Реферат: Lexicology. Word structure in Modern English

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

<span Times New Roman"">                             I.<span Times New Roman"">     

Themorphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

<span Times New Roman"">                          II.<span Times New Roman"">     

Structuraltypes of words.

<span Times New Roman"">                      III.<span Times New Roman"">     

Principlesof morphemic analysis.

<span Times New Roman"">                      IV.<span Times New Roman"">     

Derivationallevel of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.<span Times New Roman",«serif»;mso-fareast-font-family: «Times New Roman»;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:RU;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">

I.<span Times New Roman"">                 

Themorphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word-structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivationalor word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the languagesystem, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic planeof linguistic analysis.

It has been universallyacknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up ofmorphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as thesmallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derivedfrom Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme hasbeen adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctivefeature.

The morpheme is the smallestmeaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit ofspeech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, notindependently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursoryexamination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they arecomposed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixationalmorphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived wordsor derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known asaffixation (or derivation).

The root-morphemeis the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general andabstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related wordsconstituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching.Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaningproper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found inroots.

Affixational morphemesinclude inflectional affixes or inflections andderivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and arethus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixesare relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically alwaysdependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaningas found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have thepart-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of theword as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due tothis component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified intoaffixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives oradverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes aregenerally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly feltas, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill,etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, areunderstood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are feltas morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and boundmorphemes.

Freemorphemescoincide with word-forms of independentlyfunctioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only amongroots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme;in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-;the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows thatbound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word-forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -erare bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor-in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror,horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian areall bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted thatmorphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the phonemic shapes ofthe word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other.All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation arecalled allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greekallos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a groupwhose members together consistute a structural unit of the language(allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ationare the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaningor function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the finalphoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and thesame morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorphis defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in aspecific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variantscannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterizedby contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environmentthey signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, forinstance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –ablemean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur amongprefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which theywill assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stemexisting under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded asallomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II.<span Times New Roman"">              

Structuraltypes of words.

Themorphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims atsplitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at thislevel of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types(root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the mainstructural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation andcomposition the most productive ways of word building.

Accordingto the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic.Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g.small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into twosubgroups:  derived words and compoundwords – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived wordsare composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable,outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which containat least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes beinginsignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compoundsas in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade,eye-ball, etc.

Thesestructural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correctunderstanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of:1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequencyvalue in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor.According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, wefind that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words inthe existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the totalnumber, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% andadjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more thanthe number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But wecannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English,according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number ofnouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words.Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38%and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nounsand 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute thefoundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramountimportance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words arecharacterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety ofmeanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structuresare much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types ofderived and compound words.

III.<span Times New Roman"">          

Principles of morphemicanalysis.

In mostcases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individualmorphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words isgenerally carried out according to the method of Immediate and UltimateConstituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stageof the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. Ateach stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents.Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken intosmaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive atconstituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referredto Ultimate Constituents.

Asynchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by theprocedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the twomeaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

Themethod is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphologicaldivisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as webreak the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of thegiven word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristicof the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all theconstituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+{ [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breakinga word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structuralorder of the constituents.

A diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1.<span Times New Roman"">    

un- / gentlemanly

2.<span Times New Roman"">   

un- / gentleman / — ly

3.<span Times New Roman"">   

un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.<span Times New Roman"">   

un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only themorphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which itis built.

The analysis of word-structure atthe morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. Forexample, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-]recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and[-nıs] found in a countless number of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC[-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken intoany smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any furtherdivision of –ness would give individual speech-sounds whichdenote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into theICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the methodof Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: theso-called root-principle and affix principle.

Accordingto the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemesis based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. theidentification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation ofwords singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach-, sing-, drive-.

Accordingto the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on theidentification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example theidentification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement,disagree.

As arule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemicsegmentation of words.

However,the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, asit is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above.Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but therecognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful whichnaturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain,contain or  receive, deceive,conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to besingled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing incommon with the phonetically identical prefixes re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize,de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or[dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical orfunctional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having acertain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detainand [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It followsthat all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributionalmeaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-,de-, con-, per- and makes one understand -tain and –ceive asroots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficientground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexicalmeaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes andare known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes ofthe same kind  are also encountered inwords like rusty-fusty.

IV.<span Times New Roman"">          

Derivational level ofanalysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

Themorphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determiningtheir types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of themorphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, thelatter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes arearranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various typesof words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morphemearrangement underlies the classification of words into different types andenables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relationswithin the word and the interrelations between different types and classes ofwords are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

Theanalysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation betweendifferent types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unitat the derivational level is the stem.

Thestem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchangedthroughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer (), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of theword that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one oranother part of speech.

The structure of stems should bedescribed in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishingthe patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and thederivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems:simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute apattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simplestems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the rootmorpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with theresult of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevantat the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. Itfollows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevantto the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements ofdouble opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain,receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non-motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though whichthey are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between theirIC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic inwhich case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, theother IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarilypolymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselvesstems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is builtby joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result ofthe analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of wordsare classified according to the structure of theirstems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words arethose composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivationalmorpheme.Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivationalmorphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process ofcomposition and derivational.

Compound wordsproper are formed by joining together stems ofword already available in the language.

еще рефераты
Еще работы по литературе, лингвистике. иностранным языкам