Word Structure
, M. H. Aronoff 1974
This work deals, in the main, with that aspect of word structure referred to commonly as derivational morphology, though other related areas are touched upon in the course of discussion. Much, though by no means all of the material discussed is drawn from English. The framework presented pretends, however, to universal scope.
We divide the question of word structure into two subparts, that of word-formation, the coining of new words, and that of word-analysis, the provision of structure to already existing words. We say that there is a lexicon or dictionary, the main provision for entry into which is that an entry must be a word, and be arbitrary (unpredictable) in at least one aspect of its meaning or form. New words are coined by the application of general rules called Word Formation Rules. Such a rule forms a new word from an already existing one, one in the lexicon, by performing an operation of a specific sort on that existing word. Existing words are analysed by applying to them the same Word Formation Rules, but as redundancy rules, i.e. as rules for determining how a word might have been formed. Not all new words are added to the lexicon. Whether a given word is added depends on whether it is arbitrary, and this is correlated with the productivity of a rule by which it is formed.
Because of the way in which Word Formation Rules are formulated (one affix, one rule), it is necessary to posit a class of readjustment rules, which operate on the output of the Word Formation Rules, and whose output itself is the input to the phonology, and to the Lexical Insertion Transformation.
The rules of derivational morphology are completely separated from the other sets of rules of a grammar. They operate on words to produce words or to provide structure to existing words. The figure below gives a simplified picture of the interaction of the derivational morphology with other parts of the grammar.
[FIGURE]
Thesis Supervisor: Morris Halle, Professor of Linguistics
1 | Ground and teleology | 13 | |||
1.1 | Derivation and inflection | 14 | |||
1.2 | Other types of morphology | 17 | |||
1.3 | A brief survey of the recent history of the study of morphology | 19 | |||
Footnotes to Chapter 1 | 24 | ||||
2 | Basics | 25 | |||
2.1 | Trouble with morphemes | 25 | |||
2.1.1 | Minimal signs | 26 | |||
2.1.2 | Words | 27 | |||
2.1.3 | Morphemes | 28 | |||
2.1.3.1 | Cranberry morphs | 29 | |||
2.1.3.2 | Other berries | 29 | |||
2.1.3.3 | Prefix=stem (+latinate) | 31 | |||
2.1.3.4 | A similar case | 37 | |||
2.1.3.5 | Defining the morpheme | 37 | |||
2.1.4 | Trouble with words | 38 | |||
2.1.4.1 | Cranberry words | 38 | |||
2.1.4.2 | The numerous verbs stand | 39 | |||
2.1.5 | An historical note on inflection | 40 | |||
2.2 | Word formation | 41 | |||
2.2.1 | Possible and actual words | 41 | |||
2.2.2 | Types of new words | 45 | |||
2.2.3 | What are new words coined from | 46 | |||
2.2.3.1 | Oddities | 46 | |||
2.2.3.2 | Words from morphemes | 46 | |||
2.2.3.3 | Word-based morphology | 48 | |||
2.2.3.4 | Word Formation Rules | 48 | |||
2.2.3.5 | Assumptions about the lexicon | 50 | |||
2.2.4 | Evidence for the proposal | 51 | |||
2.2.4.1 | The phonological cycle | 51 | |||
2.2.4.2 | Irregular back-formations | 58 | |||
2.2.5 | Counter-evidence | 61 | |||
2.2.6 | Word structure | 64 | |||
Footnotes to Chapter 2 | 68 | ||||
3 | Productivity | 72 | |||
3.1 | Preliminaries | 72 | |||
3.2 | +ness and +ity | 76 | |||
3.2.1 | Gaps | 76 | |||
3.2.2 | Semantics | 77 | |||
3.2.3 | Phonology | 79 | |||
3.2.4 | Gaps again | 82 | |||
3.2.5 | Semantics again | 86 | |||
3.3 | Blocking | 87 | |||
3.4 | Conclusion | 91 | |||
Footnotes to Chapter 3 | 92 | ||||
Preface to Part 2 | 93 | ||||
4 | Word Formation Rules | 99 | |||
4.1 | Syntax and semantics | 101 | |||
4.1.1 | The base | 101 | |||
4.1.1.1 | The unitary base hypothesis | 102 | |||
4.1.2 | The output | 104 | |||
4.1.2.1 | Semantics | 105 | |||
4.1.2.2 | Syntax | 107 | |||
4.2 | Morphology | 109 | |||
4.2.1 | Morphological restrictions on the base | 109 | |||
4.2.1.1 | Abstract morphological features | 109 | |||
4.2.1.2 | Restrictions statable on individual morphemes | 113 | |||
4.2.1.3 | Encoding morphological restrictions | 117 | |||
4.2.1.3.1 | Ordering of WFRs | 119 | |||
4.2.1.3.2 | Unordered WFRs | 129 | |||
4.2.2 | The morphological operation | 133 | |||
4.2.2.1 | Copying rules | 134 | |||
4.2.2.2 | Infixing | 144 | |||
4.2.2.3 | Consequences | 146 | |||
4.2.3 | The place of the morphological operation in the grammar | 150 | |||
4.2.3.1 | Reduplication paradoxes | 152 | |||
4.3 | Phonology | 167 | |||
4.3.1 | Phonological conditions | 167 | |||
4.3.1.1 | An aside concerning negative and positive conditions | 168 | |||
4.3.1.2 | Conditions on the underlying form of the base | 169 | |||
4.3.1.3 | Stress-sensitive affixes | 170 | |||
4.3.1.4 | + boundaries and cycles | 172 | |||
4.3.1.5 | # boundaries and cycles | 175 | |||
4.3.1.6 | A theory of boundaries and brackets | 175 | |||
4.3.2 | Problems | 176 | |||
4.3.2.1 | A condition on the surface form of the output | 176 | |||
4.3.2.2 | A global phonological condition | 177 | |||
4.3.2.3 | A transderivational constraint | 178 | |||
4.3.2.4 | Boundary problems | 180 | |||
4.4 | Summary | 183 | |||
Footnotes to Chapter 4 | 185 | ||||
5 | Adjustment rules | 188 | |||
5.1 | Truncation rules | 189 | |||
5.1.1 | +ee | 189 | |||
5.1.2 | +ant | 192 | |||
5.1.3 | +er | 195 | |||
5.1.4 | TruncaWFRs | 198 | |||
5.1.5 | Truncation and phonology | 199 | |||
5.1.6 | Russian truncation | 200 | |||
5.1.7 | German ge-deletion | 205 | |||
5.2 | Allomorphy rules | 207 | |||
5.2.1 | -ion | 208 | |||
5.2.1.1 | Allomorphs of ation | 209 | |||
5.2.1.2 | +ation | 210 | |||
5.2.1.3 | Stems of the form X+ate | 212 | |||
5.2.1.4 | The marked roots | 212 | |||
5.2.2 | Root allomorphy | 218 | |||
5.2.2.1 | fy+ and ply+ | 228 | |||
5.2.3 | Other allomorphy | 229 | |||
5.2.4 | Allomorphy and other parts of the grammar | 232 | |||
Footnotes to Chapter 5 | 236 |