Morpheme concept

3.1. Morpheme – is the 2d main unit of the language structure. The shortest structural unit which carried a definite gr. meaning. The smallest dependent meaningful unit. Has gr. form and meaning, i.e. is bilateral

Let us look in more detail at two characteristics of morphemes, in the light of how the notion has been introduced. To allow the meanings of some complex words to be predictable, morphemes must

1. be identifiable from one word to another

and

2. contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word.

Now, what permits the same morpheme to be identified in a variety of different words? A morpheme cannot, after all, be just any recurring word-part. To see this, consider the words attack, stack, tackle and taxi.

These all contain a syllable pronounced like the word tack; but it would be absurd to say that the same morpheme -tack- is identifiable in each, because the meaning of tack has nothing to do with the meanings of the other words, and all of them must surely be listed separately in any dictionary. So it may seem natural to link characteristic 1. tightly to 2., making the identification of morphemes dependent on their meaning.

Indeed, in introductory linguistics textbooks, one often encounters statements to the effect that morphemes are not merely the smallest units of grammatical structure but also the smallest meaningful units.

This view is widespread precisely because it fits many complex words very well – not only brand new words like un-Clintonish but also established words like helpfulness, which is divisible into the morphemes help,

-ful (identifiable also in cheerful and doleful, for example) and -ness (identifiable also in happiness and sadness). It seems reasonable to say that the meaning of both un-Clintonish and helpfulness is entirely determined by the meanings of the morphemes that they contain. Even the meaning

of a word such as readable, which is idiosyncratic enough to require mention in a dictionary, is clearly

related to the normal meanings or functions of read and -able. In the face of such examples, it is important to remember that there is no necessary or logical connection between characteristics 1. and 2.

Another general point to be made about morphemes is that, although they are the parts out of which words are composed, they do not have to be of any particular length. Some relatively long words, such as

catamaran and knickerbocker, may consist of just one morpheme; on the other hand, a single-syllable word, such as tenths, may contain as many as three morphemes (ten, -th, -s). What this shows is that the morphological structure of words is largely independent of their phonologicalstructure (their division into sounds, syllables and rhythmic units). This reflects a striking difference between human speech and all animal communication systems: only speech (so far as we know) is analysable in two parallel ways, into units that contribute to meaning (morphemes, words, phrases etc.) and units that are individually meaningless (sounds, syllables etc.). What matters here is just that you should avoid a mistake that beginners

sometimes make, that of confusing morphemes with phonological units such as syllables.

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Words as types and words as tokens	\|	Kinds of morpheme: bound versus free

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