A course In Modern English Lexicology

§ 5. Morphemic Types of Words
are classified into monomorphic
and polymorphic. M o n o m o r p h i с or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All p о l у m о r p h i с
words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into two subgroups: m o n o r a d i c a l (or one-root words) and p o l y r a d i -
c a l words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots.
M o n o r a d i c a l words fall into two subtypes: 1) r a d i c a l -
s u f f i x a l words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more suffixal morphemes, e.g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, etc.; 2 ) r a d i c a l - p r e f i x a l words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, e.g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton, etc. and 3) p r e f i x o - r a d i c a l - s u f f i x a l , i.e. words which consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal morphemes, e.g. dis-agreeable, misinterpretation, etc.
P o l y r a d i c a l words fall into two types: 1) p o l y r a d i c a l words which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes, e.g.
book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc. and 2) words which cont a i n a t l e a s t t w o r o o t s a n d o n e o r m o r e a f f i x a -
t i o n a l m o r p h e m e s , e.g. safety-pin, wedding-pie, class-consciousness, light-mindedness, pen-holder, etc.
The analysis of the morphemic composition
§ 6. Derivative Structure of words defines the ultimate meaningful constituents (UCs), their typical sequence and arrangement, but it does not reveal the hierarchy of morphemes making up the word, neither does it reveal the way a word is constructed, nor how a new word of similar structure should be understood. The morphemic analysis does not aim at finding out the nature and arrangement of ICs which underlie the structural and the semantic type of the word, e.g. words unmanly and discouragement morphemically are referred to the same type as both are segmented into three UCs representing one root, one prefixational and one suffixational morpheme. However the arrangement and the nature 95
of ICs and hence the relationship of morphemes in these words is different
— in unmanly the prefixational morpheme makes one of the ICs, the other IC is represented by a sequence of the root and the suffixational morpheme and thus the meaning of the word is derived from the relations between the ICs un- and manly- (‘not manly’), whereas discouragement rests on the relations of the IC discourage- made up by the combination of the. prefixational and the root-morphemes and the suffixational morpheme
-ment for its second IC (’smth that discourages’). Hence we may infer that these three-morpheme words should be referred to different derivational types: unmanly to a prefixational and discouragement to a suffixational derivative.
The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word is known as its d e r i v a t i v e s t r u c t u r e . Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it differs from it in principle.
According to the derivative structure all
§ 7. Derivative Relations words fall into two big classes: simp l e x e s or s i m p l e , non-derived words and c o m p l e x e s or d e r i v a t i v e s . S i m p l e x e s are words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs. The morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically non-motivated l and independent of other words, e.g.
hand, come, blue, etc. Morphemically it may be monomorphic in which case its stem coincides with the free root-morpheme as in, e.g., hand, come, blue, etc. or polymorphic in which case it is a sequence of bound morphemes as in, e.g., anxious, theory, public, etc.
D e r i v a t i v e s are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence derivatives are secondary, motivated units, made up as a rule of two ICs, i.e. binary units, e.g. words like friendliness, unwifely, school-masterish, etc. are made up of the ICs friendly + -ness, un- + wifely, schoolmas-ter+-ish. The ICs are brought together according to specific rules of order and arrangement preconditioned by the system of the language. It follows that all derivatives are marked by the fixed order of their ICs.
The basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are: d e r i v a t i o n a l b a s e s , d e r i v a t i o n a l a f f i x e s and d e r i v a t i o n a l p a t t e r n s which differ from the units of the morphemic structure of words (different types of morphemes). The relations between words with a common root but of different derivative structure are known as d e r i v a t i v e r e l a t i o n s . The derivative and derivative relations make the subject of study at t h e d e r i v a t i o n al l e v e l of a n a l y s i s ; it aims at establishing correlations between different types of words, the structural and semantic patterns 1 See ‘Semasiology’, § 17, p. 25. 96
words are built on, the study also enables one to understand how new words appear in the language.
The constituents of the derivative structure are functional units, i.e.
units whose function is to indicate relationship between different classes of words or differently-behaving words of the same class and to signal the formation of new words. It follows that derivational functions are proper to different linguistic units which thus serve as ICs of a derivative. It must be also noted that the difference between classes of words is signalled by both the derivative structure of the word, or to be more exact by the stem it shapes, and by the set of paradigmatic inflections that this structure presupposes. For example, the nominal class of words to which derivatives like historian, teacher, lobbyist are referred is signalled by both the derivative structure, i.e. the unity of their ICs history+-ian, teach+ + -er lobby +
-ist shaping the stems of these words — and the nominal set of paradigmatic inflections which these stems precondition, i.e. histori-an(O), historian(s) , historian('s) , historian(s’) . The class of words like enrich, enlarge is likewise signalled by their derivative structure (en- + +rich, en-+large) and the verbal set of paradigmatic inflexions. Hence the paradigmatic systems of different classes of words have, among their functions, the function of distinguishing the formal make-up of word classes. It follows that the paradigmatic system of inflections in cases of meaningful absence of the 1С which determines the class membership of the motivated stem functions as the sole indication of its derived nature.1
A derivational base as a functional unit is de-
§ 8. Derivational Bases fined as the constituent to which a rule of word-formation is applied. It is the part of the word which establishes connection with the lexical unit that motivates the derivative and determines its individual lexical meaning describing the difference between words in one and the same derivative set, for example the individual lexical meaning of words like singer, rebuilder, whitewasher, etc. which all denote active doers of action, is signalled by the lexical meaning of the derivational bases sing-, rebuild-, whitewash- which establish connection with the motivating source verb.
Structurally derivational bases fall into three classes: 1) bases that c o i n c i d e w i t h m o r p h o l o g i c a l s t e m s of different degrees of complexity, e.g. duti ful, dutiful ly; day-dream, to day-dream, daydream er; 2) bases that coincide w i t h w o r d - f o r m s ; e.g. paper- bound , un smiling, un known; 3) bases that coincide w i t h word-grоups of different degrees of stability, e ,g. second-rate ness, flat-waist ed, etc.
1. Bases built on stems of different degree of complexity make the largest ‘and commonest group of components of derivatives of various classes, e.g. un-button, girl- ish; girlish-ness, colour-blind- ness, ex-
filmstar, etc. Bases of this class are functionally and semantically distinct from all kinds of stems. Functionally, the m o r p h o l o g i c a l s t e m is the part of the word which is the starting point for its forms, it is the 1 See ‘Word-Formation’, § 16, p. 127, 4 № 2775
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part which semantically presents a unity of lexical and functional meanings thus predicting the entire grammatical paradigm. The stem remains unchanged throughout all word-forms, it keeps them together preserving the identity cf the word. Thus the stems in the above-given words are ex-filmstar, unbutton which remain unchanged in all the forms of each word as, e.g., ex-filmstar(O) , ex-filmstar(s) , ex-filmstar(’s) , ex-filmstar(s) . Stems are characterised by a phonetic identity with the word-form that habitually represents the word as a whole (the common case singular, the infinitive, etc.).
A d e r i v a t i o n a l b a s e unlike a stem does not predict’ the part of speech of the derivative, it only outlines a possible range and nature of the second IC and it is only the unity of both that determines the lexical-grammatical class of the derivative. A derivational base is the starting-point for d i f f e r e n t words and its derivational potential outlines the type and scope of existing words and new creations. The nominal base for example, hand- gives rise to nouns, e.g. hand-rail, hand-bag, short-hand, handful, to adjectives, e.g. handy, or verbs, e.g. to hand. Similarly the base rich- may be one of the ICs of the noun richness, the adjective gold-rich, or the verb to enrich.
Semantically the stem stands for the whole semantic structure of the word, it represents all it s lexical meanings. A base, semantically, is also different in that it represents, as a rule, only o n e meaning of the source word or its stem. The derivatives glassful and glassy, e.g., though connected with the stem of the same source word are built on different derivational bases,, as glassful is the result of the application of the word-formation rule to the meaning of the source word ‘drinking vessel or its contents’, whereas glassy — to the meaning ‘hard, transparent, easily-broken substance’. Derivatives fiery, fire-place, to fire, fire-escape, firearm, a l l have bases built on the stem of the same source noun fire, but the words like fire-escape fire-engine and fire-alarm are semantically motivated by the meaning ‘destructive burning’, the words firearms, ceasefire, (to) fire are motivated by another meaning ’shooting’, whereas the word fiery (as in fiery speech, eyes) is motivated by the meaning
’strong emotion, excited feeling’. The same difference can be exemplified by the words starlet, starry, starlike, starless which are all motivated by the derivational base meaning ‘a heavenly body seen in the night as distant point of light’, as compared to stardom, starlet, to star motivated by the base meaning ‘a person famous as actor, singer’ though both represent the same morphological stem of the word star.
Stems that serve as this class of bases may themselves be different morphemically and derivationally thus forming derivational bases of different degrees of complexity which affects the range and scope of their collocability and their derivational capacity. Derivationally the stems may be:
a) s i m p l e , which consist of only one, semantically nonmotivated constituent. The most characteristic feature of simple stems in Modern English is the phonetic and graphic identity with the root-morpheme and the word-form that habitually represents the word as a whole.
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As has been mentioned elsewhere l simple stems may be both monomorphic units and morphemic sequences made up of bound and pseudo-morphemes, hence morphemically segmentable stems in such words as pocket, motion, retain, horrible, etc. should be regarded as derivationally simple.
b) d e r i v e d stems are semantically and structurally motivated, and are the results of the application of word-formation rules; it follows that they are as a rule binary, i.e. made up of two ICs, and polymorphic, e.g. the derived stem of the word girlish is understood on the basis of derivative relations between girl and girlish; the derived stem of a greater complexity girlishness is based on the derivative relations between girlish and girlishness. This is also seen in to weekend, to daydream which are derived from the nouns week-end and day-dream and are motivated by the derivative relations between the noun and the verb.2
Derived stems, however, are not necessarily polymorphic.
It especially concerns derivatives with a zero IC, i.e. meaningful absence of the derivational means in which case the distinction between the stem of the source word and the motivated stem of the derivative is signalled by the difference in paradigmatic sets of inflections which they take.3
For example, the stem of the verb (to) parrot, though it consists of one overt constituent and is a one-morpheme word, should be considered derived as it is felt by a native speaker as structurally and semantically dependent on the simple stem of the noun parrot and because it conveys a r e g u l a r relationship between these two classes of words — verbs and nouns 4. The same is true of the stems in such words as (to) winter, a cut, a drive, etc.
c) c o m p o u n d stems are always binary and semantically motivated, but unlike the derived stems both ICs of compound stems are stems themselves. The derivative structure and morphemic composition of each IC may be of different degree of complexity, for example, the compound stem of the noun match-box consists of two simple stems, the stem of the noun letter-writer — of one simple and one derived stem, and the stem aircraft-carrier — of a compound and derived stem.
The structural complexity of the derivational bases built on derived and compound stems is a heavy constraint imposed on the collocability and semantic freedom of these bases and consequently on their derivative potential. Compare, for example, the derivational capacity of the simple stem girl, which can give rise to girly, girlish, girlless, girl-friend, and the limited capacity of girlish which gives only girlishness and girlishly.
2. The second class of derivational bases is made up of word-forms. It is obvious that word-forms functioning as parts of the word lose all syntactic properties they possess in independent use. This class of bases is confined to verbal word-forms — the present and the past participles —
which regularly function as ICs of non-simple adjectives, adverbs and nouns. The collocability of this class of derivational bases is confined to 1 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 7, p. 96.
2 See ‘Word-Formation’, §§ 16,'p. 127.
3 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 7, p. 96.
4 See ‘Word-Formation’, § 18, p. 131.
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just a few derivational affixes such as the prefix un-, the suffix -ly, in e.g.
unnamed, unknown, unwrapped, etc., smilingly, knowingly, etc. The derivational bases in question may be also collocated with other bases which coincide only with nominal and adjectival stems, e.g. mockingbird, dancing-girl, ice-bound, time-consuming, ocean-going, easy-going, etc.
3. The third class of derivational bases is made up of word-groups.
Free word-groups make up the greater part of this class of bases. Like word-forms, word-groups serving as derivational bases lose their morphological and syntactic properties proper to them as self-contained lexical units. Bases of this class also allow of a rather limited range of collocability, they are most active with derivational affixes in the class of adjectives and nouns, e.g. in words like blue-eyed, long-fingered, old-worldish, dogooder, second-rateness, etc.
Thus, we may conclude that each class of bases, though it makes use of one of the structural units of vocabulary, is distinct from it and differs from it both in form and meaning. The greater the degree of structural complexity of the base the more limited its derivative potential.
Derivational affixes are ICs of numerous de-