Билет № 4

1. Explain the notions “morpheme” and “allomorph”.

Morpheme – is a part of the word – is a minimal linguistic sight associating a phonetic form with a particular meaning which cannot be segmented into smaller units of the same type.

In synthetic languages (with a high morpheme-per-word rating), m. form words.

In isolating (Chinese – only roots) with a low morpheme per-word rating.

Morpheme – a generic term for roots and affixes.

It’s also a not independent unit of a lang and do possess the inner completeness of a word.

Morphological analysis of the word:

Morphemic lvl. (Basic unit of analysis - morpheme)

Types of m. and m.classific.:

• Semantic – meaning

• Structural – form – what comes after

• Functional – aspect of lang. was studied in many ling. Schools.

Semantic classific. of m.:

• Root morphemes: the main carriers of lexical meaning

Ex: hand – part of body / handly – in the 1^st meaning a person clever with hands / hand/i/work – smth made by hands

• Non-root morphemes: the main carriers of gramm amd lex-gramm meaning

Ex: hand –handly – hand/s

1. Inflexional m. (словоизменительные) – inflections

Ex: long – longer (the gram marker for the comparative degree)

2. Derivational morphemes (словообразовательные) – affixes

Ex: print – print/er (lex-gram marker of carrier of thу фсешщт)

Structural classific.:

• Root m.

Ex: name – name-day

• Suffixes (follow the roots)

Ex: name – name/ly

• Preffixes

Ex: name – fore/name

• Zero m (always meaningful)

Ex: name/0 – name/s

An allomorph – is a positional variant of a morpheme.

Ex.: believe – belief

The position variant of the m. can depend on its:

• Grammar position

Ex.: leaf – leaves

knife – knives

(the gram. Pos. in the sing/plur form entails the alternation [f]-[v] in the stem)

• Phonological position

Ex.: worked – said – minded / [t] - [d] - [id]

(the morph. Express the past tense)

Depend on is the consonant voiced/voiceless or it’s a vowel! (phonological surrounded)

The phonological position entails the alternation [t] - [d] - [id] in the inflection, conditioned by the ultima of the stem (исход основы)

2. What types of meaning do you know and what are their differences?

In the most general sense meaning is the content of a linguistic sign.

The Ogden/Richards triangle implies that this content depends on 3 components:

1. symbol

2. thought

3. the piece of extra-ling. Reality that is key to:

Ex: work/er/s

• work – symbol – implies the thought of “engagement in physical or mental activity” and refers to any corresponding activity in reality > lexical meaning

• -er - symbol – “carrier/subject of any action” and refers to the class of subjects of the act > lexical meaning, and to a class of nouns > lexico-grammatical meaning

• -s – symbol – “plurality” and refers to the grammatical category of pl > grammatical meaning

Dif. between lexical and grammatical meaning:

• Conceptual: lex.meaning is specific / gramm is highly abstract

But: there are lexical meanings of very high abstractness – relation, object, characters

• Functional: lex.m. – can function separately as a nomination for a piece of reality.

Gramm.m. – lacks the nominative function

Ex.: work (denotes any activity if occurring separately) vs. –s (denotes the 3 pers.sing only within a word-form)

* lex.m. can be used separately, gramm – never! It’s always with lex.m.

** gramm.m. is obligatory must be used! You can say without lex.m. – not necessary to express