Riassunto esame Lingua Inglese 2, docente Mochi, libro consigliato Word Formation in English I, Plag

Riassunto esame Lingua Inglese 2, docente Mochi, libro consigliato Word Formation in English, I. Plag

(tutti i capitoli)

1 - BASIC CONCEPT

1.1 What is a word?

You might first think of the word as a unit in the writing system, the orthographic word. You can say that a

word is an uninterrupted string of letters, which is preceded by a blank space and followed either by a

blank space or by a punctuation mark.

We have two problems:

The first one is the orthography is often variable. Es: “girlfriend” is also “girl-friend” and “girl friend”.

The second problem is that may not coincide with our intuitions. A compound word “girlfriend” is

considerate as one word, but it should be spelled without a blank space separating the elements that

together make up the compound.

Every word can have only one main stress as indicated by the acute accents (‘). The main stressed syllable,

which is the most prominent one in a word. Stressed syllables being pronounced louder, with higher pitch,

or with longer duration. Longer words often have additional stresses, so-called secondary stresses.

There are some cases in which word integrity is violated: the plural of son-in-law is sons-in-low.

The semantic definition of “word”: a word may always express a unified concept, not every unified concept

is expressed by one word.

Proprieties of words:

- Words are entities having a part of speech specification,

- Words are syntactic atoms,

- Words (usually) have one main stress,

- Words (usually) are indivisible units.

1.2 Studying word-formation

a. Employee b. Apartment building c. Chair

Inventor Greenhouse Neighbour

Inability Team manager Matter

Meaningless Truck driver Brow great

Suddenness Blackboard Promise

Unhappy Son-in-law Discuss

Decolonialization Pickpocket

In columns a and b we find words that are obviously composed by putting together smaller elements to

form larger words with more complex meanings.

Decolonialization can be segmented into the smallest parts de-, colony, -al, .ize and –ation; we can

decompose complex words into their smallest meaningful units. These are called morphemes.

The words in column c cannot be decomposed into smaller meaningful units; they consist of only one

morpheme. Some morphemes can occur only of attached to some other morphemes. Such morphemes are

called bound morphemes in contrast to free morphemes.

The part of word, which an affix is attached to, is called base. We will use the term root to refer to bases

that cannot be analysed further into morphemes.

It is also possible to combine two bases, a process we already know as compounding. The word in b are

cases in point.

Concatenation is linking together bases and affixes as in a chain (catena).

There are also other non-concatenative ways to form morphologically complex words. We can turn nouns

into verbs.

a. Ron (Aron) b. Condo (condominium)

Liz (Elisabeth) Demo (demonstration)

Mike (Michael) Disco (discotheque)

Trish (Patricia) Lab (laboratory)

This type of word formation is called truncation with the team clipping also being used.

Some truncation and affixation can occur together, so-called diminutives.

c. Mandy (Amanda)

Andy (Andrew)

Charlie (Charles)

Patty (Patricia)

Robbie (Roberta)

We also find so-called blends, which are amalgamations of parts of different words, such as smog

(smoke/fog) or modem (modulator/demodulator)

Blends based on orthography are called acronyms, which are coined by combining the initial letters of

compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new word (NATO, UNESCO).

1.3 Inflection and derivation

Inflection is part of the grammar on the one hand, and derivation and compounding as part of word-

formation.

The most crucial difference is that inflectional morphemes encode grammatical categories such as plural,

person, tense or case. These categories are relevant for the building of sentences and are referred to by the

grammar.

Semantic opacity: if you consider the meaning of interview and the meaning of the ingredient morphemes

inter- and view, you can observe that the meaning of interview is not the sum of the meaning of its parts.

Derivation Inflection

- Encodes lexical meaning - Encodes grammatical categories

- Is not syntactically relevant - Is syntactically relevant

- Can occur inside derivation - Occurs outside all derivation

- Often changes the part of speech - Does not change part of speech

- Is often semantically opaque - Is rarely semantically opaque

- Is often restricted in its productivity - Is fully productive

- Is not restricted to suffixation - Always suffixation (in English)

2 - STUDYING COMPLEX WORDS

2.1 The morpheme as the minimal linguistic sign.

It is a unit of form and meaning a sign.

Morphemes have a meaning that is expressed in the physical form of sound weaves or by the black marks

on paper which call letters. The part of morpheme we have referred to as its “form” is also called morph, a

term coined on the basis of the Greek word for “form, figure”.

That sound sequence (Ʌŋ) stands for the meaning “not” is a pure conversation of English, and in a different

language (and speech community) the same string of sounds may represent another meaning or no

meaning at all.

In complex words at least one morpheme in combine with another morpheme. This creates a derived word,

a new complex sign.

The meaning of the new complex sign unhappy can be predicated from the meaning of its parts. Linguistic

expressions such as unhappy, whose meaning is a function of the meaning of its parts, are called

compositional.

Not even all complex words have compositional; the meaning of the prefix inter- can be paraphrased as

“between”, but the verb interview does not mean “view between” but something like “have a formal

conversation”. And while late means “after the due time”, the adverb lately does not have the

compositional meaning “in a late manner” but is best paraphrased as “recently”.

The firs phenomenon, which appears somewhat problematic for our notion of the morpheme, is

conversation, the process by which words are derived from other words without any visible marking. This

would force us to recognize morphemes, which have no morph; this problem can be solved by assuming

that zero-forms are also possible elements in language. In this view, the verb water is derived from the

noun water by adding to the base noun water a zero-form with the meaning “apply X”. We could speak of

the presence of a zero-morph in the case of conversation (zero-derivation for conversation).

While affixational processes usually make it easy to find the different morphemes and determine their

meaning and form, non-affixational processes do not lent themselves to a straightforward analysis in term

of morphemes.

It could be argued that fell is derived from fall by the addition of a so-called causative morpheme “make X”.

It is expressed merely by the vowel change and not by any affix , a similar kind of process. The addition of

meaning by means of vowel alternation is evidenced in English in certain cases of past-tense formation and

of plural marking on nouns.

Another problem of the morpheme is that is some expressions there is more than one form signifying a

certain meaning so-called extended exponence because the forms that represent the morpheme extend

across more than one element.

To account for cases of extended exponence we have to allow morphemes to be discontinuous. In other

words, we have to allow for the meaning of a morpheme to be realized by more than one morph, by a form

of BE and –ING.

Another oft-cited problem of the morpheme is that there are frequently parts of words that invite

morphological segmentation, but do not carry any meaning.

The evidence we have collected so far amounts to the conclusion that at least infer, confer, prefer and refer

are monomorphemic word.

2.2 Allomorphy

Such different morphs representing the same morpheme are called allomorphs and when different morphs

realize one and the same morpheme the phenomenon is known as allomorphy.

On a more abstract level, we can say that is the sound structure that conditions the distribution of the

allomorphs, so determinates which allomorph has to be used in a given linguistic context. This is called

phonological conditioning.

Allomorphy is also rather frequent in English derivation, and both based and affixed can be affected by it.

In all cases involving affixes, there is more than one base allomorph, and the appropriate allomorph is

dependent on the kind of suffix attached to it. We can thus state that there are not only obligatorily bound

morphemes, but also obligatorily bound morphs, or rather specific realizations of a morpheme that only

occur in context where the morpheme is combined with another morpheme.

a. The allomorphy of adjectival –al/-ar



Cause + al causal



Inflection + al inflectional



Distribution + al distributional



Pole + al polar



Nodule + al nodular



Cellule + al cellular

The data in (a) show some adjective derived from nouns by the suffix ation of all-ar. Both suffixes mean the

same thing and their phonetic resemblance strongly suggests that they are all omorphs of one morpheme.

We could say that our suffix surfaces as –ar after (l), and –al in all other cases. This is a case of phonological

conditioning of suffix; a dissimilation of the final sound of the suffix. The opposite process, assimilation, can

also be observed, for example with the regular English past-tense ending. Conversely, the insertion of (ə)

with words ending in (r) and (d) can be analysed as a case of dissimilation.

Where a variant (-ar) is exclusively found in one environment, whereas the other variant (-al) is exclusively

found in a different environment, is called complementary distribution.

Such predictable changes in the realization of a morpheme are called morphonological alternation.

2.3 Establishing word-formation rules

There must be some kind of system in speakers’ minds that is responsible for that, the so -called word-

formation rules.

The most obviously observation is that un- cannot attach to just any other morpheme, but only to certain

ones. In those cases where it can attach, it adds a negative meaning to the base. The straightforward

generalization to account for this pattern is that un- attaches to adjectives but not to nouns or verbs.

Furthermore, un- can only attach to words, not to bound morphemes.

We can summarize these observations and formulate a word-formation rule as in below. In order to be

applied correctly, the rule must at least contain information about the phonology, its semantics, and possible

base morphemes.

We can verify the accuracy of the rule by testing it against further data. The rule makes the interesting

prediction that all adjective can be prefixed with un-, and that no verb and no noun can take un-. If there are

words that do not behave according to the hypothesized rule, the hypothesis is falsified an d we must either

abandon our rule or refine it in such a way that it makes more accurate predictions.

While the vast majority of un- derivates behave according to our word-formation rule, there are a number

of

words that go against it.

b. Nouns

Unbelief

Unease

Untruth c. Word-formation rule for the prefix un-

Phonology /Ʌŋ/X

Semantics “not X” Unsaddle

Unplug

Base X = adjective

Verbs

Undo

Unfold

Undress

Unmask

Unearth

Semantically, the base words belief, ease and truth are all abstract nouns, but not all abstract nouns can take

un-, which suggest that the words in (b.) are perhaps individual exception to our rule. However, the meaning

of un- in all three forms can be paraphrased as “lack of” which is a clear generalization. This meaning

is slightly

different, though, from the meaning of un- which is given in (c) as “not”.

The fact that the interpretation “lack of X” occurs with nouns and the interpretation “not X” with adjectives

might however be taken as a hint that the two cases can be unified into one, with slightly different

interpretation following from the difference in the part of speech of the base.

The verb undo does not mean, “not do”, the verb unfold does not mean, “not fold”.

Un- attachment mostly creates derivatives that express a contrary contrast on a bi -dimensional scale of

“more or less”, so, a contrast between gradable adjectives and their respective opposites, as in happy –

unhappy, clear –unclear, comfortable –uncomfortable. There are two other kinds of opposites that

are usually

not expressive through un- prefixation, namely contradictories and complementaries. Contradictories

expressions exclude one another, and there is no room between. Complementarity is a semantic relation in

which one expression stands in a complementary contrast to a whole set of other, related expressions.

The only interpretation possible f or a combination of negative and adjectival meaning is that the derived

form denotes the absence of the property denoted by the adjective. With abstract nouns, a similar

inferencing procedure applies. The derivative is automatically interpreted as “lack of X” because this is the

only way to make sense out of the composition of general negative meaning and the meanin g of abstract

noun. With verbs denoting a goal-oriented action. Negation is automatically interpreted ad reversal or

removal.

Obviously, there must be a restriction at work that only allows as bases verbs denote an action which can be

reversed or which involves a participant that can be removed.

The attachment of nominal –th can be said to be lexically conditioned (or lexically governed), which means

that the possibility to take –th must be listed with each individual lexical item that has this possibility. It is

impossible to define the class of –th taking adjective by some independent property that all possible bases

have and all impossible bases don’t have. Strictly speaking then, we are not dealing with a rule that can be

used to form new words, but with a rule that simply generalizes over the structure of a set of existing

complex words. Such rules are sometimes referred to as redundancy rules rule or word-structure rules.

So that we will often use the term “word formation process” to refer to both kinds of rule.

Sometimes new complex words are derived without an existing word-formation rule, but formed on the

basis of a single (or very few) model words.

The process by which these words came into being is called analogy.

Quite often, word are analogically derived by deleting a suffix (or supposed suffix), a process called back-

formation. An example: the verb edit which was derived from the word editor by deleting –or on the basis

of a proportional analogy with word pairs such as actor-act.

In such cases, the dividing line between analogical patterns and word-formation rules is hard to draw.

Based on such reasoning, some scholar have developed theories that abandon the concept of rule entirely

and replace it by the notion of analogy. First, it is unclear how the systematic restrictions emerge that are

characteristic of derivational processes and which in a rule-based framework are an integral part of the

rule. Second, it is unclear why certain analogies are often made while others are never made.

2.4 Multiple affixation

Many complex words contain more than two morphemes.

The relationship between the three morphemes can also be represented by brackets or by a tree diagram.

This structure is supported by the semantic analysis, but also by the fact that –un only attaches to verbs if

the action or process denoted by the verb can be reversed.

a. [re-[organize-ation] b. [de-[centralize-ation]]

Organization Centralization

Re- organize -ation De- centralize -ation

[[re-organize]-ation] [[de-centralize]-ation]

Reorganize Decentralize

Re- organize -ation De- centralize -ation

Both are possible interpretations with only an extremely subtle difference in meaning (if detectable

at all). Furthermore, some complex words with more than one affix seem to have come into being

through the simultaneous attachment of two affixes. A case in point is decaffeinate, for which, at

the time of creation, neither caffeinate was available as a base word (for the prefixation of de-), nor

“decaffein”. Such forms are called parasynthetic formations, and the process of simultaneous

multiple affixation is parasynthesis.

3 - PRODUCTIVITY AND THE MENTAL LEXICON

In this chapter we will look at the mechanism that are responsible for the fact that some affixes can easily

be used to coin new words while other affixes can not.

3.1 Introducing: what is productivity?

We can distinguish between redundancy rules that describe the relationship between existing words and

word-formation rules that can in addition be used to create new words. Any theory of word -formation

would therefore ideally not only describe existing complex words but also determine which kinds of

derivative could be formed by the speakers according to the regularities and conditions of the rules of their

language. In other words, any word-formation theory should make predictions about which words are

possible in a language and which words are not.

Some affixes are often used to create new words, they property of an affix to be used to coin new complex

words is referred to as the productivity of that affix.

Nominal –th can only attach to a small number of specified words, but this suffix can therefore be

considered unproductive.

For example, the suffix –ness gives rise to many more new words than, for example, the suffix –ish. The

obvious question now is which mechanism are responsible, for the productivity of a word-formation rule.

3.2 Possible and actual words

We have seen that un- can be freely attached to most adjective, but not all, that un- occurs with nouns, but

only with very few, and then un- can occur with verbs, but by no means with all verbs.

Often, word-formation rules that look straightforward and adequate at first, sight turn out to be

problematic upon closer inspection.

Another typical problem with many postulated word-formation rules