Семинар (февраля: 17 пн – Р763,

Пн – Р764, 25вт - Р765)

Grammar and Word-building                                   15

GRAMMAR AND WОRD-BUILDING

The relations between word-building, grammar, and lexicology have not yet been made quite clear. By and large three views have been expressed: (1) word-building is part of lexicology, (2) word-building is partly at least a matter of grammar, (3) word-building is a special sphere intermediate between lexicology and grammar and occasionally encroaching upon either.

According as one or another of these views is endorsed, word-building is either ignored in a book on grammar, as something lying beyond its sphere, or it is treated of in grammar book to some extent, at least.

The difficulty of the question is illustrated by the very fact of such different views being taken by scholars.

16                                                   Introduction

We will not here take up the question in its entirety, as it is obviously a question of general linguistics rather than of English linguistics, and we will merely state some points which we will follow in our treatment of the matter.

A complete enumeration of all suffixes and prefixes existing in a language and used to build words cannot be the task of a grammar. The meaning of such word-building suffixes as, e. g., -ness or -er for nouns, -ful or -less for adjectives, etc., cannot and should not be considered in grammar, any more than grammar can give a complete list of nouns, adjectives, etc. The grammatical aspect of word-building is, that words belonging to a certain part of speech are (or can be) derived by means of certain morphemes, chiefly suffixes (but in a few cases also prefixes), vowel alternation, and so forth.

From this viewpoint it is essential to note that a few word-building morphemes are unambiguous, that is, a word containing them is sure to belong to a certain part of speech, whereas others are ambiguous, that is, the morpheme is not in itself sufficient to make sure that a word belongs to a definite part of speech.

We need not give here any complete list of affixes of either type. A few typical examples will be all that is needed.

Affixes unambiguously showing to what part of speech a word belongs are very few. Among them is the suffix -ity for nouns. In such cases as scarcity, necessity, peculiarity, monstrosity, etc., there is no doubt that the word is a noun. In the sphere of adjectives there is the suffix -less and the suffix -ous. For instance, useless, harmless, fatherless, meaningless can be identified as adjectives by the mere fact of their having this suffix, and so can the words copious, hazardous, luminous, callous, ubiquitous, and so forth.

In the sphere of verbs we may note the suffix -ise (also spelt -ize) as an unambiguous sign of a word being a verb: cf. crystallise, immunise, organise, mobilise, vaporise, and the like.

Most word-forming morphemes are ambiguous, that is, they do not with certainty point to any definite part of speech but leave some choice which has to be decided by other criteria. The wideness of the choice varies with different morphemes. Thus, for instance, the suffix -ful leaves us only one alternative: the word can either be an adjective, which is the more usual case (useful, careful, truthful, masterful, needful, sinful, etc.), or a noun, which is much rarer (handful, spoonful, mouthful, pocketful, roomful, etc.). It will be readily seen that the second type is limited to formations in which the first element denotes some physical object having a certain volume.

In a similar way, the suffix -ment leaves open the choice between noun and verb, of which the first is much more frequent: compare

Grammar and Word-building                                   17

the nouns instrument, tenement, merriment, government, sentiment, pigment, basement, and the verbs implement, regiment, augment. It will be seen that most of these have homonyms among the nouns. It might perhaps be argued that -ment itself is a noun-forming, not a verb-forming suffix, and that verbs like implement have been formed from the corresponding nouns without any suffix at all. This may be true, but it is irrelevant: the fact remains that in contemporary English we have both nouns and verbs containing the suffix -ment followed by no other word-forming suffix.

Other suffixes may leave us a choice between three or more possibilities, for instance the suffix -ly leaves open the choice between adjectives, adverbs, nouns, modal words, and particles. We shall give a few examples of each category. Adjectives in -ly: orderly, friendly, comely, sickly, masterly; adverbs: kindly, safely, generally, merrily, joyfully; nouns: daily (a newspaper published every day; a woman coming in as daily help), orderly (a soldier assigned to an officer for carrying messages); modal words: possibly, probably, certainly, presumably, admittedly; particles: exclusively, merely, solely. If modal words are not accepted as a separate part of speech, or if words like merely are included among adverbs, the number of possibilities will be reduced by one or two items. But even so we shall have to admit that the suffix -ly is of comparatively little value for determining the part of speech to which a word belongs.

Prefixes are only rarely found to distinguish one part of speech from another.¹ Here are some well-known examples: endear v. vs. dear adj., enlarge v. vs. large adj., enmesh v. vs. mesh n., behead v. vs. head n.,²belittle v. vs. little adj.

A few more examples of this kind may be found, but there is not a single prefix to show definitely to what part of speech a word belongs. For instance, the negative prefix in- may be found in nouns (independence, intransigence), in adjectives (independent, intransigent, inconclusive), in verbs (incapacitate) and in adverbs (independently, inconclusively, inconsistently), so that as an indication of a part of speech it is valueless.

The prefix under- is also to be found in nouns, adjectives, and verbs, for instance, understudy, undersecretary (nouns), underfed,

¹ We are not here concerned with the historical origins of this state of things, and therefore we do not dwell on the fact that, for instance, the verb behead comes from Old English beheafdian, which was derived from the Old English noun heafod by means of a suffix as well as of a prefix, nor do we make similar remarks about the verb endear, etc. However such a state of things may have originated, the fact remains that in Modern English the two parts of speech are distinguished by the prefix alone.

² It might be argued that there is a verb head as well. But the meanings of the two verbs are so very far apart that this argument does not seem convincing.

18                                                    Introduction

underdeveloped, underdone (adjectives), undervalue, underestimate, undermine (verbs).

Other means of word-building are vowel alternations and consonant alternations. However, these are so limited in their application that the presence of this or that vowel or consonant in a word can never be a sure sign of its belonging to a definite part of speech. For example, the alternation [u:] — [i:], in spelling, oo — ee, is found in a few noun-verb groups (doom — deem, food — feed), but it does not follow that the vowel [i:] (spelt ee) is a sign of a verb: there are numerous words belonging to other parts of speech having this vowel in their root: spleen, beech, deed are nouns; keen, green, deep are adjectives, etc. We need not give any more examples. The same is also true of consonant alternations, for example, the alternation [k] — [tS] in such pairs as speak — speech, break — breach, etc. Important as they are from a lexical viewpoint, their grammatical significance is next to nil.

Thus the grammatical aspect of word-building, at least in English, is rather unimportant; the main phenomena of word-building belong to the sphere of lexicology.

In concluding our observations on word-building we may note some so-called nonce-words formed without any suffixes. Thus, in the following example a nonce-word, namely a verb, is formed from an adverb without any suffixes and it is characterised as a verb merely by its surroundings in the sentence. This is a dialogue between a mother and her daughter who was rather late in coming back home from school. "Then where have you been? It's late." "Nowhere." "What?" "Nowhere." "Don't nowhere me. I know how long it takes to walk home from school." (WOODHILL) The third nowhere is shown to be the infinitive of a verb by its position between don't and me. Its meaning is clear from the context. Don't nowhere me obviously means much the same as, Don't say "nowhere" to me, or, Don't try to deceive me by saying "nowhere". In the following example even an unfinished sentence consisting of two words is treated in this way: "Now, Dora — " he began. "Don't you 'Now, Dora' me!" she said in a loud voice, frantically striking the sides of the chair with her hands. "I just can't stand this any longer! I just can't!" (E. CALDWELL) Such formations are not very frequent, and they are conversational rather than literary.

Our study of Modern English morphology will consist of four main items, viz. (1) essentials of morphology: general study of morphemes and types of word-form derivation, (2) the system of parts of speech, (3) study of each separate part of speech, the grammatical categories connected with it, and its syntactical functions.

Part One

Morphology

Chapter I

ESSENTIALS OF MORPHOLOGY

MORPHEMES

The morpheme is one of the central notions of grammatical theory, without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. Definition of a morpheme is not an easy matter, and it has been attempted many times by different scholars. Without going into particulars of the discussions that have taken place, we may briefly define the morphemes as the smallest meaningful units into which a word form may be divided. For instance, if we take the form writers, it can be divided into three morphemes: (1) writ-, expressing the basic lexical meaning of the word, (2) -er-, expressing the idea of agent performing the action indicated by the root of the verb, (3) -s, indicating number, that is, showing that more than one person of the type indicated is meant. Similarly the form advantageously can be divided into three morphemes: advantage + ous + ly, each with a special meaning of its own.

Two additional remarks are necessary here: (1) Two or more morphemes may sound the same but be basically different, that is, they may be homonyms. Thus the -er morpheme indicating the doer of an action as in writer has a homonym — the morpheme -er denoting the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs, as in longer. Which of the two homonymous morphemes is actually there in a given case can of course only be determined by examining the other morphemes in the word. Thus, the morpheme -er in our first example, writer, cannot possibly be the morpheme of the comparative degree, as the morpheme writ- to which it is joined on is not the stem of an adjective or adverb, and so no comparative degree is to be thought of here.

(2) There may be zero morphemes, that is, the absence of a morpheme may indicate a certain meaning. Thus, if we compare the forms book and books, both derived from the stem book-, we may say that while books is characterised by the -s-morpheme as being a plural form, book is characterised by the zero morpheme as being a singular form.

In modern descriptive linguistics the term "morpheme" has been given a somewhat different meaning.¹ Scholars belonging to this trend approach the problem from this angle: If we compare the four sentences: the student comes, the students come; the ox comes, the oxen come, it will be seen that the change of student to students is

¹ See, for example, H. A. Gleason Jr., An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, 1955, Chapter V.

22                                      Essentials of Morphology

paralleled by the change of ox to oxen. That is, the meaning and function of the -en in oxen is the same as the meaning and function of the -s in students. On this account the -s and the -en are said to represent the same morpheme: each of them is a morph representing the morpheme, and they are termed allomorphs of the morpheme. Furthermore, as in the word goose the form corresponding to students and oxen is geese, where nothing is added, but the root vowel is changed, the morph representing the morpheme in this case is said to be the very change of [u:] into [i:] (graphically, oo and ее). Thus the morpheme, in this case, has three allomorphs, (1) -s, (2) -en, (3) [u:] -> [i:].

This latter item entails some difficulty, as a morph is shown not necessarily to be a material entity, that is a phoneme, or a combination of phonemes; sometimes it may be a change of one phoneme into another.

Similarly, in the past tense of verbs the morpheme of the past tense has two allomorphs, (1) -ed, (2) the change of vowel, as [ai] —> [ou] (write — wrote), [i] -> [ae] (sing —sang), etc.

We will apply the term "morpheme" only to material units including zero.

In grammar, we are of course concerned with the grammatical, or structural, meaning of morphemes: we do not here study the meanings of root morphemes, which are necessarily lexical, and as to derivation morphemes, i. e. those which serve to build words, we are only interested in them in so far as they are grammatically relevant, and that is the case if they show that the word belongs to a certain part of speech, and if they serve to distinguish one part of speech from another. This grammatical significance of derivation morphemes, if it is there at all, is always combined with their lexical meaning. For instance, if we take this pair of words: write v. and writer n., the derivative morpheme -er has a grammatical significance, as it serves to distinguish a noun from a verb, and it has its lexical meaning, as the lexical meaning of the noun writer is different from that of the verb write.

Inflection morphemes have no lexical meaning or function. There is not the slightest difference in the way of lexical meaning between live and lived, or between house and houses. However, an inflection morpheme can acquire a lexical meaning in some special cases, for instance if the plural form of a noun develops a meaning which the singular form has not; thus, the plural form colours has a meaning, 'flag', which the singular form colour has not. These are cases of lexicalisation (compare below, p. 36).

There is in Modern English a case where a boundary line between inflection and derivation is hard to draw, and a morpheme does duty both ways. This is the morpheme -ing with its function of a suffix deriving verbal nouns and of an inflection serving to

Morphemes                                                     28

form a gerund, which is one of the non-finite verb forms. This appears to be quite a special case in English, and it does not seem to find any parallel in Russian.

24                                      Essentials of Morphology

TYPES OF WORD-FORM DERIVATION

These fall under two main headings, (a) those limited to changes in the body of the word, without having recourse to auxiliary words (synthetic types), (b) those implying the use of auxiliary words (analytical types). Besides, there are a few special cases of different forms of a word being derived from altogether different stems.

Synthetic Types

The number of morphemes used for deriving word-forms in Modern English is very small (much smaller than either in German or in Russian, for instance). They may be enumerated in a very short space.

There is the ending -s (-es), with three variants of pronunciation, used to form the plural of almost all nouns, and the endings -en and -ren, used for the same purpose in one or two words each, viz. oxen, brethren (poet.), children.

There is the ending -'s, with the same three variants of pronunciation as for the plural ending, used to form what is generally termed the genitive case of nouns.¹

For adjectives, there are the endings -er and -est for the degrees of comparison.

For verbs, the number of morphemes used to derive their forms is only slightly greater. There is the ending -s (-es) for the third person singular present indicative, with the same three variants of pronunciation noted above for nouns, the ending -d (-ed) for the past tense of certain verbs (with three variants of pronunciation, again), the ending -d (ed) for the second participle of certain verbs, the ending -n (-en) for the second participle of certain other verbs, and the ending -ing for the first participle and also for the gerund.

Thus the total number of morphemes used to derive forms of words is eleven or twelve, which is much less than the number found in languages of a mainly synthetical structure.

It should also be noted that most of these endings are mono-semantic, in the sense that they denote only one grammatical category and not two or three (or more) at a time, as is the case in synthetic languages. For example, the plural -s (or -es) denotes only the category of plural number, and has nothing to do with any other grammatical category, such as case.

It would, however, mean oversimplifying matters if we were to suppose that all English inflectional morphemes are monosemantic. This is certainly not the case with the -s (-es) of the third

¹ The problem of the genitive case will be dealt with in Chapter III (see p. 41 ff.).

Types of Word-form Derivation                                      25

person singular. It expresses at least three grammatical categories: person (third), number (singular), and mood (indicative). In certain verbs it also expresses the category of tense: thus, in the form puts only the -s shows that it is a present-tense form.

Sound Alternations

By sound alternations we mean a way of expressing grammatical categories which consists in changing a sound inside the root. This method appears in Modern English, for example, in nouns, as when the root vowel [ae] of the singular form man is changed into [e] to form the plural men, or similarly the root vowel [au] of mouse is changed into [aı] in mice, and a few more cases of the same kind.

This method is much more extensively used in verbs, such as write — wrote — written, sing — sang — sung, meet — met — met, etc. On the whole, vowel alternation does play some part among the means of expressing grammatical categories, though its part in Modern English has been much reduced as compared to Old English.

Analytical Types

These consist in using a word (devoid of any lexical meaning of its own) to express some grammatical category of another word.

There can be no doubt in Modern English about the analytical character of such formations as, e. g., has invited or is invited, or is inviting, or does not invite. The verbs have, be, and do have no lexical meaning of their own in these cases. The lexical meaning of the formation resides in the participle or infinitive following the verb have, be or do. Some doubt has been expressed about the formations shall invite and will invite. There is a view that shall and will have a lexical meaning.¹ We will not go into this question now and we will consider shall and will as verbs serving to form the future tense of other verbs. Thus, have, be, do, shall, and will are what we call auxiliary verbs, and as such they constitute a typical feature of the analytical structure of Modern English.

While the existence of analytical forms of the English verb cannot be disputed, the existence of such forms in adjectives and adverbs is not nowadays universally recognised. The question whether such formations as more vivid, the most vivid, or, again, more vividly and most vividly are or are not analytical forms of degrees of comparison of vivid and vividly, is controversial. We can only say here that if these formations are recognised as analytical forms of degrees of comparison, the words more and most have to be numbered among the analytical means of morphology.

¹ See below, p. 87.

26                                      Essentials of Morphology

Suppletive Formations

Besides the synthetical and analytical means of building word forms in Modern English, there is yet another way of building them which stands quite apart and is found in a very limited number of cases only. By a suppletive formation we mean building a form of a word from an altogether different stem. Examples in point are, the verb go, with its past tense went; the personal pronoun I, with its objective case form me, the adjective good with its comparative degree form better, and a few more. We consider, for instance, go and went as, in a way, two forms of one word, because in the vast majority of verbs the past tense is derived from the same stem as the present or infinitive, e. g. live — lived, speak — spoke, etc. It is against this background that the units go and went come to be considered as forms of one word, formed from different stems. In the morphological system of Modern English suppletive formations are a very insignificant element, but they concern a few very widely used words among adjectives, pronouns, and verbs.

Such, then, are the means of deriving the forms of words in Modern English. We shall have to ascertain the exact meaning and function of each of them as we proceed on our survey of the parts of speech.