes (word final, they are bound morphs which occur in word final position and turn a lexeme into a new lexeme ex: free→ freedom) and endings (word final, they are responsible for inflecting a lexeme into its different word forms ex: cow→ cows. High→ higher). Some affixes are still productive in present English while others are not. When we talk about productive affixes, we are talking about affixes still used to create new lexemes out of no ones or for creating different word forms from the same lexeme. Those which are non-productive are basically forms of old English words which existed in earlier stages of English language. Each morph realizes a different type of information. Each piece of information is turned into a morpheme so morphs can realize lexical information so they can realize lexical morphemes or they can also realize grammatical information in which case they are turned into grammatical morphemes. As for the English language, grammatical morphemes are for example plural number on English nouns, tense (present and past in particular), aspect (progressive or perfect), number and person (particularly on some nouns and verb to be), degree (on adjective and adverbs) and case (on a variety of pronouns). As for gender: unlike many inflexional languages as Italian, where gender on nouns and adjectives is realized by endings (bello- singular and masculine), English has a rather strict word system for gender called “natural gender” each grammatical gender distinctions made in the language depend upon the sex of the object in the real world, which means that English distinguishes masculine , feminine , common gender and neutral gender.
Whenever this happens, the morph is said to be a portmanteau morph what in Italian is called “amalgama morfematico”. Examples of English words which follow the fusional rule are the personal pronoun we, him and its along with the irregular plural teeth and the irregular past tense write/wrote/written. Sometimes a grammatical morpheme has no overt phonetic/orthographic realization in particular members of a word class; that means that the morphemes exist but has no phonetical or orthographical realization. That means that the morph is a “zero morph” and the rule that applies is known as zero rule. Yesterday I cut my finger → cut is the same in the present, in the past tense and in the past participle. All the tenses are not distinguished by any other morphs, but this doesn’t mean that the morpheme which stands for present are not there: they exist but they don’t have a phonetic or orthographic realization: they are represented by a zero-morph. We can notice this if we compare an irregular verb as cut with a regular one as “to work” where the past tenses, the morpheme of the past tenses are realized by a morph which is “ed”. Another example is provided by the category of number: These sheep are eating grass → sheep has the same form in singular and plural. But in the plural, we say 2 sheep (the morpheme for the plural exist but doesn’t have phonetic or orthographic realisation). We can easily realize the notion of zero morph if we compare the plural sheep to the plural of dog where the grammatical morpheme of plural number is realised by the morph s. However, sometimes a morpheme is never realized by any morph in a language; this is the case of gender in English nouns. Gender in English is not a grammatical category-it’s realized by different and separate words. Another grammatical category is the positive form on English adjectives and adverbs or singular on English nouns, present tense on English verbs. Whenever a morpheme is never realized in a language by a morph, that means that when there is the occurs, the null realisation rule applies. A particular example is represented by men’s: there are two morphs: men (free) and s (bound) and three different morphemes: man (lexical morpheme), plural number (grammatical morpheme) and possession (grammatical morpheme): with men’s in particular, we can say that 2 different rules apply: the fusional and the agglutinative at the same time. To sum up morphological rules:
- Agglutinative: cow + plural, tall + comparative > cows, taller
- Fusional: (catch/write) + past tense > caught/wrote
- Null: noun + singular: tree→ tree
- Zero rule: cut + past tense > cut, put
- Fusional and agglutinative: men’s To sum up: Morphemes : are abstract elements, they are realised as morphs, they can convey lexical and/or grammatical information. ALLOMORPHS IN ENGLISH MORPH: a concrete segment/subpart. Basically, all morphs have a concrete and phonetic orthographical realisation. MORPHEME: an abstract entity, a piece of information realized through morphs. Each morph realizes one or more pieces of information and if the type of info is grammatical, the morpheme extern grammatical morpheme, while if the morph is lexical, the morpheme is set to be a lexical morpheme.
- 1 morph: 1 morpheme
- 1 morph: several morphemes
- Zero morph: 1 morpheme
- Null morph: null morpheme ALLOMORPH : allo and morph (2 morphs). Allo means “different” and it comes from Greek. Allomorph means “different morphs”. An allomorph is a predictable or orthographical realisation of the same morpheme. An allomorph can be said to be one of the several morphs which realise a morpheme. So, the same morpheme can be realised by several morphs → each of the several morphs is called an allomorph. The morpheme of past tense and past participle of regular verbs in English→ the morph which represents this morpheme is “ed”. The same morph (ed) which realizes the morpheme of past tense in English can have different pronunciations (d, t, ed). These different pronunciations are conditioned by the phonetic environment of the verb to which they are attached. Another example is the morpheme of plural number on English nouns, generally represented by the morphs - s or - es. Different pronunciations depend on the sound of the noun to which the morphs are attached to. We say that examples discussed so far are examples of different morphs which realize the same morpheme and these allomorphs (different pronunciations of the same morph) are actually predicted or depend on the phonetic environment in which they occur. Whenever a morph is pronounced in different ways according to the phonetic environment, it is said that the morph is phonologically conditioned. In English there can also be allomorphs whose appearance is unpredictable phonologically so cannot be predicted by simply looking at the phonetic environment but it’s determined by the grammar of the language. Some examples of irregular plurals in English: ox-oxen (the morpheme of the plural number is realised with the suffix en), child-children (same bound morph which realizes the morpheme of plural number but we can see that the vowel of the root changes because child we’ve got - ild and in the plural the vowel of the group is no longer i but e, so there is a combination, there is a change in the vowel), woman-women (the plural is realized by adding - en and changing the root vowel), goose - geese, mouse - mice (in both examples what distinguishes the singular and the plural is simply a change in the root vowel so we do not add any suffixes for the plural number), shelf-shelves (the plural is realised by adding the suffix - es and by changing f into v), sheep-sheep (there is no difference between singular and plural, it’s a clear example of how the notion of zero morph works. What distinguishes the singular from the plural is the fact that the morpheme of plural number exists but has no phonetic or orthographical realization). Whenever there is a change in the vowel or consonant (as in woman or shelf) of the root, and whenever this change signals some differences in terms of number or grammatical information of the morpheme, this represent a process known as root allomorphy →As for irregular past tenses (buy bought - sweep swept): the morpheme of past participle is realized through a combination of dental suffix t and a root allomorphy. Sing sang sung : the morpheme of past tense is realized through root allomorphy. There is no other suffix attached to the end of the word. Actually, root allomorphy is no longer productive in present English; the English words which display root allomorphy are linguistic fossils (forms from earlier stages of the language) or foreign borrowings. Many irregularities can only be explained by taking a historical or diachronical point of view; another type of allomorphy in English is represented by Suppletion : Adjectives like “hot hotter hottest” (regular) Good gooder goodest Good better best The same phenomenon applies to verbs (work regular verb); but go goed goed go gone went
(verbilizers) or nouns and verbs into adjectives (adjectivalizers) or adjectives and nouns into adverbs (adverbilizers).
- ISH : this suffix can be attached to adjectives with a meaning of “nearly, more or less”. “Ish Watch” is a brand name, which means that “ish” which is a suffix has undergone a process which is known as “de-grammalization”. Ish it’s normally a bound morph, but in the brand name it has become an independent word which can stand on its own. The fact that foreign affixes exist means that they have been borrowed and they attach to native roots and native basis and this process gives rise to hybrid derivatives whereby the affix is foreign but the root is native and so on. Unlike - ish, some of the native suffixes which still exist in PDE whether they are productive or unproductive, have gone through a process known as grammaticalization which is the opposite of a process through which - ish has gone. Some of the suffixes which exist in the present English used to be independent lexemes in Old English. Nowadays they are preserved as suffixes and a process by means of which an independent lexeme has turned into a grammatical word or a bound word is known in linguistic as grammaticalization (historical process which takes sometimes an amount of time in order to take place and develop). ZERO- DERIVATION While compounding is a word-formation process which more or less occurs in many European languages, zero derivation is a word formation process which can be classified and identify as one of the distinguishing features of English as a Germanic language (maybe zero derivation also distinguishes English from all Germanic languages, particularly because of its word formation process which is highly productive). We come across new lexemes coined by means of zero derivation on a daily basis but we are not so aware of the fact that the lexemes are the result of this process. We have to underline that it is also used in a wide range of context. (ex: work as nouns and as verb). Image of the comic→ when Calvin talks about verbing as a process by means of which people can “weird language”, he’s basically referring to a process which is used to turn nouns or adjectives into verbs and this is a process which represents a sub-category of a larger process known as zero- derivation or conversion or functional shift. Verbing meaning “whether you turn a noun/adjective into verb” means one of the subtypes into which zero derivation comes in English. These 3 are the names by means of which word formation process is referenced in different linguistics manuals→ what distinguishes zero derivation from conversion and functional shift is simply the theoretical framework on which each label relies, in the sense that all of them reference to the same process. Zero derivation is THE distinguishing word formation process of English as a Germanic language→ it symbols English out of all the other Germanic languages. This results in the fact that several lexemes that we use every day belong to more than one part of speech (love is noun and a verb, clean in an adjective and a verb). From a synchronic perspective, what we can say is that clean belongs to 2 different word categories so it basically shares the properties of both categories. Actually, these are all examples of how zero derivation works in English. Examples: ❖ Let’s beauty together→ beauty is transformed into a verb; ❖ Tylenol→ name of a drug. “how we family ”→ family is used as a verb (how we care about family) ❖ Great minds like a think → think is a noun and a verb in English (a verb has been turned into a noun) ZERO DERIVATION : The process by means of which actually an existing lexeme is assigned to a new grammatical category without changing anything in internal structure in morphology. What distinguishes zero derivation from the other labels is the fact that zero derivation is conceived
in terms of word formation process- a derivative process by means of a zero morph. Whenever we use and we adopt the label zero derivation (in Italian “derivazione a morfo zero”), we are talking about a process which is brought about by means of a zero morph (the zero morph has the same function as derivational affixes have in suffixation and prefixation). If we adopt the label “ conversion ” or “ functional shift ”, and if we stick to a theoretical framework, whereby new lexemes are formed by assigning an existing lexeme to a new class/syntactic category/part of speech without changing its form in any way. These labels, though they reference to the same process, differ from each other in sense of the theoretical framework they rely on. In English, several lexemes can be coined by means of 0 derivation: we can turn nouns into verbs (example: movie) or brand names into verbs… it can also affect minor word classes like conjunctions and also nouns in the plural forms. A suffix like - ism can be used as a noun especially in the plural form→ isms. The last 2 examples (conjunctions) are very interesting because the original lexeme is not a lexical word but it’s a grammatical word. Ifs and buts: particular sub-category because the original lexemes are conjunctions (which are not content words, but function words); we are used to think about this process as it creates new lexemes out of existing ones, whereby the original lexeme is a word or a lexeme which is a content word. Ifs and buts→ the original lexeme are not a content word but a function word. How can we postulate the existence of zero morph and zero derivation of word formation process? It depends on the notion of zero morph itself. We can easily realize how zero derivation works by simply comparing new lexemes created by means of zero derivation to other lexemes which have the same derivative relationship which is expressed by an overt morph →as a concrete phonetic and orthographical realization. If we adopt the label “ zero derivation ” that means that we adhere to a framework whereby zero derivation is the same as derivation by means of prefixes and suffixes, but the difference is that the morpheme which is responsible for the derivative process, is realized by a zero morph→ zero derivation is the same as other process (as suffixation and prefixation), but the lexical morpheme which is responsible for the derivative process has no phonetic or orthographical realization. For conversion and functional shift , if we adopt this label we are adhering to a theoretical framework whereby this process is not a proper word formation process because it doesn’t involve any addition of derivational affixes, it simply has to do with assigning a lexeme which is already part of the lexical inventory of the language to a new grammatical category (clean is an adjective, but it is also a verb). If we adopt this label, we are simply saying that a lexeme can belong to different grammatical categories and share the properties of more than one category at a time (nouns, adjectives, adverbs). Zero-derivation process works in the same way as prefixation and suffixation does→ we can understand it if we compare the same process where the same derivative relationship is expressed by an overt morph. Examples: table with derivation (instant examples of derivation) and zero- derivation. There are 3 different groups of derivative processes. Zero derivation works in the same way as prefixation and suffixation does, the only difference is that the derivative morpheme is realised by means of the zero morph. SLIDE: Derivation (i) → the verb legalize has been derived from the adjective legal by simply adding the suffix - ize. Legal references to a quality, to legalize means “to make something legal”. The passage from adjective to verb with the meaning of legal-to make something legal is realized by means of the bound morph - ize which realizes the lexical morpheme of the action related to the adjective. This is a derivative process→ - ize exemplifies the passage from an adjective to the verb.
However, there are linguists who have criticized this approach and in order to support their claim, they gave examples:
- to butter from the noun butter (which means “to smear or spread with butter”) if we stick to the semantic clue, “butter” only means to smear or spread something with butter. If we say “to butter toast with marmalade” in this sentence to butter doesn’t include any butter! Another example is represented by the verb “to garage” from the noun garage. To garage means to park a vehicle in the garage. When we use the word garage, we are talking about a word which is usually a building connected to a house. “To garage the car in the shed” (a shed is a very small building usually made of wood in which you store things, not thought to keep a car). In this sentence the word has nothing to do with the original noun from which it has been converted, so we can easily say that the verb to garage doesn’t derive from the noun. MORPHOLOGICAL CLUE: according to this clue, converted forms will always stay the regular productive inflection of the category they belong to (if the original lexeme is a noun and the converted lexeme is a verb, the verb converted will take the regular productive inflection of regular verbs in English, which is - ed). Some examples: highlight; highstick → each of them is a noun and a verb but the problem is “the noun derives from the verb or the contrary?”. This is a question we will try to explain: as the morphological clue says, the converted form will always stay the regular productive inflection of the category→ if the original lexeme is a noun, then the converted form takes on the inflection of the regular forms of verbs in English. Highlight and highstick in their past forms show regularity (ed)→ this means the original lexeme is a noun and the converted form is the verb. Two examples advanced by those linguists who say the morphological clue doesn’t work:
- Ring (transitive) “to provide something with a circle”→ “ring-ringed-ringed”: in that case it is the verb which has been converted from the noun, because the verb has a regular form.
- Ring (intransitive) “to call”→ “ring rang rung”: the verb has not been converted from the noun but it is an original verb. It is not linked to the noun “ring” meaning “a circle”. The fact that the form of the verb is the same as the transitive form is the result of the loss of the inflection that occurred in English during the middle English period. It has nothing to do with zero derivation but it is an original verb (not a verb which has been converted from the noun ring meaning a circle or a piece of jewellery). MINOR EXAMPLES OF ZERO DERIVATION WORD STRESS → We’ve got a large set of converted forms whereby zero derivation is realized in the converted form by a shift in the word stress. For example: whenever we turn a phrasal verb into a noun, also the converted noun has a word stress pattern different from the original lexeme. Examples: Tàke òver → the converted noun takes only one stress on the very first vowel: “tàkeover". To màke ùp→ màkeup. If the verbs have 2 syllables→ the stress is always on the second syllable. Con/dùct is the verb, cònduct is the noun. COMMONIZATION → process whereby an original proper noun (real/fictional person/place) is converted into a common word (noun, verb, adjective). The largest category is represented by an original lexeme which is turned into a converted noun. Ex: Cashmere (it was a place), china (type of tools), sandwich, odyssey, Braille, bourbon. SECONDARY SHIFT → Converted lexeme which belong to the same category of the original lexeme but the meaning is different. An original lexeme which belongs to a sub-class is converted into
another lexeme within the same word class. One example of derivation is when mass nouns are turned into count nouns: for example “the American press” can also be used as a count noun means “how many press” and also the meaning is affected while press as a mass noun means an “institution”, as a count noun it means journalist. PSEUDO-TRANSITIVE VERBS →Another example of zero derivation occurs whenever a transitive verb is turned into an intransitive verb with a passive meaning. One example is the verb to sell:
- She sells second-hand cars (transitive)
- This book sells well (intransitive)→ passive meaning; people buy this book very regularly.
- The novel has sold a million copies→ passive meaning.
SHORTENING (it includes back-formation, clipping and blending)
It is a word formation process but indeed unlike zero derivation, it’s a label which includes different word-formation processes. Shortening is a more general and wider term which stands for different processes: back-formation, clipping and blending.
- BACK-FORMATION: a process which gives birth to new lexemes by mistake.
- CLIPPING: a process whereby new lexemes are coined out of existing ones by economizing.
- BLENDING: it consists in 2 processes: clipping and compounding together. All these processes can be included under the label of shortening because the new lexeme coined by means of each of these processes is, in terms of its internal structure, shorter than the original lexeme (the process behind each phenomenon distinguishes the process). BACK-FORMATION (in Italian it’s: retro-formazione) Some examples: 3 groups of words in which the final lexeme is shorter than the original one.
- New lexemes created by back-formation out of original lexemes all ending with or/er/ar, for example: editor >to edit, writer > to write, babysitter >babysit, burglar>burgle.
- New lexemes created by back-formation out of original lexemes ending in “on”, for example: transcription>transcript, television> to televise, orientation > to orientate.
- New lexemes created by back-formation out of original lexemes ending in “y” as greedy> greed, foggy >fog… How does it work and how do we know it has been created out of the first word and not the other way around? Because back-formation is a process which is the result of another process known as MISPARSING→ literally, it consists of parsing , which means analysing and “mis”, which stands for something incorrect. So misparsing means literally “incorrectly placing word boundaries in a contiguous sequence of letters”. This is an example: “fatalbert”, actually, if we pass it, it consist in “fat” and “albert” so the word boundary is between fat and albert which is a noun and not “fatal” and “bert” because that doesn’t make sense, even though fatal is a word, bert is not. Misparsing is a learning process which is very popular among language learners and children (native). It is also very common in the Twitter environment (hashtag). “Misparsing” is the phenomenon, while “misparses” are the new lexemes created by the process. There’s how it works→A speaker encounters word containing sound sequence that sounds and looks like a derivational suffix in that language; the sound sequence is a presumed derivational suffix (the original lexeme is part of the root of the original lexeme, it’s not a derivational suffix in the original lexeme). What does the language learner
GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES IN ENGLISH
English grammatical categories: Introduction and Gender. Pulcini, chapter 3, inflectional morphology For example, Pulcini discusses noun inflexions (number, case, tense, person…), so only nominal grammatical categories and some verb but not all of them. Gender is not among the nominal categories that Pulcini discusses (but it’s important). Gender is among the distinguishing feature of English inflectional morphology, when we compare English to a variety of other languages, in particular when we compare it with Italian. Grammatical morphemes express grammatical notions such as number, tense, gender, case and so on. In this section we will look more in detail at the different grammatical categories in English, the terms of each category (the distinction which are made with each one), and also the means of expression by which these grammatical categories are expressed. Our discussion includes both the nominal categories of English (number, gender , person, case , degree, definiteness) but also the verbal categories of English (tense, aspect, mood , voice). Regarding the means by which these grammatical categories are expressed in English we will see how some of them are mainly expressed in English by means of inflection (that is word forms of a given lexeme) while others are mainly expressed by means of periphrasis (that is periphrastically, whereby a function word is normally used along with content word as for example In the “will” future in English). I will do: the notion of future time is represented by will, and we also find out that some grammatical categories are represented by hybrid form, in the sense that some grammatical categories are expressed both by means of inflection as well as by means of periphrasis. Also, we’ll discuss how systematic and regular, we will see how a specific grammatical category is systematically and regularly by means of inflection or whether it is expressed by means of periphrasis. Also, we’ll see when a specific means of expression, be it inflection or periphrasis, is not regular and systematic but idiosyncratic and lexical (it only applies to specific groups of words or individual words) the examples are provided including the notion of “dual” in English: this is because there may be some languages which have the distinction or the concept of “two” when talking about people , the 2 of us, the 2 of you. We it can be we inclusive (you and me) but also you can be exclusive (you as one person or you as a group). The old English had specific forms of the personal pronoun we and you that particularly meant “the two of us” or “the two of you” but these words have now been lost, so that now in present English the notion dual is expressed lexically only with the words both or two and not grammatically by an inflection. The two of us→ we both. GENDER Languages assign gender distinction to nouns according to different system; these 2 systems are known as the grammatical gender and the natural gender. What distinguishes the 2 is the fact that grammatical gender (nouns) is arbitrary and very often does not reflect the sex of the object or the entity in the real world (English doesn’t have the grammatical gender but Italian do). Ex: people, a person might be feminine or masculine, but the gender that the word which references to that person in language is different. A person may be feminine but the word that the language use to reference that person is masculine. Grammatical gender is of course the gender system that we find in languages such as present-day German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian. German has 3 gender (m, f, neutral).
English has the other system of gender assignment, known as natural gender. Unlike in the grammatical one, here the gender depends upon the sex that the object or the entity reference by the noun has in the real world. If an object in the real world is sexless, in English it has a neutral gender , whether it is feminine also in the language, it gets the feminine language. English is such a language whereby words are assigned natural gender (the same they have in the real world). Gender in English falls into 4 different categories: masculine gender , feminine gender , common gender (m or f) and neuter (sexless) gender. “Persona” “spia”→ in Italian it’s feminine, but in the real world it can actually be reference either to a female or a male person. In English it would be common gender. Can it be a common gender also in Italian? In Italian we only got f and m gender, even if feminine word can refer to men (astronauta, insegnante). In English, unlike Italian, we have got 4 different subcategories. English and many words in English are preceded or followed by “lady” or “man” just to turn common gender to the feminine of the masculine. Also, in Italian it’s been a proposal to turn nouns which can be common gender into the feminine. There are different means of expression used to realize gender: the most common way, which is the largest group, is represented by words whereby gender is expressed by different forms from different genders (nouns in particular) whereby the feminine is expressed by a word which has nothing to do with a very word useful. Another means of expression to express gender is by means of suffixation, this only applies to limited group of words for example nouns which can be turned into the feminine by adding a suffix. Another means of expression is by means of compounding (only to specific categories of nouns). Another means is by inflection unlike the previous one, inflection only applies to pronouns- that means that gender is a category which basically affects nouns but also pronouns. Nouns may turn into a different gender by means of separate word forms which is the largest category. Most actually nouns fall into this category. This means of expression is also known as a covert category, in the sense that if you compare this to instances of nouns in English whereby gender is expressed by suffixation or compounding inflection, gender is covered and not as in suffixation or compounding. For example: we can have separate forms for masculine, feminine and common gender: boy, girl, child. Child can be either masculine of feminine. Another example: rooster/hen/chicken. By suffixation: Feminine suffixes < masculine nouns:
- ess: goddess < god; actress < actor Common gender suffixes < nouns/verbs/adjectives
- ian/-ist: librarian < library; artist < art
- er: baker < bake (the exception is represented by waiter > waitress. The feminine which comes from the masculine).
- ard: drunkard < drunk By compounding (which is a covert category): Feminine < common gender:
- Woman: woman doctor
