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The problem of the word. Types of morphemes. Principles of morphemic and derivational analysis.

The term word problem has several meanings:

· word problem (mathematics education) is a type of textbook problem designed to help students apply abstract mathematical concepts to "real-world" situations

· word problem (mathematics) is a decision problem for algebraic identities in mathematics and computer science

· word problem for groups is the problem of recognizing the identity element in a finitely presented group

· word problem (computability) is a decision problem concerning formal languages

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. Every word comprises one or more morphemes.

Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediateand Ultimate Constituents.

This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents. A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity. The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula: un+ { [ (gent- + -le) + -man ] + -ly} Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.A diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows: 1. un- / gentlemanly2. un- / gentleman / - ly3. un- / gentle / - man / - ly4. un- / gentl / - e / - man / - ly A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word. Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmerinto the derivational morpheme – er and the roots teach-, sing-, drive-.According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retainfrom detain and [-teın] distinguishes retainfrom receive.It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand -tainand –ceiveas roots.

The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV. Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask (), asks, asked, askingis ask-;thestem of the word singer(), singer’s, singers, singers’is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech. The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types. There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

2. The noun system of Old English was quite complex with 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and 5 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental). In the history of English this was simplified considerably. The cases were reduced to nominative and genitive and the phenomenon of grammatical gender was lost.

In addition to gender and case Old English had a variety of plural types just like Modern German. The number of these has steadily declined throughout the centuries. This demise can be documented quite clearly and the reduction in diversity shows a definite sequence which can be summarised as follows:

It is clear from Old English that the umlaut plurals declined quite rapidly. We have words like cu with an original plural cy (compare German Kuh ~ Kühe) which later becomes cyne (cf. the Early Modern English form kine). /r/ plurals are replaced by nasal plurals in the early Middle English period as the present-day form children shows which has a nasal ending added to an original childer (/r/-plural). The nasal plurals themselves pass into decline by the late Middle English period (Chaucer still has eyen for modern eyes).

Now note that the umlaut plurals are an inherited type from pre-Old English forms of Germanic which English shares with other forms of North and West Germanic like German and Swedish. From the point of view of iconicity (a form indicates a grammatical category) the umlaut plurals fulfill their function well. The singular and the plural forms of words are clearly distinguished.

However, from the point of view of the language’s grammar the umlaut type contravenes a principle of morphology which requires that there be an isomorphic relationship (one to one in form) between the lexical root or stem of a word and any inflection added to it. Ideally, this type of situation applies to agglutinative languages. Looking at the remaining three formational types one sees that they form a scale of decreasing sonority (open, vowel-like quality): /r/ -> /n/ -> /s/. A general principle of morphology is that inflectional endings are favoured which show a high degree of phonetic salience. It is this factor which increases with progression in types just indicated.

The point being made here is that any explanation which tries to avail of either phonological or morphological arguments exclusively is doomed to failure as there was a morphological reason for loss in the first case and a phonological reason in each of the remaining three.

The effects of the above changes on the morphology of Middle English were very considerable. They led to a loss of distinctiveness among grammatical endings so that the various declensional classes of Old English collapsed, with the dative plural remaining for a while the only case — with a final nasal /-n/ — which was distinctive, but even that was reduced in the course of the Middle English period. A direct consequence of this was that the more common declensions were generalised and used productively. The two main ones are the s -type and the nasal type as seen in the Old English words stān ‘stone’: stānas ‘stones’ and ēage ‘eye’: ēagan ‘eyes’ respectively. For a while the nasal declension was productive as is seen in its addition to the old r -plural child: childer > child(e)ren to give the doubly marked plural which has survived to the present day. The north of the country was as always innovative and by about 1200 nouns are commonly found with a plural and a genitive singular in /-s/, this then spreading to the south somewhat later and with time it replaced virtually all nasal plurals. There are a few remainders into the time of Shakespeare — e.g. eyen, shoon, housen — but these have been brought into line with the universal s -plural so that nowadays there are only three nasal plurals remaining: oxen, children and brethren (a double plural with an umlaut of brother and a nasal ending).