Words in English
Linguistics/English 215
Prof. S. Kemmer
Morphemes
Morphemes are form/meaning pairings (where "form" = distinctive
string of sounds). Morphemes can be roots or affixes, depending on
whether they are the main part or dependent part of a word (cf. Roots
vs. Affixes).
It is important to recognize that there is no one-to-one
correspondence between form and meaning, and that what counts for
identification as a morpheme is both form AND meaning. Let's consider
some potentially tricky situations that can arise in deciding whether
we're dealing with a single morpheme or more than one:
1. Two different morphemes can accidentally have the same form. Some
English morphemes for which this is the case are the following ("Greek
prefix", "Latin root" etc. are abbreviations for "prefix borrowed from
(Classical) Greek", "root morpheme borrowed from Latin" etc.):
The unrelatedness of the meanings tells us they are different
linguistic units. There is no psychological connection between them,
and typically their origins are completely different.
2. Forms with the same meaning may also be different
morphemes. There are two subcases of this:
(a) the forms may be rather different from one another. Example:
In this example, the first two morphemes were borrowed into English
from different languages, a sufficient reason for thinking of them as
different elements and hence distinct morphemes. The third is native
English, which means another different linguistic source and hence a
different element. It so happens that in this case, all three
morphemes go back to a prehistoric word meaning 'not' that linguists
have reconstructed as part of the original language that gave rise to
Latin, Greek, English, and other related languages. But the connection
is too far back to think of them as a unitary element in English.
(b) the forms may be the same or very similar, but like the above
case, their sources are different languages. Example:
As above, these two happen to go back to a common ancestral source
morpheme, before Latin and English (and their closest relatives)
evolved into separate languages. (This historical fact accounts for
why the forms are similar.) But again, the unity of these elements is
only historical. Because the immediate source languages are different,
it is reasonable to think of them as different elements. This kind of
situation, in which our definition of morpheme as an element pairing a
particular form with a particular meaning might lead us to call these
one morpheme, but our historical knowledge leads us to call them two,
is comparatively rare. We need not let such a borderline case detract
from our basic understanding of a morpheme. They are mentioned here
only for completeness' sake.
3. Two forms with the same meaning may be alternate forms of the same
morpheme. Example:
In these cases, the two forms are very similar, often differing in one
consonant or vowel. They typically result from a situation in which an
original single form adapted its beginning or ending sounds to the
sounds found in other morphemes it combined with. Often there is some
pattern to the alternation between the two forms (e.g. the Greek 'not'
morpheme is found in the form a- before roots beginning with
consonants, and an- before roots beginning with vowels.)
The alternate forms in these cases are called allomorphs ( < Greek
prefix allo- 'other'). We will discuss many cases of allomorphy in
class; they are treated in Chapter 4 of Denning and Leben.
© 1998 Suzanne Kemmer
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