Morphological structure of the word

Seminar 2

Discontinuous morphemes (прерывные).

Сontinuous (linear) morphemes (непрерывные)

The continuous morpheme is an uninterrupted string of phonemes building up a morpheme.

The discontinuous morpheme is a grammatical unit built up of an interrupted string of phonemes. It is seen in the analytical grammatical form comprising an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix.

Example:

be... ing — for the continuous verb forms (e.g. is going);

have... en — for the perfect verb forms (e.g. has gone);

be... en — for the passive verb forms (e.g. is taken)

To sum up:

The morpheme is a recurrent meaningful from which cannot be further analyzed into smaller recurrent meaningful forms. It is syntactically or positionally bound and cannot take any arbitrary position. It never expresses both a lexical and a grammatical meaning. Lexical morphemes have consistent meaning beyond whatever grammatical information they also carry. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand, function only to express grammatical meaning. Grammatical meaning is recurrent and systemic, it is general and abstract, while lexical meaning is free and independent, concrete and material.

1) Be ready to define the following terms:

morphology, morpheme, zero morphemes, marginal morphemes, central morphemes, root morphemes/roots, lexical morphemes, grammatical morphemes, affixal morphemes/ (affixes), prefixes, suffixes, inflexions/grammatical suffix, distribution, textual environments, morphs, contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution, complementary distribution, allomorphs, free morphemes, bound morphemes, semi-bound morphemes, overt morphemes, covert morphemes, segmental morphemes, supra-segmental morphemes, additive morphemes, replacive morphemes, сontinuous/linear morphemes, discontinuous morphemes.

2) Be ready to discuss the following questions:

1) Notion of the morpheme.

2) The principles of the traditional study of the morphemic composition of the word.

3) The terms ‘suffix’ and ‘inflection.

4) Notion of the morph.

5) The difference between a morpheme and an allomorph.

6) Distributional analysis in studying morphemes. Types of distribution.

7) Distributional morpheme types.

3) Practical assignments:

3.1. Do the morphemic analysis of the words on the lines of the traditional and distributional classifications.

MODEL: ‘inseparable’

The traditional classification:

the word ‘inseparable’ is a three-morpheme word consisting of the root ‘-separ-‘, the prefix ‘in-‘ and the lexical suffix ‘-able’.

The distributional analysis:

the root ‘-separ-‘ is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme; the prefix ‘in-‘ is bound, overt, continuous, additive; the suffix ‘-able’ is bound, overt, continuous, additive.

a) unmistakably, children's (books), disfigured, underspecified, surroundings, presume, kingdom, brotherhood, plentiful, imperishable, unprecedented, oxen, embodiment, outlandish;

b) hammer, students' (papers), sing – sang – singing – singer, really, proficient – deficient – efficient, gooseberry;

c) quiet, bell, unbelievably, glassy, uncommunicative, inexplicable;

d) inconceivable, southernism, semidarkness, adventuresses, unfathomable, insufficiency, to prejudge.

3.2. Define the type of the morphemic distribution according to which the given words are grouped.

MODEL: insensible – incapable

The morphs ‘-ible’ and ‘-able’ are in complementary distribution, as they have the same meaning but are different in their form which is explained by their different environments.

a) impeccable, indelicate, illiterate, irrelevant;

b) undisputable, indisputable;

c) published, rimmed;

d) seams, seamless, seamy.

3.3. Group the words according to a particular type of morphemic distribution.

MODEL: worked – bells – tells – fells – telling – spells – spelled – spelt –felled – bell.

spells – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-s’ and ‘-ed’ are in contrastive distribution (= fells – felled);

bell – bells: the allomorph ‘-s’ and the zero allomorph are in contrastive distribution;

spelt – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-t’ and ‘-ed’ are in non-contrastive distribution;

worked – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-ed’ [t] and ‘-ed’ [d] are in complementary distribution, etc.

a) burning – burns – burned – burnt;

b) dig – digs – digging – digged – dug – digger;

c) light – lit – lighted – lighting – lighter;

d) worked – working – worker – workable – workoholic.

3.4. Group the words according to a particular type of morphemic distribution:

1. mice, leapt, appendices, kittens, cats, witches, leaping, children, leaped, leaps, formulae, stimuli, matrices, sanatoria;

2. geese, dogs, chickens, deer, mats, bade, bid, phenomena, formulae, formulas, genii, geniuses, scissors;

3. genera, brethren, brothers, trout, gestures, blessed, blest, tins, pots, matches, antennae, antennas;

4. anthems, classes, lice, handkerchiefs, handkerchieves, bereft, bereaved, grouse, cleaved, cleft, clove.

4) Analyze the following texts:

Text 1

Francis W.N. The Structure of American English. Building Blocks of Speech: Morphemics