Linguistica Inglese di base (Fonetica, Fonologia, Morfologia, Sintassi)

9nov module a: an introduction to the structure of English

English is a complex object, made up of different elements organized into a functional structure.

Main blocks of English

• Phonology
• Morphology
• Lexis
• Grammar

Morphology

Morphology: (morph = shape) - How words are formed and internally structured.

Can we break up a word into smaller units?

Morphemes: the smallest meaningful unit that cannot be further divided. For example:

• v. to attend: → n. attendance – attendee – attendant
• v. to rely: → adj. reliable – reliant – unreliable

Core morpheme/stem: morpheme that contributes to the meaning in a substantial way (e.g., “copyright” = compound, 2 stems)

Free morpheme: can stand on its own

Bound morpheme: no lexical meaning on its own, must be attached to others. For example:

• "swims" → "-s" has a grammatical function → inflectional morphology (the way words change grammatically)
• "swimmer" → "-er" has no grammatical function, it forms a new word → derivational morph

Inflectional processes

• Zero morph: e.g., A sheep – Two sheep; Don't hurt her feelings – I hurt myself (plural, past tense → no change)
• Internal change: e.g., mouse – mice, foot – feet, sing – sang – sung
• Allomorphs: same grammatical function, different physical realization: cats → [s], dogs → [z], churches → [iz]

There are also lexical allomorphs, e.g., variants of the -er suffix for animate nouns: teacher, employee, informant, atheist.

Derivational processes

• Semantic change: e.g., to place/displace, skirt/miniskirt, yellow/yellowish
• Change of word class: e.g., dark → darken, teach → teacher, happy → happiness

16nov: inflectional morphology

The study of the way in which words inflect, curve, modulate, of the grammatical function of bound morphemes. Generally, verbs inflect for mood, tense, person, and number, while nouns and adjectives inflect for number and gender. English is inflected through the addition of a limited number of bound morphemes to indicate grammatical information regarding plurality, third person singular, past, and present tense.

Bound morphemes for inflection

• The morpheme s is used to indicate:
  • The plurality of nouns
  • The possessive of nouns (the girl's jumper)
  • The third person singular of present tense verbs
• The morpheme ed is used to indicate:
  • The past tense of regular verbs (walk → walked)
  • The past participle of regular verbs (talk+ed → I have talked)
• The morpheme ing is used to indicate:
  • The present participle of verbs (go+ing → I am going)
• The morpheme er is used to indicate:
  • The comparison of monosyllabic adjectives/adverbs (fast+er = I am faster than you)
• The morpheme est is used to indicate:
  • The superlative of monosyllabic adjectives/adverbs (fast+est = She is the fastest)

Morph, allomorph, morpheme

A morph is the phonological and/or orthographical variant of the morpheme. Morpheme: abstract concept → Morph: concrete element, realization. Allomorphs: A morpheme can have one or more morphs; morphs that belong to the same morpheme are allomorphs: they have the same meaning but occur in different environments.

How are new words formed in English?

1. Internal method: by means of words that are already part of the language (derivational processes)
2. External method: by means of words that are borrowed from other languages
3. Mixed method: a mixture of both

Internal method

1. Affixation
2. Compounding
3. Conversion
4. Abbreviation
5. Eponymy
6. Hypocorism
7. Blending

1. Affixation

Affix: v. to attach one thing to another. Derivational affixes combine with base forms to create new words. For example:

Dis – illusion – ment (prefix – base – suffix)

Prefixes are placed before a base and change its meaning without changing its class (class preserving). For example:

• Reliable > Unreliable
• Zip > Unzip
• Function > Malfunction
• Understand > Misunderstand

‘In’ → The prefix ‘in-’ has several allomorphs depending on the phonological properties of the base it precedes:

• Formal > informal
• Possible > impossible
• Legal > illegal
• Rational > irrational

Suffixes are placed after a base and usually change its word class (class changing). For example:

• v. Retire > n. retirement
• v. Apply > n. appliance
• adj. Verbal > adv. verbally

Nominal suffixes

Nominal suffixes are attached to verbs, adjectives, and nouns and they turn them into abstract nouns or person nouns.

• Adj + Suffix = Noun → -ness, -ity, -ery, -ship
• Verb + Suffix = Noun → -ment, -ion, -ing*, -ant, -er, -or, -ist

*Certain bound suffixes are “disguised” as inflectional morphemes but are in fact derivational. For example:

• She has been doing yoga for some years → inflectional: progressive form
• Doing yoga is good for your mind, body, and soul → derivational: from verb to a nominal form

We can only decide whether they are inflectional or derivational by looking at the context.

Noun + Suffix = Noun (no change of class involved) → -aire, -er, -hood, -ism, -ist, -ery

Verbal suffixes

Verbal suffixes are added to adjectives and nouns to form verbs: -ate, -ise, -en, -ify

Adjectival suffixes

Adjectival suffixes turn nouns, verbs, and adjectives into new adjectives

• Noun + suffix = adjective → -ous, -al, -ary, -less, -ful, -ish, -ic/ical, -ly
• Verb + suffix = adjective → -ive, -able/-ible, -ing
• Adjective + suffix = adjective → -ish

14dic: 2. Compounding

Compounding is the union of two free morphemes. It is very productive because new combinations are always possible. For example:

• Turncoat (voltagabbana)
• Blackbird (merlo)

- Endocentric: when the whole compound is grammatically and semantically equivalent to at least one of its parts. For example: Blackbird is a kind of bird; Garden-party is a kind of party.

- Exocentric: when the whole compound is not grammatically or semantically equivalent to at least one of its parts. For example: Redneck is not a type of neck but a white person who has a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude.

Compounds can be written as:

• Two separate words: full moon
• One word: toothpaste, bedroom
• A hyphenated word: check-in, densely-populated

Rhyming compounds

• Reduplication: bye-bye; fifty-fifty; so-so
• Two different but rhyming words: lovey-dovey; walkie-talkie
• One lexical word + a made-up word that rhymes with the first one: wishy-washy, super-duper
• Two made-up words: higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter
• Two elements that almost match with different vowels: pitter-patter, zigzag, tick-tock, riffraff

Compounds can be classified according to a word class. This means that one of the words is syntactically dominant (head, normally on the right side). The other element (free morpheme) is the modifier. For example:

• week-end → week = modifier; end = head.

The syntactic properties of the head are passed onto the entire compound. If the head is a noun, the compound will be a noun.

• easy (adj.) + chair (n.) = easychair (n.)

3. Conversion

Words that change their word class without the addition of a suffix. For example:

• To swim – a swim
• A bottle – to bottle
• Up → prep > verb: Up your game!
• Man → noun > verb: You need to man up and go get what you want.
• Has been → verb > noun: Most Hollywood has-beens are often seen on late-night TV.

4. Abbreviation

• Initialisms: BBC; VIP; HTML → Items are spoken as individual letters.
• Acronyms: LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation); NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) → Initials form a new word.
• Clippings: AD for advertisement; EXAM for examination; FRIDGE for refrigerator → a part of a word is deleted thus shortened.

[ fore-clipping: (aero)plane, (tele)phone backclipping: mobile (phone), disco(theque), lab(oratory) middle-clipping: (in)flu(enza) ]

5. Eponymy

Proper nouns that have become common nouns. For example: kleenex, hoover, braille, diesel.

6. Hypocorism

Hypocorism is used to refer to words formed by suffixing a vowel, usually to a monosyllabic root or by suffixing –y or –ie after clipping a word.

• Common nouns: television → telly, Polytechnic → poly
• To create familiar forms of names: John → Johnnie, Elizabeth → Lizzie

7. Blend

(Smog = smoke + fog) → Two words blended into one word.

External method: borrowings

• Prestige: add prestige to the receiving language (e.g., “question”: I questioned the wisdom of taking so many pills)
• Necessity: lexical and semantic gap in the receiving language (e.g., pizza from Italian, robot from Czech)

More than 300 languages and cultures have had an influence on English over the centuries:

• Romans → (wine (vinum), wall (vallum), -chester (castra), etc)
• Vikings → (they, egg, kid, skin, etc)
• Normans → (authority, chancellor, prison, sugar, wardrobe, medicine, etc)

Foreign borrowings

• Latin → after the arrival of Christianity (bishop, church, priest)
• Scandinavian → Viking invasion (8^th century) (egg, sky, window)
• French → Norman Conquest (11^th century) (warden, reward, mansion)
• Latin → End of Renaissance (16^th century)

Examples:

• LATIN: cheese, gospel, interrogate...
• FRENCH: question, guard, rouge
• ITALIAN: violin, opera, mafia, spaghetti
• SPANISH: cannibal, guitar, hammock
• GERMAN: hamburger, blitz, waltz

The adaptation process

When loanwords are adopted, they normally adapt to the rules of the given linguistic system: Phonology, Orthography, Morphosyntax, Semantics.

Phonological adaptations

• Words remain more or less the same as in the original language.
• Change forced by the phonotactic rules of the English language. For example: forte (I'm afraid cooking isn't one of my fortes)
• Change in analogy to the phonology of other already existing words in English. For example: “matildite” pronounced as /ait/ rather than /ite/ because already existing words ending in –ite. (quite)

Orthographic adaptations

• English orthographic influence from French fantasmagorie > Eng. Phantasmagoria
• From Italian salame > Eng. Salami [ /səˈlɑːmi/ ]

Morphological adaptations

• FR. realiser > to realise (derivational suffix)
• FR. civiltite > civility (derivational suffix)
• IT. Ballerina/e > ballerina/s (inflectional suffix)

Semantic adaptations

• Borrowings can become semantically adapted by acquiring a restricted meaning: affettuoso, in English used only in the context of music.
• A different meaning: pepperoni refers to a type of sausage (+orthographic adaptation)

Mixed method

Semantic loan: when to an existing word is added a new shade of meaning that derives from a foreign word. For example:

• Dream1. Joy 2. (from the Scandinavian languages) a series of events or images that happen in your mind when sleeping.

Calque (loan translation): A foreign word which is literally translated into another language:

• FR: par coeur > ENG. by heart
• ENG: skyscraper > IT: grattacielo
• ENG: honeymoon > IT. luna di miele

15dic: what is a word?

The term “word” is used in three main senses: word-form, lexeme, grammatical word.

A word-form is the physical form that represents a word in speech or writing. For example:

• “boy” → in written language (orthographic forms): boys (plural) boy's, boys', etc.
• In oral language (phonological forms): /bɔɪ/ /bɔɪz/

The term lexeme or “lexical item” is used when by word we mean “vocabulary item”: an item requiring a single vocabulary entry. For example:

• Lexeme “speak” → word-forms: speak, speaks, spoke, spoken, speaking.

Lexemes can be verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs as well. In some cases, the same word-form may be related to different meanings, so it represents two or more lexemes. For example:

• I was looking at the book when she booked the ticket.

Words viewed as syntactic units are called grammatical words. In this case, we consider a lexeme together with its morphological and syntactic properties:

• Speaking is the progressive form of the verb “speak”

She played the flute → She has played the flute. Although we have the same sense of the same lexeme realized by the same word-form, we know that it has two different grammatical functions: an action happened in the past, an action recently completed.

This can apply to nouns too:

• The wolf killed a sheep and a deer → The wolf killed two sheep and two deer.

Word classes

Each word belongs to a specific word class (verb, noun, adj, etc.). When the same appears in more than one class, we consider the various occurrences as separate lexemes. For example:

• Smoke, to smoke.

There are 11 word classes, 4 of which are content words, 7 are function words.

Content words are Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, and Adverbs. They have independent meanings and may be meaningful even if isolated. Content words have a very large number of members and they are open classes.

Function words are non-content words that don't suggest any identifiable meaning. They signal grammatical functions and structures, they contain relatively few members and are closed classes. There are 7 function word classes:

• Determiners → the, my, this, that, a/an, etc.
• Pronouns → I, me, they, anyone, all, some, who, which, etc.
• Prepositions → of, in to, for, with, etc.
• Conjunctions → as, if, when, then, while, although, and, but, etc.
• Auxiliaries → they precede the main verb: can, will, may, might, shall, be, have, do, etc.
• Numerals → one, two, first, second, etc.
• Discourse markers → Right, OK, etc.

It is generally impossible to tell the word classes without looking at the whole sentence:

• The hat is on the sofa (prep.) → He had a hat on (adverb)

Semantics