Lecture 2

Morphology

List of principal questions

1. Morphemic structure of the word

2. Two basic criteria of the morphemic structure of the word

3. Categorial structure of the word

4. Grammatical classes of words

1. Morphemic structure of the word

The morphological system of language reveals its properties through the morphemic structure of words. It follows from this that morphology as part of grammatical theory faces the two segmental units: the mor­pheme and the word. But the mor­pheme is not identified otherwise than part of the word; the functions of the morpheme are effected only as the corresponding constituent func­tions of the word as a whole.

In studying the morpheme we actually study the word in the necessary details of its composition and functions.

Definition to the word

It is very difficult to give a rigorous and at the same time universal definition to the word, definition as would unambiguously apply to all the different word-units of the lexicon. This difficulty is ex­plained by the fact that the word is an extremely complex and many-sided phenomenon. Within the framework of different linguistic trends and theories the word is defined as:

• the minimal potential sentence,

• the minimal free linguistic form,

• the elementary component of the sentence,

• the articulate sound-symbol,

• the grammatically arranged combination of sound with meaning,

• the meaningfully integral and immediately iden­tifiable lingual unit,

• the uninterrupted string of morphemes, etc.

None of these definitions, which can be divided into formal, functional, and mixed, has the power to precisely cover all the lexical segments of language without a residue remaining outside the field of definition.

The said difficulties compel some linguists to refrain from accepting the word as the basic element of language. In particular, American schol­ars - representatives of Descriptive Linguistics founded by L. Bloomfield - recognized not the word and the sentence, but the phoneme and the morpheme as the basic categories of linguistic description, because these units are the easiest to be isolated in the continual text due to their "physically" minimal, elementary segmental character: the phoneme being the minimal formal segment of language, the morpheme, the minimal meaningful segment. Accordingly, only two segmental levels were origi­nally identified in language by Descriptive scholars: the phonemic level and the morphemic level; later, a third one was added to these - the level of "constructions", i.e. the level of morphemic combinations.

In spite of the shown difficulties, however, there remains the unques­tionable fact that each speaker has at his disposal a ready stock of nam­ing units (more precisely, units standing to one another in nominative correlation) by which he can build up an infinite number of utterances reflecting the ever changing situations of reality.

This circumstance urges us to seek the identification of the word as a lingual unit-type on other lines than the "strictly operational definition".

The nature of the element of any system is revealed in the character of its function. The function of words is realized in their nominative cor­relation with one another.

As we see, if the elementary character (indivisibility) of the morpheme (as a significative unit) is established in the structure of words, the ele­mentary character of the word (as a nominative unit) is realized in the system of lexicon.

Summing up what has been said in this paragraph, we may point out some of the properties of the morpheme and the word which are funda­mental from the point of view of their systemic status and therefore re­quire detailed investigations and descriptions.

The morpheme is a meaningful segmental component of the word; the morpheme is formed by phonemes; as a meaningful component of the word it is elementary (i.e. indivisible into smaller segments as regards its significative function).

The word is a nominative unit of language; it is formed by mor­phemes; it enters the lexicon of language as its elementary component (i.e. a component indivisible into smaller segments as regards its nomi­native function); together with other nominative units the word is used for the formation of the sentence - a unit of information in the commu­nication process.