матковська

48Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics

6.Below is a list of expressions with the word “red”. In each case, try to find a plausible motivation for the use of the word and argue whether we have more to do with a “linguistic” metaphor or metonymy as with “school” (see Table 4) or more with a conceptual metaphor or metonymy as with “foot of the mountain” (see Section 2.3.2).

a.redhead (= someone with red hair)

b.red herring (= something that is not important, but distracts one from things that are important)

c.He was caught red-handed (= in the act of doing something wrong).

d.He was beginning to see red (= he was getting very angry).

e.This was a red-hot (= very exciting) project.

f.red politics (= extremely left-wing, communist ideas)

7.For the notion of footwear think of or find as many words as you can, including such terms as boots, slippers, trainers, pumps, flipflops, mountain boots, shoes, wellingtons and add terms such as indoor footwear, sportswear, etc.

a.Which of these words are superordinate terms, and which ones subordinate terms?

b.Which of these words could be considered “basic level terms?” Give reasons for your answer.

c.Which of these words are highly entrenched, and which ones aren’t? Give reasons for your answer.

d.For this set of words, draw up a hierarchical taxonomy as in Table 6 or Table 8 in this chapter.

8.When young children first acquire language, they are known to call any male “dadda”, any round object “apple”, or any bigger animal “woof, woof” (BrE) or “bow bow” (AmE). Using the information given in Chapters 1 and 2, try to give an account for this phenomenon.

3Meaningful building blocks

Morphology

3.0Overview

In Chapter 2, we saw that words or lexical items may have several, often related senses, forming a network. In Chapter 3 we will see that morphemes, the smallest meaningful elements in language, are like words in that they may have prototypical senses and peripheral senses, together forming a radial network of senses.

Morphology is the study of morphemes, i.e., building elements used to form composite words or grammatical units. In one sense, morphology can be defined as the study of the internal structure of composite words; in an other sense, as the study of the elements needed to constuct syntactic groups and sentences. A morpheme can be either a simple word or an a x. Simple words can occur on their own and thus are independent morphemes. For this reason they are called “free morphemes”. In contrast, a xes cannot occur on their own and are therefore called “bound morphemes”.

The formation of composite words is called word formation. The most important processes of word formation are compounding, e.g. apple tree, and derivation, e.g. breathless. Other processes of word formation are conversion (clean Æ to clean), backderivation (typewriter Æ to typewrite), blending (motor + hotel Æ motel), clipping (a miniskirt Æ a mini) and acronyms (European Union Æ EU).

Grammatical morphemes are used to link words in a grammatical unit. They function as building elements for syntactic groups (e.g. many books) or for sentence construction (e.g. He worked).

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3.1 Introduction

After introducing the traditional distinctions made in morphology, we will look at factors that may play a role in word formation when we name things.

3.1.1 Two kinds of building blocks: Words and a xes

In Chapter 2 we concentrated on words. Now we will also look at elements which can be put on to words in order to build composite words such as bookish or in order to build grammatical units as in (he) is coming. It is convenient to have a common term for both a simple word form like book or come and for the a x -ish or the participial form -ing added to the verb. The term introduced for this purpose is morpheme, from Greek morphè ‘form’. A morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit in the language. We can distinguish between lexical morphemes, also called lexemes, and grammatical morphemes. We must further distinguish between free morphemes or simple words, and bound morphemes or a xes. They allow us to build composite words and composite grammatical units.

We will first look at the way words are composed from morphemes. Composite words can be formed in mainly two ways. We combine two “free” morphemes as in fruit juice, or we combine a “free” morpheme with a “bound” morpheme as in fruitless.

These two main ways of building composite words are known as compounding and derivation. In the simplest case, a compound consists of two free morphemes, whereas a derivation consists of a free morpheme and a bound morpheme (Table 1). Bound morphemes which are used to build derivations are called derivational morphemes and this branch of morphology is known as derivational morphology.

Table 1. Composite words

These two types of word-formation processes are not the only possibilities, of course. Di erent word-formation processes may be involved in forming one

Chapter 3. Meaningful building blocks 51

composite word. In the following examples, more complex types of composite words are analyzed by means of brackets (whereby m = morpheme) and by diagrams.

–wheelchair patient: (free m + free m) + free m

–drug dealer: free m + (free m + bound m)

–washing-up liquid: [(free m + bound m) + free m] + free m

–dish-washing liquid: [free m +(free m + bound m)] + free m

dish - washing liquid (= derivation + compounding + compounding)

In derivation some bound morphemes come after the free morpheme as in fruitless, some come before it as in unkind, and some even in the middle as in speedometer. The first type is called su x, the second prefix, and the third infix; a cover term for the three forms is a x (from to a x ‘to fasten, to stick together’).

Morphology is not only operative in the lexicon but also in grammar. Thus the form for building the regular plural in English — the su x -s — is a grammatical building element just like the -y in the derivation fruity is a lexical building element. At a more general level we call this plural -s the plural morpheme, which may have several di erent forms such as -s in books, -en in oxen, a change of the vowel as in mouse vs. mice or goose vs. geese. Morphemes such as the plural morpheme with nouns, or the present tense morpheme -s with verbs as in he steps or the past tense morpheme -ed as in he stepped are all grammatical morphemes.

Within grammatical morphemes we can also make a further distinction between two types: Free morphemes like the particle to in to go and bound

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morphemes like the 3rd person ending -s in he likes. Free grammatical morphemes are also referred to as function words. In a sense, they are less free than items such as book or like, which are known as content words. A function word and one or more content words can be linked together in a syntactic group, such as a (very) (nice) present.

Words combined with bound grammatical morphemes are referred to as inflected forms and constitute the part of morphology known as inflection. Therefore bound grammatical morphemes are also called inflectional morphemes and this branch of morphology is called inflectional morphology. The set of grammatical morphemes is summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Types of grammatical morphemes

Building composite grammatical units

3.1.2 Word formation and name-giving

We have now seen three di erent ways of forming new expressions for concepts: compounding, derivation, and syntactic grouping. This raises the question: Why is one name and not the other accepted in the language? There are several possibilities available and it can never be predicted which one will eventually be generally accepted. Let us look at a recent example.

The engineers in a big electronic firm are sitting around the table to discuss a new type of telephone not fixed to a plug which can be carried around. They might find all sorts of names for it like mobile telephone, cellular telephone, pocket telephone, digital phone, portable phone, etc. Each name reflects a di erent construal and highlights one salient aspect of the phone. In American English the name which has been accepted is based on the internal cellular system and it is called a cellular phone, a cell phone, or just — in its reduced form — a cellular. In British English the emphasis is placed on the movable quality of such a phone and it is called a mobile phone. In German, the “useful and simple to use” aspect is stressed and the device is named ein Handy, which is an instance of German word formation with English elements. In French its movability is

Chapter 3. Meaningful building blocks 53

stressed and it is called un portable. In Flemmish it is called een gsm (an acronym standing for ‘global system for mobile communication’) and in Dutch een mobiel. The word portable also exists as an older French loan-word in English, but it is nearly always associated with a television set as illustrated in (1).

(1) We swapped our colour television, and bought a black and white portable.

When a name like portable TV has been around for some time, it becomes entrenched and accepted. Part of it may even be clipped, so that portable stands for the whole concept and is no longer available for a new concept, at least not in English.

As Dutch shows, acceptability of new composite words di ers not only across languages, but also across varieties of the same language. In both British English (BrE) and American English (AmE), car refers to a vehicle with a fuel engine. However, car is more usual in BrE than in AmE, where the general name automobile or specific names such as sedan or convertible are frequently used. A place to park a car in BrE is a car park, in AmE a parking lot if outside, or a parking garage if it is an enclosed building. Obviously, the choice of a new composite word or expression for the many new things in our cultures is the result of an “onomasiological struggle”, something which is also present in the way British and American English di er in the naming of kitchen gadgets.

As the etymological origin of some American English items shows, name-giving in American English reflects to some extent the multicultural composition of the American population and the diverse onomasiological resources of American English. The study of name-giving or onomasiology is therefore closely linked to the culture prevailing within a given variety of a language and this is even more apparent if we look at di erent languages. Summarizing the various

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onomasiological possibilities of English, we have now encountered six types of name-giving, as shown in Table 3, where a number of the items of (2) are listed in six di erent classes.

Table 3. Various types of lexical forms

In the following sections, we will first investigate the two main types of word formation: compounding (3.2), and derivation (3.3). We will then look at other types of word formation (3.4), and finally at grammatical morphemes (3.5). In each section we will also consider the di erent senses morphemes may have and what roles they may play in naming things.

3.2 Compounding

After looking at the di erent patterns of compounds and analyzing the distinction between compounds and syntactic groups, we will look at the types of compounds that get accepted and the functions compounding has.

3.2.1 Basic patterns of compounds

Compounds have highly strict patterning. The first element in the compound receives the main stress, but it is generally the second element that determines the compound’s new word class. Thus in blackbird the second element (bird) is a noun and the compound as a whole remains a noun. This element is called the head of the compound. The head of a compound belongs to one of the three major word classes: noun, verb, or adjective. The first element can also be any one of these three. Thus we have three patterns of compounds, each with three members.

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alligators tells us we cannot have a dressing domain (they don’t wear shoes), it is most likely to be the “provenance” relation but not of the alligator as a whole, but of one element in the alligator frame only, i.e. its skin. In tennis shoes the purpose domain is clear. In horse shoes and snow shoes the purpose relation is self-imposing, too. There we have the elements of protecting or supporting for the feet: These the only elements that fit into the ‘horse’ frame and the ‘snow’ frame, respectively. As a consequence of this conceptual blending, the words that enter the compounding process do not necessarily keep their original meaning, but may undergo widening (generalization) or narrowing (specialization).

Since verbs and adjectives denote relations, the blends in these compounds are more straightforward because the kind of relation is overtly expressed.

Verb compounds usually denote an event in the head of the compound, and the first element in the blend suggests the instruments with which, or circumstances in which the event takes place: In (5a) we have an instrumental interpretation, in (5b) a circumstantial one (you walk in your sleep) and in (5c) again an instrumental one (you clean something by blowing it dry).

c.adjective + adjective = dark-blue, pale yellow

Here the head of the adjective compound is further specified by the first element. The noun in (6a) denotes the area or field to which the adjective as the head applies. The verb denotes the degree (6b) to which the property holds and therefore means “very”. The adjective in (6c) denotes a shade in the property denoted by the head element: The blue can be very dark or move towards the light end of the spectrum.

3.2.2 Compound versus syntactic group

A syntactic group, also called a phrase, is a composite syntactic unit such as a black bird, which is a noun phrase and consists of a determiner, an adjective, and a noun. The phonological di erence with a compound like blackbird is that

Chapter 3. Meaningful building blocks 57

a compound has one main stress, usually on the first element, whereas a syntactic group like a black bird has two stresses: Primary or main stress (´) and secondary stress (`), and the main stress of these two is on the second element. Compare:

This phonological di erence is accompanied by a fundamental di erence in meaning. Compounds have meanings of their own: The sum of the meanings of the composing elements is not equal to the meaning of the compound. A blackbird need not necessarily be black, but might in the imagination of a speaker be any colour so that we could even have “a brown blackbird”. Actually, we do talk of brown blackbirds, which are in fact the females of the species. In other words, in (7a) we only mean one kind of bird, but in (8a) we may mean any kind of bird that is black. Also in (7b) and (8b) this di erence is very outspoken: A ´paper basket is a basket in which to throw used paper, but a `paper ´basket is any basket made of paper. In some cases there is no di erence as in (7c) and (8c). On the whole, compounds are like simple words, but in spite of their idiosyncratic meaning, the meaning of a compound is to a large extent transparent.

Some compounds such as cranberry or daisy, however, are no longer transparent or analyzable. They are therefore called darkened compounds. In the example cranberry the first element cran does not evoke any meaning although it is etymologically relatable to the name of a bird, i.e. crane. Sometimes we do not even realize that a word was originally a compound as in daisy, which derives from the “day’s eye”, i.e. a flower opening up early in the morning, or in window, derived from wind and auge ‘eye’, i.e. “the eye (in the wall, like an eye in the face) for the wind to fan”. What such darkened compounds show is that during the course of time a compound gets “entrenched” so deeply in the language that it is no longer analyzed and not felt to be di erent from a simple word any longer.

We can conclude that there are di erent degrees of transparency and productivity with compounds. At the fully productive end of the continuum, compounds are not only very easy to produce and hence so frequent, but they are also transparent as already discussed in Chapter 1.2.3. Compounds are fully