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English Morphology

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 English
Morphology
Syllabi for the Lectures
Examples and Exercises

Ludmila Veselovská
1st and 2nd editions 2006, 2009. Revised 2017.

Reviews
Jeffrey Parrott, PhD; Dagmar Machová, PhD.

Language consultant
Prof. Joseph Emonds, PhD.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1

2 COMMUNICATION (REVISION) ......................................................... 3

2.1 Model of Communication ....................................................................................................... 3
2.2 Human Language .................................................................................................................... 3
2.3 Linguistics ............................................................................................................................... 4

3 LINGUISTICS IS A SCIENCE ............................................................. 9

3.1 Characteristics of Linguistic Descriptions............................................................................... 9
3.2 Founders of Scientific Linguistics in the 20th century ............................................................. 9
3.3 General principles of classification ....................................................................................... 10
3.4 How to Evaluate Data (Acceptability vs. Unacceptability) ................................................... 10
3.5 Stating the Rules / Principles................................................................................................. 12

4 MORPHOLOGY ..................................................................................... 16
4.1 Morphemes ............................................................................................................................ 16
4.2 Lexical and non-lexical Meaning of Morphemes .................................................................. 16
4.3 Criteria for dividing morphemes ........................................................................................... 18
4.3.1 Taxonomy with respect to the meaning/function of the morpheme ................................... 18
4.3.2 Taxonomy with respect to the independent occurrence of the morpheme ......................... 19
4.3.3 Taxonomy of affixes according to their position with respect to the stem......................... 19
4.4 Morphemes as Things or Rules? ........................................................................................... 21
4.4.1 Level of Abstraction of Morphology .................................................................................. 21

5 WORD-FORMATION, ‘COINING’, ‘NEOLOGISMS’ .................... 25

5.1 Lexicon .................................................................................................................................. 25
5.2 Kinds of Word Formation ..................................................................................................... 25
5.3 Back Formation ..................................................................................................................... 26

6 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY .................................................... 30

6.1 The Open-endedness of the Lexicon ..................................................................................... 30
6.2 Constraints on Productivity ................................................................................................... 30
6.2.1 Blocking Effect .................................................................................................................. 31
6.2.2 Phonological Factors ........................................................................................................ 31
6.2.3 Morphological Factors...................................................................................................... 31
 6.2.4 Interaction of Morphology and Phonology ....................................................................... 32
6.2.5 Semantic factors ................................................................................................................ 32

7 COMPOUNDING .................................................................................... 36
7.1 Orthography........................................................................................................................... 37
7.2 Stress Placement in Compounds ........................................................................................... 38
7.3 Morphology ........................................................................................................................... 38
7.4 Syntax of idioms vs. compounds ........................................................................................... 38
7.5 Semantics .............................................................................................................................. 40
7.6 Headedness of Compounds ................................................................................................... 41
7.7 Right-hand Head Rule ........................................................................................................... 41

8 SOME SPECIAL KINDS OF (ENGLISH) COMPOUNDS ................ 45

8.1 Nominal Compounds: Bracketing ambiguities (“Bracketing Paradox”) .............................. 45
8.2 Verbal Compounds (Incorporation) ...................................................................................... 45
8.3 Other types of Endocentric (English) Compounds ................................................................ 46
8.3.1 Alliterative and Rhyming Compounds ............................................................................... 46
8.3.2 Cranberry and Neoclassical Compounds (analogical formations) ................................... 47
8.3.3 Coordinate/ copulative compounds ('Dvandva' compounds) ............................................ 47
8.3.4 Left-hand Headed Compounds in English ......................................................................... 47
8.4 Headless Compounds in English (Exocentric Compounds) ................................................. 48
8.4.1 Metaphoric ('Bahuvrihi') semantically opaques compounds ............................................ 48
8.4.2 Verb-Preposition Compound Nouns (formed from Phrasal Verbs) ................................. 48
8.4.3 Quotational Compounds.................................................................................................... 49

9 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY OF LANGUAGES ..................... 51

9.1 Index of Synthesis ................................................................................................................. 52
9.1.1 Isolating Languages .......................................................................................................... 52
9.1.2 Polysynthetic and Incorporating Languages..................................................................... 53
9.2 Index of Fusion...................................................................................................................... 53
9.2.1 Agglutinating Languages................................................................................................... 54
9.2.2 Fusional / Inflectional Languages ..................................................................................... 54

10 PARTS OF SPEECH / WORD CATEGORIES ................................... 61

10.1 The Nature of Categories ...................................................................................................... 64
10.2 Semantic-Notional Criteria for establishing a Category (often imprecise) ........................... 65
10.3 Morphological Criteria for establishing an item's Category (very reliable) .......................... 65
10.3.1 Derivational Morphology .................................................................................................. 66
10.3.2 Inflectional Morphology .................................................................................................... 66
10.3.3 Grammaticalization as a source of Morphology ............................................................... 67
10.3.4 Types of Features .............................................................................................................. 68
11 SYNTACTIC CRITERIA FOR ESTABLISHING A CATEGORY .. 72
11.1 Heads, Phrases and Pro-forms ............................................................................................... 72
11.2 Categorial Prototypicality...................................................................................................... 74
11.2.1 “Fuzzy” Categories ........................................................................................................... 74
11.3 Some non-lexical categories or minor parts of speech .......................................................... 75

12 ATTACHMENTS .................................................................................... 78
12.1 Irregular Plurals ..................................................................................................................... 78
12.2 Extended Irregular Verb Dictionary ...................................................................................... 85
12.3 LIST OF SOME ENGLISH BOUND MORPHEMES ....................................................... 101
12.3.1 Negative affixes ............................................................................................................... 101
12.3.2 Some of the more frequent English suffixes ..................................................................... 101
12.3.3 Prefixes of Germanic origin ............................................................................................ 104
12.3.4 Non-German prefixes ...................................................................................................... 104
12.3.5 Some morphemes of Greek origin ................................................................................... 105
12.3.6 Some of the more frequent roots of Latin origin ............................................................ 106

13 RELATED LITERATURE................................................................... 108

14 INDEX ..................................................................................................... 110

1 INTRODUCTION

Working with this text

This text has been written to assist students of English in their work in Morphology and
Morpho-Syntax courses in the programme of English philology. It assumes a solid working knowledge
of English grammar and of the traditional grammar at the level assumed for the grammar school
courses of the Czech language.
This text, however, is in no way intended to replace any textbook specified in a course
description, nor does the material presented here cover all of what students need to read for their
exams. Instead, it provides syllabi for the lectures with many schemes and examples commented on
and discussed in the course. Without such a commentary some of them may be difficult to understand,
so the students are strongly encouraged to make their own notes and remarks during the classes.
Enough space is given between the paragraphs and on the margins so that such additions are possible.
Some students may still have problems with English terminology and structuring their study - this text
should also provide them with the main terms used, and the sections basically follow a pattern that can
be used in preparing for English grammar exams, though not all topics are covered to the same extent
and some require more individual reading.
Apart from syllabi, the following text also contains a number of exercises. The function of the
exercises is twofold. First, they introduce some new aspects or problems of the proposed analyses not
mentioned in detail during the lectures. Second, they allow students to test their understanding of the
topics under discussion. In some cases, however, there is no generally agreed solution to the problem
so the exercise provides more data for discussion of alternatives that go beyond simple minded tests of
memorized knowledge.

The Topics and Background Philosophy

This volume constitutes a general introduction to the study of morphology as a part of

linguistics. It deals with the most standard and frequent processes of English word-formation,
concentrating mainly on derivation and compounding. At the end some general principles of the
morphological typology of languages are introduced and discussed. The last chapter provides an
introduction for the next part of the course: English Morphosyntax of the main lexical categories (parts
of speech). It deals with morpho-syntactic criteria for English parts of speech, providing a universal
introduction to the topic. Each script in this series contains an introductory Revision section testing the
assumed preliminary knowledge, and a final Revision section which summarizes the basic topics
covered in the course.
The text concentrates on topics which the author finds most important, most interesting and
sometimes neglected in other study materials. To complement these individual choices, at the
beginning of most sections there are some bibliographical references to the literature which are
recommended as study material for the course. The students are expected to go through at least some
of the materials mentioned.
The author of the following text believes in linguistics, above all in grammar, as an autonomous
science. Therefore the analyses here assumed that human language is a system which can be studied
by applying scientific methods, with the result of acquiring some descriptively adequate and as
explanatory as possible generalized hypotheses (most of which have implications for more than one
language). Empirical data and argumentation are thus strongly preferred to the memorizing of any
listed classifications, and no a priori analysis or theory is taken for granted or as definitive.

1
Nonetheless, the presentation and hypotheses here, such as in the choices of categories, are based on
traditional functional and structuralist grammar (which the students used during their pre-university
education) and only slightly influenced by current theoretical proposals.
Recent functional and generative approaches typically present themselves as returning to the
empirical concerns of traditional grammar and at the moment provide a wide range of plausible
frameworks. The grammatical analyses introduced in this course assume the need for empirical and
scientific understanding of human language and although it concentrates on formal grammar, it
assumes interactions with other disciplines such as a theory of communication, literary study,
psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.
The author hopes that discussing and trying to understand basic grammar in a more universal
and open-minded way turns out to be useful for all students of English language, who can then go on
in their studies in whichever field or framework suits their fancy. However, this script is not a
textbook in a specific linguistic theory. If some students want to pursue their linguistic studies in the
future, they have to find their field and acquire more specialized knowledge in a more systematic
framework.

And at the end, I would like to thank my colleagues Joseph Emonds, Jeffrey Parrott and other
reviewers for their comments, revisions of the text, adding many usefull examples and all their help
which made the text more suitable for seminar work.

2
2 COMMUNICATION (REVISION)

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002) pp. 2-16, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) pp. 1-10; Akmajian,
Demers, Farmer & Harnish (1990) pp. 1-10; Crystal (1987) pp. 395-414.

2.1 Model of Communication

INFERENCE MODEL: takes into account also inferences, i.e. a specific pragmatic interpretation
must include context and consistency (a large complex of factors).

(1) COMMUNICATION - A simplified Message Model

REALITY (H2O, CO2, light rays,…)

CONCEPT of reality “water, air, light…”

message source message destination

CODING DECODING

transmitter receiver
speaker/writer CODE = symbols, signs hearer/reader

channel/noise/etc.
CONTEXT (linguistic/ extralinguistic)

LANGUAGE: A human specific communication code (arbitrary, conventional).

2.2 Human Language

Crystal (1987) pp. 395-403.

Compare human language (human-specific communication code) with animal communication. The
distinction is NOT in the level of communication needs, feelings, etc., but primarily in the FORM.

(1) Language Faculty - a human specific innate ability to acquire language

Universal Grammar - a set of abstract, universal principles of the system in the brain

(2) a) Discrete infinity

b) 'Double articulation' / 'Duality of patterning'
!!!
3
(3) Discrete infinity
Human language makes “infinite use of finite means” (Wilhelm von Humboldt). That is, a finite list of
discrete elements (individually distinct and countable, as opposed to continuous) combine according
to specific rules or principles, yielding an infinite number of expressions.

(4) 'Double articulation' / 'Duality of patterning'

(Hockert 1960): the existence of two levels of rule-governed combinatorial structure: one combining
meaningless sounds into morphemes, the other combining meaningful morphemes into words and
phrases, is a universal design feature of human language.

(5) Innateness Hypothesis

(Chomsky 1957) The innate abstract principles are the same for all children, irrespective of ethnic
background, i.e. they are NEUTRAL with respect to differences among languages, i.e. they are
UNIVERSAL. Then language universals reflect the existence of general linguistic principles which
facilitate the child's language-learning task.

2.3 Linguistics

Crystal (1987) pp. 81-123; Svoboda (2004) pp. 10-15.

Sciences/disciplines dealing with human language:

(6) a. Theory of communication, semiotics (treats language as a central branch).

b. LINGUISTICS
- Language form: syntax/morphology, phonology/phonetics
- Language meaning: semantics
- Language use: pragmatics

c. Interdisciplinary fields: stylistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,

neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, etc.

Special (technical) subfields within linguistics: lexicology, lexicography, logopedics

(7) Levels of linguistic analysis (parts of formal Linguistics):

a. TEXT ANALYSIS text / paragraph

(Hypersyntax) clause / sentence

(i) SYNTAX phrase syntagma

b. GRAMMAR
(ii) MORPHOLOGY word paradigms
morpheme

c. PHONETICS / PHONOLOGY segments phonemes/ allophones

4
Some levels of linguistics (e.g., phonetics/phonology, semantics, pragmatics) are more autonomous,
i.e. independent. They have their own definable topics and categories, deal with specific elements and
apply their own rules which are less derived from other fields than others.

In contrast, morphology and syntax (= grammar) use similar elements, apply similar rules and discuss
the same or similar topics and categories.

(8) Immediate constituent analysis of phonetic/phonological structure:

a. His father is tired.

b. his father is tired

c. his father is tired

d. [his] [fa] [ther] [is] [tir] [ed]

e. h i z f a đ ә i z t ai ә d

e. sound segments (the symbols are only illustrative)

d. syllables (consonantal onset + vocalic nucleus + optional “coda”)
c. phonetic word (stress pattern, etc.)
b. phonetic phrase (also stress pattern, intonation, etc., and related to syntactic structure)
a. phonetic sentence (intonation pattern, etc.)

Phonetics/phonology is an autonomous field of linguistics. It deals with elements which distinguish

meaning but do not have meaning themselves (sound segments/phonemes), e.g. cat vs. rat; Czech pat
vs. pád, myši vs. Míši.

Phonological rules apply without respect to meaning, e.g. final devoicing in Czech applies to all parts
of speech and all sentence members, i.e. to all phonetically defined elements irrespective of their role
in the other parts of the language system.

Notice the duality of patterning, as in (4) above. A few meaningless elements (sound segments such
as consonants and vowels) combine into a huge number of meaningful units (morphemes) which
further combine into an infinite number of larger units (complex words, phrases, clauses, texts).

5
(9) Levels of morpho-syntactic (grammatical) structure:

a. His father is tired.

b. his father is tired

c. his father is tired

d. [he] + s father [be] + s tir + ed

d. morpheme = ‘minimal meaningful element’

c. word/ part of speech (choice of a member of a paradigm)
b. phrase/ grammatical category and sentence member/ function (syntagma)
a. clause

Revising terminology: Syntagma vs. Paradigm

(10) Syntagma
!!!
- relation between two syntactic categories. Syntagmatic relations are hierarchical. Traditionally they
are equivalents of sentence functions (which relate sentence members), e.g. subject-predicate, noun-
adjectival attribute, verb-object.
Sometimes we use only one of the couple to classify the relation. An 'attribute' means a relation which
e.g. an adjective has with respect to a Noun (blue sky).

(11) a. real trouble

b. often talk
c. write a letter
d. John reads

The syntactic system is a complex net of grammatical relations. The units which form a system are
not separable from the relations, in fact it is the relations (=functions) that justify the units.

(12) Paradigm
!!!
- a list of (e.g. morphological) forms of one unit (tokens of a type), e.g. he (pronoun): he/ his/ him,
help (verb): help/ helped/ helping, book (noun): book /books, nice (adjective): nice/ nicer/ nicest. One
of the paradigmatic forms is usually taken as unmarked and called the citation form. Paradigms are
traditionally related to specific parts of speech (categories).

(13) a. I, me, my, mine

b. boy, boys

6
(14) EXERCISE ===========================================
Discuss the main topics (units, terms) of the following sciences. What does it mean to say that
phonetics and semantics are autonomous parts of linguistics?

a) phonology/ phonetics d) lexicology g) communication theory

b) morphology e) semantics h) semiotics
c) syntax f) pragmatics i) stylistics

(15) EXERCISE ================================================

Decide for the following pairs whether they differ in meaning, pragmatic use, or form. Match the pairs
with the correct statement below:

i. Same meaning, different pragmatics, different structure = A or B ?

ii. Same meaning, same pragmatics, different structure = A or B ?
iii. Same meaning, different pragmatics, same structure = A or B ?

a. I’ve never been beaten in a poker game by a woman before, so could you be quiet?
b. Ain’t no dame never beat me at poker afore, so shut up, can you?

-- Who did Caesar complain about?

a. It was Brutus that Caesar complained about to Mark Anthony.
b. It was Mark Anthony that Caesar complained to about Brutus.

a. John liked the play.

b. John was pleased by the play.

(16) EXERCISE =================================================

a. Compare the PARADIGM of an English pronoun/ noun/ verb with the paradigm of their Czech
counterparts.
b. Compare the SYNTAGMA of an English pronoun/ noun/ verb with the syntagma of their Czech
counterparts.

a. .......................................................................................................................................................
..................................................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................

b. ........................................................................................................................................................
...................................................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................................
...................................................................................................................................................................

7
(17) EXERCISE =================================================
Name the parts/units involved in the structure at a given level using the following terms: sentence
member, sound, syntagma, part of speech, syllable, phoneme, morpheme, word, clause/sentence,
paradigm, predicate, pronoun, etc. Think of other terms related to a given level.

a. My boy friend reads novels.

b. my boy friend reads novels

c. my boy friend reads novels

d. my boy friend read + s novel + s

e. m y b [o+ y] f r [ i+ e] n d

a. ....................................................................................................................................................

b. ....................................................................................................................................................

c. ....................................................................................................................................................

d. ....................................................................................................................................................

e. ....................................................................................................................................................

(18) EXERCISE ============================================

Revise the topics from Introduction to Language-Linguistics:

- structure of linguistic fields

- main topics of each field
- primitives in a given field

8
3 LINGUISTICS IS A SCIENCE

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002) pp. 17-42, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) pp. 11-28.

3.1 Characteristics of Linguistic Descriptions

Linguistics, as a science, deals with a language system, i.e. this means an structure of interrelated
elements. The language system is a reality, it is a human-specific code for communication. It is subject
to principles and rules that are specific to human language structure, i.e. they are “species-specific
abilities.”

That is, the linguistic model should be specific to human language.

(1) Linguistics
a. observes/studies data within one or many language(s),
b. describes them (classifies their parts),
c. looks for generalizations in these descriptions, and
d. creates a model of grammar that can express these generalizations, but cannot express other
systems that cannot occur as human languages.

(2) a) narrow data → wide comparison of such sets of data

b) concrete descriptions → abstract generalizations that express common features

(3) LEVELS OF ADEQUACY in models of grammar:

a. Observational adequacy: the model must reflect the data correctly, as in (1a-b above).
b. Descriptive adequacy: the model uses symbols and categories to expresses not just the data but
also generalizations in the descriptions of data, as in (1c).
c. Explanatory adequacy: individual rules are related to the whole system, as in (1d).

(4) General UNIVERSALS: e.g. all languages have essentially the same parts of speech.

(5) Language-specific features: e.g. some languages have morphological case on adjectives, e.g.
Czech and German, while others do not, e.g. English and French (comparative linguistics).

3.2 Founders of Scientific Linguistics in the 20th century

The only part of 19th c. linguistics today considered scientific (that is, predictive in some sense)
described historical (“diachronic”) sound changes in Indo-European languages.

Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1915) introduced:

(6) The distinction between diachronic and synchronic linguistics, which is the study of language
as a system in the brains of speakers, which has no (significant) historical dimension.

9
Except for learning new vocabulary, an adult’s grammar typically doesn’t change.

(7) The distinction between langue ‘language’ and parole ‘speech’.

For de Saussure, all speakers of the same language share langue, the same store of words and
morphemes, which he calls “signs”. The relation between sound and meaning for each sign is
arbitrary.

Parole is how individuals choose to use items from their langue in making up utterances
communicating with each other. Thus, the parole of any two speakers is different.

Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (1957) proposed that natural language grammars can be
represented as formal systems that combine minimal units of meaning (= “morphemes”) into well-
formed sentences of a language.

In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), he argued that humans are innately disposed to acquire such
grammars (without instruction as small children). This ability to acquire, understand, and produce
language is linguistic competence. The actual use of language in particular real life contexts is
performance.

(8) The distinction between competence and performance.

Chomsky’s competence not only includes knowledge of a lexicon (= de Saussure’s langue), but also
the combinatory principles of grammar, in addition to langue.

3.3 General principles of classification

Labels used in grammar for classifications (e.g. parts of speech or sentence functions) do not denote
any real entities. The classification must reflects some theoretical claim about similarity between the
members of the class. Saying that XX is "a noun" or "an attribute" we are claiming that XX has the
properties and behaviour which a theory assigns to a concept of "noun" or "attribute". If the label does
not correlate with any properties/ characteristics/ behaviour, it is not of any use.

(9) "Taxonomy is to be valued if it provides a convenient and revealing

conceptual organization of the entities in its realm... in our case something
in terms of which grammatical and semantic generalizations can be easily formulated"
!!!
Fillmore (1977:68)

3.4 How to Evaluate Data (Acceptability vs. Unacceptability)

(10) Native speakers have intuitions a) about the WELL-FORMEDNESS of strings of words,
and
b) about STRUCTURE (groupings, etc.).

10
"We may make an intuitive judgment that some linguistic expression is odd or deviant. But we cannot
in general know, pretheoretically, whether this deviance is a matter of syntax, semantics, pragmatic,
belief, memory limitations, style, etc., or even whether these are appropriate categories for the
interpretation of the judgment in question. It is an obvious and uncontroversial fact that informant
judgments do not fall neatly into clear categories: syntactic, semantic, etc.”
(Chomsky: Essays, 1977:4)

(11) a structure can/must be evaluated w.r.t.: A) its usage (pragmatic contexts)

a speaker has competence in: B) its interpretation (meaning)
C) its form (grammaticality)

A) Pragmatic Competence (Theory of Language Use)

(12) a. ? an honest geranium

b. ? The man next door swears it never looses its temper with anyone.
c. ? the tree who we saw
d. ? Each human being has two or three eyes.
e. ? William might have been pregnant but he had a miscarriage.
f. ? The umbrella is flying with the bathroom.
g. ?Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
h. ?I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to compose someday.

B) Semantic Competence

"The borderline between grammar and semantics is unclear, and linguists will draw the line
variously... Similarly the borderline between grammar and pragmatics (and even more between
semantics and pragmatics) is unclear." (Quirk et al. 1985:16)

(13) The 'meaning' of a lexical item (e.g. factive verbs)

a. He thought that Elisabeth was there, but it turned out that she wasn't.
b. ! He realized that Elisabeth was here, but it turned out that she wasn't.

(14) Co-reference (there are rules for possible co-reference)

a. Petr věděl, že ho někdo určitě viděl. = Peter and ho are the same person
b. (On) Věděl, že Petra někdo určitě viděl. = Peter and on are not the same person

(15) a. The mani knew that somebody saw himi

b. !/*Hei knew that somebody saw the mani - the indices mark the co-reference

(16) a. Hei hoped that Mary loved himi. - Pronoun co-reference is fine.
b. Whoi hoped that Mary loved himi? - Pronoun co-reference is fine if who= him.
c. Who did he hope that Mary loved? - Pronoun co-reference bad if who= him.
*Whoi did hei hope that Mary loved?

(17) a. Everybodyi is loved by hisi mother. - Pronoun co-reference is fine.

b. ?Hisi mother loves everybodyi. - Pronoun co-reference very doubtful.

11
C) Grammatical Competence (Grammaticality)

(18) a. *Will you opening the window?

!!!
b. *Opens the window, please!
c. *Each room have two or three window.
d. *Jane might be had pregnant but she had miscarriage.
e. *The witch flying is with straw broom some.

The reason for the ungrammaticality has to be found, defined and explained, referring to some rule
and/or principle, which the ungrammatical sentence violates.

(19) Phonological competence: blick vs. *bnick SENtence vs. *senTENCE

(20) Morphological competence: men vs. *mans tigress vs. *horsess

(21) Syntactic competence: I sent him out a copy. vs. *I sent a copy to him out.

3.5 Stating the Rules / Principles

Testing grammaticality (native speaker judgments) is the main method for studying a linguistic
system. Grammatical examples, however, illustrate a possibility, not a rule. The rules are defined
correctly only when their violation results in ungrammaticality. We have to find contrasting examples
to demonstrate the potentials and limits of the system.

Compare the following examples in (22). Discuss how each of them 'demonstrates' the rule for the
order of Subject – Verb – Object in English and Czech (and are these fixed vs. free?).

Consider also the style, frequency, special interpretations, etc.

(22) SVO a. Mary wrote the letter. a'. Marie napsala dopis.
SOV b. *Mary the letter wrote. b'. % Marie dopis napsala.
OVS c. *The letter wrote Mary. c'. Dopis napsala Marie.
OSV d. The letter Mary wrote. d'. % Dopis Marie napsala.
VSO e. *Wrote Mary the letter. e'. % Napsala Marie dopis.
VOS f. *Wrote the letter Mary. f'. % Napsala dopis Marie.

(23) EXERCISE ================================================

Mark the acceptability, distinguishing between OK= correct, ,* = ungrammatical, e.g. a syntactic
morphological error, and ! / ? = a semantic /pragmatic, discourse error.

i. a. Jenda zabil kámen.

b. Tygr zabil antilopu, ale ona neumřela.
c. Včera to jsem koupil si.

ii. a. Můj bratr Petr si uvědomil, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.

b. Moje kočka si uvědomila, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.
c. Moje zlaté rybičky si uvědomily, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.

12
 d. Můj prvok si uvědomil, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.
e. Moje teflonová pánev si uvědomila, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.
f. Moje pravdomluvnost si uvědomila, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.
g. Moje narození si uvědomil, že jsem mizerná kuchařka.
h. Můj bratr Petr si uvědomil, že jsem mizerná kuchařka, ale já jsem dokázala, že
to není pravda.
i. Moje Petr si uvědomil, jsem že mizerný kuchařka.

iii. a. Podívej se na toho švidravého slona.

b. Podívej se na ta švidravá játra.
c. Podívej se na ta švidravá proti.

iv. a. Včera ho nutil napsat to Marii.

b. Včera ho to Marii nutil napsat.
c. Včera ho nutil podepsat se jí.
d. Včera se jí ho nutil podepsat.

v. a. Bleděmodří sloni se 35. listopadu zakuklili.

b. Dvanáctitečné slunéčko sedmitečné si utrhlo nožičku.
c. Kdo si myslíš, že to Marušce koupil?
d. Kdo se ptala, že to Marušce koupil?
e. Kdy si myslíš, že dal Petr Marušce ten karafiát?
f. Kdy si myslíš, co dal Petr Marušce?

(24) EXERCISE ================================================

Decide on the well-formedness of the following examples. Use the correct symbols for deviant
sentences (choosing among ?/ !/ *).

i. a. Zach killed the stone.

b. Zach killed the rabbit but it didn't die.
c. Killed rabbit Zach.

ii. a. My uncle realizes that I'm a lousy cook.

b. My cat realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
c. My goldfish realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
d. My pet amoeba realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
e. My frying pan realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
f. My sincerity realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
g. My birth realizes that I'm a lousy cook.
h. My uncle realizes that I'm a lousy cook, but I proved I am not.
i. My realizes uncle that I'm a lousy cook.

iii. a. Look at the cross-eyed elephant.

b. Look at the cross-eyed strange.
c. Look at the cross-eyed from.

13
(25) EXERCISE ================================================
Mark the acceptability and try to explain it. Which principle/rule does the ungrammatical example
violate? Be clear, short and accurate.

a. Everybody like to read novels.

b. The wheatfield informed Alice that she should turn left.
c. Adam completely will finish his work.
d. I gave to some of my students new books.
e. Pink elephants will fly under the city.

(26) EXERCISE ================================================

How would you interpret the following data? Which principle/rule do they demonstrate? Can you add
more data showing the same rule?

i. a. This book can tire me out. aʻ. ..........................................................

b. *These book can tire me out. bʼ. .........................................................

ii. a. big boy aˇ. velký chlapec

b. big girl b'. * velký dívka
c. big baby c'. % velký dítě

iii. a. I went to school. a' . Já jsem šel do školy.

b. You went to school. b'. * Ty jsem šel do školy.
c. He went to school. c'. * On jsem šel do školy.

iv. a. *I saw boy.

b. I saw your boy.
c. I saw a boy.
d. *I saw the your boy.

(27) EXERCISE ================================================

Give examples which illustrate the facts about English Subject-Verb agreement and try to state the
rule for the agreement as precisely as possible (e.g. 'English Verbs show Subject-Predicate agreement
only in …..). Recall that your rule and examples are to illustrate all possibilities including the
ungrammatical ones. Don't forget was vs. were. This is not simple, but try to express yourself as
economically as possible!

.........................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................

(28) EXERCISE ================================================

14
Do your examples in (27) exclude/ take into account also the following data?
If not, do they make your rule 'wrong'? How can one make it 'right'?

a. * I be at home.
b. * The teacher musts read their papers.

(29) EXERCISE ================================================

a) Mark the grammaticality of the sentences below.
b) A traditional definition of pronouns is that they can be used instead of nouns. Do the following data
confirm the definition?
c) Can you improve the definition? Give more examples illustrating the same phenomena.

a. She went to school.

b. Emma went to school.
c. My little sister went to school. .
d. My she went to school.
e. My little she went to school.
f. My little one went to school.

g. I saw him.
h. I saw Adam.
i. I saw the tall blond boy.
j. I saw the he/ him.
k. I saw the tall blond he/ him.
l. I saw the tall blond one.

(30) EXERCISE ================================================

ADDITIONAL READING (see the courseware in Moodle or in the library)

- Aarts, Bas (2008) 'Syntactic Argumentation.' In: English Syntax and Argumentation,
Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire. Chapter 10, p. 167-187.

- Haegemann, Liliane (2006) 'Linguistics as the Science of Language.' In: Thinking Syntactically: A
Guide to Argumentation and Analysis, Blackwell, London. Chapter 1, p. 3-18.

15
4 MORPHOLOGY

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002) pp. 1567-1579, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) pp. 264-290;
Crystal (1987) pp. 88-100; Dušková (1994) pp. 13-22; Akmajian/ Demers/ Farmer/ Harnish (1990)
pp. 11-52; Finegan & Besnier (1989) pp. 85-124; Fromkin & Rodman (1990) pp. 122-157; Katamba
(1993); Matthews (1974); Spenser (1991).

4.1 Morphemes

Leonard Bloomfield (Language 1933), the “father of American structuralism”

(1) ‘A morpheme is the smallest element of a language which carries a meaning.’

Which kind of meaning? In language everything has ‘some’ meaning = reason/function/role in the
system. Recall that sound segments (= “phonemes”) can distinguish meanings, but they do not carry it
themselves.

4.2 Lexical and non-lexical Meaning of Morphemes

(2) Morphology as a realization of A. lexical (autosemantic) meaning, or

B. grammaticalized meaning

Discussing the meaning of all the parts of the words below, we need to refer not only to the lexical
meaning of the stem, but also to the other parts of the word.

(3) přeskakovali = přes + skak + ova + l + i

Lexical morphemes (stems and fixed combinations of them) express a vast number of meanings –
they reflect human concepts: boy, believe, age, flaw, evolution, game, vegetable, vacuum, China,
Christmas, Islam, strawberry, road block, photo montage, intervene, undermine, disconcerting, etc.

Computational linguists estimate that native speakers control about 30,000 lexical entries, including
compounds, derivational formations, etc.

Non-lexical morphemes are far from infinite in number. They are the core of the
grammar/combinatorial system of a language, i.e. their number, form, position, combinations etc.
define the specific typological characteristics of the language (e.g. Czech vs. English).

Grammatical meanings. For some morphemes, their 'meaning/function' is simply to assign a

grammatical category or to be itself a member of a category:

(4) [N] one, thing, stuff, dark-ness, govern-ment, stupid-ity, brother-hood,

[Adj] such, atom-ic, colour-ful, green-eye-d, inter-nation-al
[V] do, have, be, dark-en, modern-ize, intens-ify, celebr-ate

16
Some morphemes provide a grammaticalized (simplified, regular) meaning (within the existing
language specific limits). They express "grammatical features."

Morphemes can also signal a relation, a configuration, a syntagma:

(5) English: book of good stories, lack of money, the King of Kings, a matter of fact

The morpheme of that introduces NPs inside larger NPs signals the relation of attribute between a
modifying noun and the preceding head noun. It has no other function or meaning in this position.

(6) Czech: vysok-á dívka, star-ou knihu

The morpheme -á in vysok-á is a morpheme of agreement (in gender, number and case), which
signals that the expression is related to a feminine noun (compare with vysoký).

(7) The-se boy-s

The form these contains a morpheme of agreement in number, which signals, that the expression is
related to a plural noun (compare with this).

(8) a. [Case: genitive/accusative] hi-s, hi-m

b. i. So they killed hi-m right away. ii. She spoke with hi-m every day.

Case shows a relation to another member of the syntagma. Here, -m marks the object function of he
with regard to the verb kill or the preposition with. Such a function is interpreted as how the object (of
a verb or preposition) is affected. The meanings include in (i) he is dead, and in (ii) he was spoken to.

c. hi-s only recent picture

-s in his marks the function of he with regard to the noun picture, and such a function is interpreted as
the Agent, Patient, or Possessor role of he.

(9) Emma read-s well.

-s in reads does not modify the lexical meaning of the stem, i.e. the reading activity is identical with or
without the morpheme -s. The morpheme -s is configurational; it shows agreement, i.e. it signals that
the verb read is related to a subject and the subject is 3sg.

Grammatical morphemes typically represent a marked setting of a relevant feature.

(10) Feature: a (usually) binary property of sound segments and grammatical categories.
E.g. ±VOICING, ±NUMBER , ±TENSE

(11) a. [Number: singular/plural] book-s

b. [Tense: Present/Past/Future] govern-ed, will govern
c. [Aspect: Perfect/Progressive] has stopp-ed, is stopp-ing
d. [Grade: Comparative/Superlative] short-er, short-est
e. [INF: no Subject/Predicate] to govern, to have gone
f. [CASE: Subject/Object /Genitive] he, hi-m, hi-s

17
4.3 Criteria for dividing morphemes

(12) I. Taxonomy with respect to the meaning or function of the morpheme

II. Taxonomy with respect to the independent occurrence of the morpheme
III. Taxonomy of affixes with respect to their position

4.3.1 Taxonomy with respect to the meaning/function of the morpheme

(13) (see also 4.2 above):

a. LEXICAL: stem (free/bound)

b. NON-LEXICAL: functional word (free) / affix (bound)
(i) DERIVATIONAL affixes create a new word or a different category.
(ii) INFLECTIONAL affixes create a specific form within a paradigm.

(14) (bi) a. writ+er V→N

b. modern+ize Adj→V
c. modern+ize+ation Adj→V→N
d. nation+al+ity N→Adj→N
e. king+dom N (person)→N (region)
f. instruct+ive V→Adj
g. thirteen+th Num (cardinal)→Adj (ordinal)

(15) (bii) a. governor+s, match+es N (plural)

b. pretti+er, Adj (comparative)
c. stopp-ed, is read+ing V (Tense, Aspect)

PARADIGMS, declensions and conjugations.

(16) (i) (pro)nominal paradigms (declensions)

a. he, his, him...

b. on, něho, jemu...
c. žena, ženy, ženě, ženu, ženo!, ženou

(ii) verbal paradigms (conjugations)

a. help, helps, helped...

b. pomáhám, pomáhá...pomáhal jsem...pomohou...

18
4.3.2 Taxonomy with respect to the independent occurrence of the morpheme

(17) a. BOUND morphemes (bound stems, affixes)

b. FREE morphemes (content words, function words)

(18) more beautiful vs. pretti-er to read vs. čís-t

little apple vs. jabl-íčko will not go vs. won’t go
bude říkat vs. hablar-a (Spanish) the girl from Prague’s shoes

4.3.3 Taxonomy of affixes according to their position with respect to the stem

a. prefix
(19) Taxonomy by position (18): b. suffix
c.
d.
circumfix
in(ter)fix !!!
(20) a. Prefixes: under-graduate, en-rich, ex-minister, mis-read, over-sleep, re-design
b. Suffixes: dark-ness, atom-ic, govern-ment, brother-ly, intens-ify, modern-ise
c. Circumfixes: some Czech collective nouns, e.g. sou-ostrov-í ‘island group’, some
German past participles, e.g. ge-hab-t ‘had’
d. Infixes: rare in English, e.g. abso-bloody-lutely, and Czech, e.g. to-ho-to, to-mu-to

(21) A possible taxonomy (combining more criteria)

MORPHEMES bound bases prefixes

affixes suffixes
in(ter)fixes
circumfixes
contracted forms

free function(al) words

content words

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

What are the underlined morphemes? If there is more than one option, give different structural
contexts which disambiguate them.

a. read-ing .......................................................................................................................
b. stop-s .......................................................................................................................
c. introduc-ed ......................................................................................................................
a. read-ing-s .......................................................................................................................

19
(23) EXERCISE ================================================
Which kind of morpheme are the –S/-ED/-ING/-ER morphemes in the following examples? Justify
your choice. Consider the category of the following word in the context.

a. i. This is Emma'-s book.

ii. These book-s belong to Emma.
iii. Emma read-s many books.

b. i. This chicken was kill-ed (by Harriet).

ii. This chicken is freshly kill-ed (*by Harriet).
iii. A freshly kill-ed (*by Harriet) chicken (*by Harriet).

c. i. He is read-ing the book.

ii. His read-ing of the book has taken a long time.
iii. He is quite a bor-ing guy.

d. i. He is a bit bigg-er than Barbara.

ii. He is a fit swimm-er.

(24) EXERCISE ================================================

How can you show/argue/prove that the bold element in (a) is a morpheme while in (b) it is not?
Apply similar arguments to (c). Is the part in bold a morpheme?

a. speak-er ......................................................................................................................
b. moth-er .......................................................................................................................
c. nic-er .......................................................................................................................
a. yawn-ing .......................................................................................................................
b. awn- ing .......................................................................................................................
c. own- ing .......................................................................................................................
a. un-paid .......................................................................................................................
b. un-derling ........................................................................................................................
c. un-do ………..............................................................................................................
a. re-call ........................................................................................................................
b. re-cord ........................................................................................................................
c. re-member .........................................................................................................................

(25) EXERCISE ================================================

On each line, what is the distinction between the underlined morphemes?

a. She is much nic-er than Mary. a'. She is more beautiful than Mary.
b. I stopp-ed at the traffic lights. b'. I will stop at the traffic lights.
c. Jill does-n't want to come. c'. Jill does not want to come.
d. Chod-íš do parku. d'. You are going to the park.
e. On chod-í do lesa. e'. He go-es to the forest.

20
(26) EXERCISE ================================================
What is the meaning of the morpheme –ER/MORE in the following contexts?

a. big, big-er, the bigg-est b. clever, more clever, the most clever

Does your definition cover also the following examples?

c. This dwarf is much bigg-er than that dwarf, but neither of them is big.
d. Though Barbara is more clever than Grace, they are both pretty stupid, in fact.

Discuss: i. Is a big mouse bigger than a small elephant?

ii. How big is ‘big’?
iii. What is the contribution to meaning of an Adjective modifier?

4.4 Morphemes as Things or Rules?

Morpheme vs. allomorph: Every differently pronounced form is a kind of allomorph!

(27) Some single morphemes:

a. plural of nouns
b. past tense of the verb be
c. event nominalization (compare Czech –ny on verbs)

(28) Their allomorphs:

a. -s [-s/-z/-iz] /-en /Ø: cats, keys, bushes, oxen, deer- Ø
b. was if the subject is grammatically singular, were otherwise.
c. -(t)ion/ -ment/ -al/ Ø, … / -ing (default):
re-ceive>re-cept-ion, develop(ment), deny>deni-al, arrest- Ø, eat(ing)

Allomorphs are in (i) ‘free variation’ or

(ii) ‘conditioned’.

The conditioning for [-s/-z/-iz] in (a) is phonetic, in (b) the conditioning is syntactic, and in (c) the
conditioning is lexical.

4.4.1 Level of Abstraction of Morphology

I. Morphology = concatenation of morphemes = ‘things’/adding material to a string

II. Morphology = applying an abstract rule + subsequent insertion of a form in a structure

View I: Morphology = concatenation of morphemes = ‘things’/adding material

What kind of ‘things’? writ + er + s = writers

21
(29) Affixation to a stem (See again (20).
a. prefixes NA-rostl / DE-stabilize
b. suffixes bez to-HO chlapce, modern-IZE
c. infixes bez to-HO-to chlapce
d. circumfixes chodi-LA BYCH

BUT! There are other examples which make this simplified view less plausible.

(30) Suppletion between stems: go>went, good>better>best, she>her, is>are, two>second

Suppletional can be partial: France > French > franco-phile, Franco-American

Note: Regular phonetic conditioning and conventional spelling changes are not suppletion:
(31) stop> stopp-ed, edit> edited, find> finds, nice> nic-er, city> cities, tomato>tomatoes

Cliticization to a stem. In English this is usually called contraction and written with
apostrophes. Are the bold morphemes on the right bound of free?

(32) a. He is not at home. He isn't at home. He’s not at home

b. Ann is often home evenings. Ann’s often home evenings.
c. They are not reliable. They’re not reliable. They aren’t reliable.

(33) Null/Zero affixation = “TRUE CONVERSION”

a. a cut/ stop/ talk/ defeat/ telephone vs. to cut/ stop/ talk/ defeat/ telephone

b. he is back vs. to back his team vs. my back hurts

c. Šel okolo našeho domu. vs. Šel jenom tak okolo.
d. Objednal si dršťkovou. vs. Objednal si dršťkovou polévku.

View II: Morphology = application of an abstract rule + subsequent insertion

Under this view, what is insertion ‘subsequent’ to? If the abstract rules don’t depend on words that
actually exist, then they are all productive, and say little about the real forms of a language. What
describes a given language are the conditions for inserting specific morphemes, as in View I.

But some morphological processes don’t seem to just “add things” to strings of morphemes:

(34) Phonological change/alternation in a stem. These are never productive in English.

a. stress change: construct, contrast, increase, import, record, torment, transport
b. vowel quality:
(i) length/ height: lead>led, loose>loss, meet>met, hide>hid, choose>choice
(ii) quality = ‘ablaut’/ ‘apophony’ sing>sang>sung, tell>told, mouse>mice
c. consonant mutation:
(i) inflections: bend > bent, leaf >leaves, roof >rooves
(ii) derivations: N>V: advice>advise, belief>believe, extent>extend, use, house

22
(35) Reduplication: Czech: mal-IN-ký > mali-LIN-katý
Spanish: poqu-IT-o > poqu-IT-IT-o

Some languages use reduplication as a grammatical device. But in English it is always word play, and
is limited to spoken language. Nonetheless, different versions are common:

(36) (i) Baby-talk reduplicates trochaic words, replacing initial consonants with w-:
bready-weady, milky-wilky, Daddy-waddy, butter-wutter, button-wutton

(ii) Reduplication can form compounds with regular lefthand stress, meaning ‘genuine,
authentic’:
salad-salad (with no meat), French-french (born in France or ethnic French), city-city (not a
small place more like a town), coffee-coffee (not decaffeinated)

(iii) Disdainful reduplication (U.S. slang, from Yiddish), replaces consonants before initial
stress with shm-: fancy-shmancy, bagel-shmagel, Rolex-shmolex.

These processes appear to apply subsequent to the insertion of specific morphemes, because they
involve modifying such morphemes in systematic ways.

(37) EXERCISE ================================================

Looking above at (4)-(9), discuss the number of distinct bound and functional morphemes in Czech
and in English. Are there distinctions in quantities of (i) free, (ii) derivational, and (iii) inflectional
morphemes?

(38) EXERCISE ================================================

Give English morphemes for the following features. If there is more than one, state the distinctions. If
there is some choice of pronunciation, give all options.

a. Number .......................................................................................................................
b. Gender .......................................................................................................................
c. Case .......................................................................................................................
d. Tense .......................................................................................................................
e. Aspect .......................................................................................................................
f. Grading .......................................................................................................................

(39) EXERCISE ================================================

Consider the importance of productivity (regularity). Which morphemes and words are listed
separately in the dictionary and how? Why? Under which letter are the listed words placed?

a. writer, sleeper, -er f. impossible, unlikely, im-, un-

b. wonderful, wasteful, -ful g. submarine, sub-normal, sub-
c. drivable, steerable, -able h. co-operate, co-produce, co-
d. goddess, tigress, -ess i. reevaluate, recalculate, re-
e. distress, de-stress, dis-, de- j. blackboard, chalkboard

23
(40) EXERCISE ================================================
Give four examples (two English and two Czech) of the types of morphemes. Write a complex word
and underline the relevant morpheme.

ENGLISH CZECH
free functional morphemes.................................................................................................................
free stems............................................................................................................................................
bound bases…..………………………………………………………………………........................………
prefixes …….......................................................................................................................................
suffixes…….........................................................................................................................................
circumfixes ….....................................................................................................................................

EXERCISE ================================================
Using your vocabulary and consulting the Appendix 1, derive as many words as possible from the
following roots. Example: employ, employ-ee (V→N), employ-er (V→N), under-employ-ment (V→N),
un-employ-ed (V→Adj), employ-able (V→Adj)...

read .........................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................
act .........................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................
light .........................................................................................................................................

(41) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the internal structure of the following complex words/sequences. Divide them into morphemes
and state the kinds of morphemes. Find other words containing the same morphemes.

Example: underemployment = under+employ+ment

-under - derivational prefix, ‘low, less’ (e.g. under-graduate, under-mine, under-used)
employ – root/ stem, ‘give work’ (e.g. employ-er, employ-ee, employ-able)
ment – derivational suffix, V→N, ‘institution/ abstract’ (govern-ment, improve-ment )

a. waiters
......................................................................................................................................
b. modernizeable ..................................................................................................................................
c. re-reads …..................................................................................................................................
d. unspoken ……..............................................................................................................................
e. (he is) reading ..................................................................................................................................
f. having been arrested ………………….………………………………………....…….......……....………
...............................................................................................................................................

24
5 WORD-FORMATION, ‘COINING’, ‘NEOLOGISMS’

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1623-1695), Huddleston & Pullum (2005: 264-290); Quirk/
Greenbaum/ Leech/ Svartvik (2004: 1515-1586).

5.1 Lexicon

Word: A simple word is a minimal free form. Lexeme: A word that is listed in lexicon.
A lexical entry is comprised of the form + the meaning, i.e. it includes all specific (idiosyncratic)
phonological/morphological/syntactic/semantic properties of a word.

Some lexemes are smaller than a word (they are bound morphemes), and some are greater (compounds
and idioms).

!!!
.
(1) Center/ Core vs. Periphery of the lexicon:

Grammatical elements and basic lexical words are in the (stable) center.
The Periphery (neologisms, cultural changes, slang, archaisms) undergoes more modifications.
Position of a specific lexical entry in the Lexicon is subject to diachrony - it changes

5.2 Kinds of Word Formation

Diachronic vs. synchronic views needed.

(2) NEOLOGISMS:
a. Totally new forms are rare, but can be found in slang.
b. old forms with a new meaning, e.g. snail-mail, cool, cruise, surf
c. generalized meaning, e.g. Kleenex, Xerox, Pampers,cola, faucet
(3) LOAN words:
a. genetics, international, infant, perfume, table, sister, they, take
b. coffee, café, teepee, robot, polka, hacek, typhoon, sushi, trek

Languages can differ in their tolerance to loans. The reasons may be social (e.g. xenophobia) or formal
(e.g., synthetic languages must adopt the new words to paradigms).

(4) COMPOSITION:
a. DERIVATION: combining stems and bound morphemes (Ch. 3)
b. COMPOUNDING. Ch. 6 treats regular forms of compounding.

25
(5) Quotation compounds:
are special fixed phrases used as single words:
hard-to-get items, do-it-yourself store, fly-by-night business, hand-me-down shirts,
off the cuff speech.

(6) Exocentric compounding:

compounds which do not contain an obvious (esp. semantic) head
blackbird, greenhouse, numbskull, pineapple, private eye, fullblood, offday, high school,
high strung,piping hot

(7) Blends/Portmanteau words:

Words made by combining parts of words (not common).
smog (<SMOke+foG), motel (<MOTor+hoTEL), hi-fi, beefalo (<BEEF + bufFALO), brunch,
Eurasia, franglais, Tex-Mex, phys-ed (<PHYSical Education).

(8) CONVERSION:
(a) True Conversion: See discussion of (30) in Ch. 3. These may involve a null affix.
(b) Partial Conversion: see the discussion of (31) in Ch. 3. These involve some stress, vowel,
or consonant changes. Frequent but no longer productive in present-day English.
construct (V) > construct n., increase (V) > increase n., loose>loss, choose>choice, sell> sale,
sing>song, advise>advice, believe>belief, extend>extent, see>sight

(9) ABBREVIATIONS:
a. Initial abbreviations: IBM, MP, p.m., sob, UN, EU, ac-dc, pms
b. Acronyms: UNESCO, radar, wasp, NASA, snafu, WACS, awol
c. Clipping:bike, fridge, info, veg, detox(ify), butt(ocks), to con (< confidence), hype(rbole),
mike (<microphone), rehab(ilitation)

5.3 Back Formation

Back formation is a (relatively rare but very interesting from a morphological point of view) source of
new stems derived by analogy, when some part of the word is analysed as an affix although it is NOT
historically an affix. (Sometimes backformation can look the same as clipping.)

(10) a. televise <television , difficult <difficulty , medic <medical , bus <omnibus

b. baby-sit < baby-sitter , chain-smoke <chain-smoker , dry clean <dry-cleaning
c. beg < beggar, burgle<burglar, edit <editor , crap < crapper < Thomas Crapper
d. tummy <stomach , civvies <civilian wear , limo <limousine , loony <lunatic

To claim that some word has been back-formed, we have to provide arguments about the likelihood of
the steps in the process of the word formation. The arguments may result from:

(11) a. more detailed morphological analysis,

b. knowledge of some specific morphological (word-formation) process,

26
 c. knowledge of historical data; such as those in (14).
(12) a. tele – vis – ion regular complex word consisting of existing morphemes
tele- e.g. tele-phone, tele-graph, tele-pathy
vis- e.g. vis-ibility, in-vis-ible
-ion e.g. locat-ion, nat-ion, divis-ion, evas-ion

b. televise which morphemes does it consist of ???

a. tele- e.g. tele-phone, tele-graph
b. vis- e.g. vis-ibility, in-vis-ible
or b. *-v- .... such a morpheme forming V doesn't exist.
c. -ise e.g. modern-ise, legal-ise

Conclusion: the word 'televise' couldn't be formed in a normal way. It must have been backformed by
speakers assuming an analogy with the words ending on –ion which have the verbal source in –ise
(modern-ise → modernisat-ion; re-vise → revis-ion).

(13) baby – sit – ing regular (old, Germanic) process of incorporating compounds.
The structure is [N+ [V + er/ing ]], never [N+V]. Exceptions
are assumed to follow the regularity, not the opposite:

a. make coffee → coffee making, coffee maker BUT * to coffee make

b. paint houses → house painter, house painting BUT * to house paint
c. lay bricks → bricklaying, bricklayer BUT * to bricklay
d. sit (with) a baby → baby sitting, baby sitter EXCEPTION!!! to baby sit
e. smoke in a chain → chainsmoking EXCEPTION!!! to chainsmoke

(14) Thomas Crapper a name of an engineer

crapper the WC Thomas Crapper invented and sold
crap back-formed analogically to Verb: writ(+er), crapp(+er)

Some derivations are even more complex:

(15) a. Hamburg → hamburg+er

b. ham+burger → burger [although "ham" was not a morpheme in Hamburg]
c. chees+burger, fish+burger

The knowledge of historical data can thus be a source of information about a word’s origin.

(16) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss how/when the underlined words entered the English vocabulary.

a. Charles IV was a great king, not an archbishop.

b. Her ex-husband is a bricklayer. He works like a robot.
c. Mr. Kinnock has never been Prime ministerable.
d. It’s nonsense to use a canoe for such a long journey.
e. They saw the Princess Royal on the balcony.

27
(17) EXERCISE ================================================
How were the underlined words first formed?

a. Samuel spilled coke, so take some Kleenex and wipe it off.

b. I have never been to the USA, though it is a member of NATO.
c. Joe bought a new bike, and rde out to pick blackberries.
d. This sandwich should count as a kind of brunch.
e. That company is disappointing; it should try to increase production.
f. To back her daughter’s team, she is ready to baby-sit every day.

(18) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain potential problems with the following words when used in Czech.

René, IBM, teepee, zoo, vacuum, Dolores Ibarruri, Ghana, tsunami, knedlich, gnocchi

(19) EXERCISE ================================================

Provide original words for the following abbreviations and acronyms. Add some examples of
further abbreviations you know.

a. a.m./ p.m. ....................................................................................................................................

b. B.C. / A.D. / C.E. .........................................................................................................................
c. UN(O) ...................................................................................................................................
d. OPEC ...................................................................................................................................
e. FBI ...................................................................................................................................
f. CIA ...................................................................................................................................
g. UNICEF ...................................................................................................................................
h. SOB ...................................................................................................................................
i. MP ...................................................................................................................................
j. CD ROM ...................................................................................................................................
k. RIP ...................................................................................................................................
l. CUNY ...................................................................................................................................
m. radar ………………………………………………………………….…………. .....................
n. nylon ...................................................................................................................................
o. PC ...................................................................................................................................
p. .......... ...................................................................................................................................
q. .......... ...................................................................................................................................

28
(20) EXERCISE ================================================
What is the origin of the following words?
a. brunch ....................................................................................................................................
b. jeep ...................................................................................................................................
c. boa.tel ..................................................................................................................................
d. co-ed ...................................................................................................................................
e. wi-fi ..................................................................................................................................
f. sci-fi ...................................................................................................................................
g. .......... ...................................................................................................................................
h. .......... . ..................................................................................................................................

(21) EXERCISE ================================================

Do the following words seem to be in the centre/core of the vocabulary or on the periphery?
a. matka, cédéčko, posed (v lese), makromolekulární, ona
b. child, infant, mother, kid, sophisticated, chic, movie, e-mail, cop, camouflage, yuppie

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

Give some words that in your lifetime entered English vocabulary. What are their stylistic values?

(23) EXERCISE ================================================

Give examples of the words which during your life time entered the Czech vocabulary. What are their
stylistic values?

(24) EXERCISE ================================================

Try to generalize the rule for (i) the stress distribution and (ii) consonant mutation for the categorial
change of the word pairs of verbs and nouns like:

a. construct, contrast, import, permit, contest, record, torment, transport, etc.

b. advise/ advice, believe/ belief, house, mouth, use, breathe/ breath, bathe/ bath

................................................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................................................

(25) EXERCISE ================================================

Use the following quotation compounds in short sentences and translate them to Czech. Then
form some yourself.

a. hard-to-get ................................................................................................................
b. do-it- yourself store ................................................................................................................
c. fly-by-night ................................................................................................................
d. what's-his-name ................................................................................................................

29
6 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1666-1720), Huddleston & Pullum (2005: 264-290).

(1) Creating/Enlarging the Lexicon by COMPOSITION

a. Compounding STEM + BASE / STEM

b. Derivation (BASE) + DERIVATIONAL AFFIX
c. Paradigm forms: + INFLECTIONAL ENDING

(2) (a) blueprint, word-stock, trigger-happy, dry clean, offshoot, back formation
(b) writ-er, invest-ment, final-ize, brother-ly, mis-calculate, re-invent, bilion-th
(c) read-s, John-’s, thinnk-s, wash-ed, spok-en, breath-ing, nic-er, ugli-est
(d) friend-li-est, re-low-er-ing, re-develop-ment-s, de-magnet-ize-s

Creating a new word by combination of base (bases) and affix(es)

BUT: The taxonomy in (1) needs a precise definitins of a word/a base/an affix/an ending?

PREFIX BASE SUFFIX ENDING

!!!
6.1 The Open-endedness of the Lexicon

Real words vs. potential words (‘individual’ occasional nonce-words: uncomplicatedness). Words are
listable (in dictionaries). Core and Periphery of the Lexicon; see (1) in Chapter 4.
Productivity follows from the rule-based processes of forming new words.

(3) PRODUCTIVITY - can produce an infinite number of words/utterances,

in Morphology - is a matter of degree not a dichotomy,
- is subject to a dimension of time.

A certain process can become more of less productive over many years.
Productive vs. idiosyncratic / frozen morphemes: E.g., past participles V–ed vs. V-en.
Creativity - standard linguistic competence of the system potentials
- individual innovations (poetic language)

6.2 Constraints on Productivity

Phonetic, morphological and semantic constraints which restrict the application of some more general
rule.

30
6.2.1 Blocking Effect

A more specific (idiosyncratic) form takes preference over (blocks the existence and use of) a less
specific (regular) form. This is the Blocking Principle of Aronoff (1976).

(4) a. write > writ-er

steal > *steal-er (blocked by idiosyncratic ‘thief’)
b. help > help-ed
write > *writ-ed (blocked by irregular 'wrote')
c. book
man
>
>
book-s
* man-s (blocked by irregular 'men') !!!
6.2.2 Phonological Factors

Example 1: ADJ → ADV-ly cannot be used if it has a repetitive effect.

(5) easy → easily, stupid → stupidly, friendly → *friendlily, smelly → *smellily

Example 2: ADJ→ V-en (inchoative V = ‘to begin to be ADJ/to cause to be ADJ’)

(i) Requires a monosyllabic base, and (ii) must end in a stop or fricative.

(6) a. fast > fasten, soft > soften, dark > darken, loose > loosen, tough > toughen
b. dry > *dryen, blue >*bluen, low >*lowen, fine >*finen, lame >*lamen
c. stupid >*stupiden, morose >*morosen, urgent >*urgenten, alive >*aliven

Example 3: The nominalizing –al requires a stem with final stress.

(7) betray+al, refuse+al, arrive+al, reverse+al, arouse+al, deny+al

6.2.3 Morphological Factors

The order of morphemes is fixed. And English allows only one productive inflection.
This is unlike even similar languages like German: ein saue-rer-er Apfel ‘a more sour apple’.

(8) a. two boy-s; a boy-’s room; *two boys’s room (where boys’s has two syllables)
some poem-s; a poen-‘s ending;* two poens’s endings (with two syllables)
b. that James family; those James-es are crazy; the James-’s car (two syllables ok)
Sherlock Holmesʼs arrogant; Sherlock Holmes’s career (two syllables ok)
c. men’s room, women’s room, *boys’s room, *kids’s room

Three classes or “levels” of morphemes (Margaret Allen 1978; Dorothy Siegel 1979).

Class I (often Romance): a. -tion, -ity, -ous, ... b. in-, pro-, re-, ...
Class II (often Germanic): a. -ness, -ful, -ly, ... b. un-, sub-, re-, ...
Class III: productive inflections (suffixes)

31
Level Ordering of affixes (Word composition as a Process)
(i) take the base and add Class I affix, possibly several: e.g. nation+al + ize + ation
→ assign word stress rules (and apply non-automatic phonological processes),
(ii) then add affixes of Class II in its position: e.g. de + nation+al + ize + ation,
(iii) then add Class III affixes (regular inflection) e.g. de + nation+al + ize + ation + s.

(9) Class I affixes always precede Class II affixes and Class III endings.

a. danger-ous-ly *danger-ly-ous
b. writ-er-s *write-s-er
c. courage-ous-ness *courage-ness-ous
d. able-ity-s (abil-iti-es) *able-s-ity
e. character-iz-ing *character-ing-ize

6.2.4 Interaction of Morphology and Phonology

Class I affixes have special phonological processes, Classes II/III are phonologically inert.

(10) assimilation of prefixes: legal → in+legal = illegal

real → in+real = unreal / *urreal
lawful → un+lawful =*ullaful

(11) stress attraction: ocean → ocean + ic ocean + less

conscience → conscient-ious conscience + ness
rapid → rapid + ity candid →candid + ness
pronounce → pronunci +ation pronounce + ment

6.2.5 Semantic factors

Specific restrictions on certain affixes often involve their meaning.

(12) Compound adjectives of the form ADJ+N+ed seem best for ‘inalienable possession’:

a. red-roofed house one-armed bandit wide-eyed girl

b. *white-fenced house *two-gunned outlaw *long shirted guy

(13) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the internal structure of the following complex words. Find other words which are comprised
of the same morphemes.

E.g. underemployment = under (prefix, ‘below, less’, e.g. under-ground), employ (root, ‘give
work’, e.g. employ-er), ment (suffix, V→N, ‘state’, ‘process’’, e.g. govern-ment)

32
a. childishness .................................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
b. novelists .......................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
c. overdevelopment .......................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
d. governmental .......................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
e. modernize ......................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
f. privatizations ......................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................
g. reinvestment ...............................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
h. immortality ........................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................
i. debriefing ................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................
j. co-operatively ......................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................
k. subcontractor ......................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................
l. multi-talented ......................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................................
m. monothematic ......................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................................

(14) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain the ungrammaticality of (a) Using examples (b) and (c) discuss whether (a) is due to
"pronunciation difficulty" or "impossibility of possession by a plural noun".

a. *girls’s room (where girl’s has a second syllable with a reduced vowel)
b. Charles → Charles-e-s, → Charles-’s book
c. children / woman → children's room, women’s shoes

Mention the synchronic vs. diachronic approach (which morphemes are synchronically productive?).

33
(15) EXERCISE ================================================
Write the meaning/function of the following morphemes and give two short, distinct example sentences
containing them.

a. -ise ............................................................................................................................................
b. -ic ............................................................................................................................................
c. -al ............................................................................................................................................
d. -en ............................................................................................................................................
e. -hood ...........................................................................................................................................
f. re- ...........................................................................................................................................
g. co- ...........................................................................................................................................
h. dis- ...........................................................................................................................................
i. fore- ...........................................................................................................................................

(16) EXERCISE ================================================

What can one say about the relative order of derivational and inflectional morphemes? Give several
more English and Czech examples showing that there is a universal rule.

a. govern-ment-s aʼ. uči-tel-é

b. * govern-s-ment bʼ. *uči-é-tel

(17) EXERCISE ================================================

Referring to the constraints on productivity, explain the (un)grammaticality:

a. boy / boys, child / *childs, bonus/ bonuses, focus/ *focuses

b. stop / stopped, speak / *speaked, try/ tried, fly/ *flied
c. easy / easily, silly / *sillyly, pretty/ prettily, ugly/ *uglily
d. black / blacken, white / whiten, green / *greenen, glad/ gladen, shy / *shyen
e. illegal, impossible,*ullawful, *umpretentious
f. blue-eyed boy, *red-capped boy, *two-cared family, *big-Alsatianed woman
g. proposal, revival, *baptisal, *disenfranchisal

(18) EXERCISE ================================================

Mark and explain the distribution of the stress.

a. lawful → unlawful, unlawfulness

b. finite → infinite, infinity
c. marine → submarine
d. marine → ex-marine

34
(19) EXERCISE ================================================
Discuss the distinctions between uses of the morpheme -er.

a. baker, cleaner , dancer, fighter, killer, painter, teacher, toiler, worker, wrecker
b. banker, barber, butcher,carpenter, dresser, farmer, gripper,, hooker, lawyer, prisoner
c. bomber, mixer, stretcher, hanger, upper/downer, whisker, rooster, poster, breather

(20) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the functions of the -ER in the following contexts. Support the distinctions by providing more
examples.

a. John Updike is a famous American writ-er who was an Eastern-er.

b. It is easi-er to do it soon-er rather than late-r.
c. Connie did not give us thei-r book, but you-r book.

(21) EXERCISE ================================================

Give examples of derivational morphemes with the following specifications:

a. V → N ......................................................................................................................................
b. V → A ......................................................................................................................................
c. A → V ......................................................................................................................................
d. A → N ......................................................................................................................................
e. N → A .....................................................................................................................................
f. N→ V .............................................................................................................................,.........

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain the logic which results in the claim that the following words are backformed.

a. to chain smoke

b. to televise

c. to beg

d. a burger

e. cheesburger

f. a crap

35
7 COMPOUNDING

See Huddleston & Pullum (2002) pp. 1644-1666, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) pp. 264-290.

a. Compounding + BASE / STEM

b. Derivation + DERIVATIONAL AFFIX
c. Paradigm forms STEM + INFLECTIONAL ENDING
(BASE)

COMPOUNDING: Creating a new lexical entry by combination of at least two bases.

(1) PREFIX STEM STEM SUFFIX INFLECTION

!!!
(2) Take this to the dry clean er s’ , and
ask them about re- dry clean ing it soon.

Compounding is a fusion of individual words into one complex unit. It is a process on two levels:
semantic and formal. Some productive (or “transparent”) compunds are fused only formally, but
many lexical (or “opaque”) compounds are fused formally and semantically.

Outside of exceptional cases, the bases are one of the four lexical categoreis, N, V, A, P, and the
compound is also one of these same four lexical categories:

(3) a. Nouns:
stairway, bus ticket, high street, meatloaf ,think tank, holdover, outdoors
b. Verbs:
brainstorm, sandblast, chain smoke, deep fry,underestimate, outswim, overtake
c. Adjectives:
blue green, air tight, noise free, outspoken, ice cold, free standing, outgoing
d. Prepositions:
alongside, inside, on board, throughout, underneath, within

Most examples in (3) are lexical compounds and often only this type is considered true compounds.
The degree of fusion is a matter of degree, not a dichotomy and it is subject to the dimension of time.
Moreover, distinct languages can define compounds in distinct ways. In Czech, orthography is crucial.
In English, nothing stops the two bases from being derived forms: independence movement.

36
(4) I. Phrase: a group of words that syntactic principles treat as a unit.

a. Free syntactic combination, with transparent meaning: A big cat scratched my tongue.
b. Idioms, with several bases connected by syntactic principles but functioning as
single semantic units, i.e. the meaning is opaque: The cat’s got my tongue again today.

(5) II. Compound: a single word in a lexical category formed of several bases which
functions in the language structure as a single word.

a. Productive, trasparent compounds: tongue injury, blood stained, cat disease.

b. Lexical, opaque compounds: tongue-tied, tongue twister, blood money, catfight

Many interesting contrasts can be made here, e.g. between (Ia) and (IIb):

(6)
a. Do centra města nesmějí nákladní auta. = Ia: free syntactic combination (standard collocation)
b. Náklaďáky do centra města nesmějí. = IIb: compound

c. That bird is really black. Have you ever seen such a black bird? = Ia
d. There are many blackbirds in the park. Some of them are not black at all. = IIb

(7) The distinctions in I-II can be organized as follows: !!!

Phrasal syntax (I) Compound words (II)

Free combinations; transparent or Productive syntax: Productive compounds:

“compositional” semantics A bad cat scratched my tongue. beef tongue; tongue stew

Lexically fixed combinations; Lexical compounds:

Idioms:
opaque semantics (“Fusion”) tongue-tied; tongue-
The cat’s got my tongue.
twister

The process of fusion in compounding can (and should) be considered on several levels:

(8) a) in orthography, b) phonetics, c) morphology, d) syntax, and e) semantics.

7.1 Orthography

This is the main (necessary and sufficient) criterion in Czech but not in English. English spelling is a
sufficient but not necessary sign of compounding. Many compounds are hyphenated or separated.

(9) a. Rohrer (1974): Some Problems of Wordformation.

b. Aronoff (1976): Word Formation in Generative Grammar.
c. Bauer (1983): English Word-formation.
d. care-taker, caretaker, and care taker all seem acceptable.

37
7.2 Stress Placement in Compounds

Bloomfield (1933): accent subordination is a hallmark of English compounds. Compounds have one
main stress, usually on the lefthand base (but not in all patterns). Any other stress is secondary. The
normal stress in English phrases is on the last word or phrase.

(10) a. to order iced (black) COFFEE vs. to order green ICE cream
b. a white HOUSE with a garden vs. The WHITE house admission of defeat
c. to DEEP fry (shrimp) can be fun vs. a deep DIVE can be dangerous
d. that (huge) MOVING van vs. that (slowly) moving VAN

BUT final stress is possible on several types of Adj-headed compounds:

(11) apple PIE, man MADE, easy-GOING, pea GREEN, knee DEEP, dirt CHEAP

So single stress on the left is a sufficient but not necessary criterion for an English compound. Outside
of contrastive stress, in free syntactic combinations the stress is rather on the right.

7.3 Morphology

In English, lexical morphemes are ordered in front of inflectional ones. There is no meaningful,
productive inflection inside a true compound.

(12) a. girl friend girl friends * girls friend

b. short-sighted *shorter-sighted
c. *scissor scissors scissor(*s)-hands
d. *trouser trousers trouser(*s)-pocket
e. *binocular binoculars binocular(*s)-case
f. quick fried *quicker/est fried
g. a clean up clean ups *a cleaned up
h. a hand out hand outs *a handed out

The following are based on irrgular inflections, and are not productive:

(13) a. well- known better-known best-known

b. a new men’s store a kids play-ground the children’s department

7.4 Syntax of idioms vs. compounds

We can test whether the semantically opaque combination behaves as one syntactic unit (a compound)
or as a syntactic phrase consisting of several separable parts (an idiom).

(14) Free syntactic complex Idiom

a. when the chaps are here a'. when the chips are down
b. rule the country b'. rule the roost

38
 c. a man from the village c'. a man about town
d. round the house d'. round-the-clock
e. as clean as you want e’. (as) clean as a whistle

We can test whether a structure can be changed by some regular syntactic process.

Idioms: undergo syntactic operations (to various degrees, not always freely)
Compounds: are inert/frozen with respect to syntax (syntactic atoms).

(i) Enlarging the complex by additional material: e.g. Nouns in a syntactic complex (phrase) can
be premodified by semantically compatible Adjectives rather freely.

(ii) Passivization: A syntactic complex [Verb +Object] can be passivised.

In an idiom (15), adding Adjectives and passivization do not change the meaning, while in a
compound (16) they do (* here it means the loss of the idiomatic reading).

(15) a. vzít kládu na ramena (= to carry a piece of wood)

b. Vzali klády na ramena. (= they carried pieces of wood)
+Adj c. Vzali dlouhé/těžké klády na ramena. (= they carried long/heavy pieces of wood)
Passive d. ?Klády byly vzaty na ramena. (= the pieces of wood were carried...)

(16) a. vzít nohy na ramena (= to run)

b. Vzali nohy na ramena. (= they ran)
* +Adj c. Vzali svalnaté/chlupaté nohy na ramena. (= *they run)
* Passive d. ??Nohy byly vzaty na ramena. (= *it was run (“utíkalo se”)

Sometimes idioms don’t allow much syntactic freedom:

(17) Free syntactic complex Idiom

a. hold your shoes a'. hold your tongue
b. I held my/his shoes. b'. I held my/*his tongue.
c. Her shoes were held by Mary. c'. *His tongue was held by John.
d. It’s her shoes that she held. d’. *It’s her tongue that she held.

Nonetheless, some other idioms keep a certain level of syntactic freedom:

(18) a. break the ice a'. The ice was finally broken by Mary.
b. keep tabs on someone b'. Tabs are being kept on new students.
c. take someone for a ride c’. The owner has been taken for a ride.

(iii) Questioning of separate parts: individual parts of a free syntactic verb phrase (Objects,
Adverbials) can be questioned. But parts of idioms often cannot be:

(19) a. stand here/at the station Where was he standing? - Here/ At the station.
b. stand by/at attention Where did he stand? - *By/*At attention.
c. take a coffee What did you take? - A coffee.
d. take courage (idiom) What did you take? - *Courage.

39
 e. have a bad cold What does he have now? - A bad cold.
f. have fun (idiom) What did you have? - *A lot of fun.

Premodifying Adjectives can generally be used as Predicates after a copula and in a relative clause.
With idioms the same changes in the structure causes the loss of the idiomatic meaning, as in (20)
and (21). See also section 7.5.

(20) a colorful/ blue/ black bird (after copula) The bird is colorful/ blue/ black.
(relative clause) A bird which is colorful /blue/ black

(21) White House (*after copula) *The president’s house is white.

(*relative clause) *The protest is near the house that’s white.

(22) a darkroom (*after copula) *That room is dark.

(*relative clause) *She used the room which was dark.

7.5 Semantics

(23) The meaning of a complex can be (i) compositional (=transparent) or

(ii) non-compositional (=opaque).

Remember that transparent meaning includes the syntagmatic information, i.e. a hierarchy, with the
kind of relation expressed in some formal way (word order, morphology, etc.).

(24) TRANSPARENT OPAQUE (non-transparent)

BLACK
bird

+ modification
BLACKBIRD
!!!
In the following pair of words, it is not enough to know the meaning of both, we must also know how
they are related. Which is hierarchically higher and what is thefunction does the subordinate element?

(25) Combining Samuel (a person) and představovat (an action)

a. Samuel představoval Samuel is Agent of introduce
b. představovat Samuela Samuel is Object of introduce
c. představovat Samuelovi Samuel is Goal/ Beneficiary of introduce

(26) Combining Peter and introduce

a. Peter introduced Peter is Agent of introduce
b. introduce Peter Peter is Object of introduce
c. introduce Mary to Peter Peter is Goal/ Beneficiary of introduce

(27) Combining city and skyscraper

a. city skyscraper city modifies skyscraper
b. skyscraper city skyscraper modifies city

40
Many phrases can have both transparent and idiomatic readings:

(28) break the ice a. ‘knock a hole in fozen water’

b. ‘start a conversation ’

(29) a. green HOUSE ‘a house which has a green color’

b. GREENhouse ‘a house made of glass to grow warm weather plants’

The grammatical relations between elements can also to some extent be transparent in idioms,
especially if one of the elements is a Verb.

(30) a. playmaker ‘a person who makes plays’ (team leader in football, hockey)
b. man-eater ‘an animal that eats people’
c. house cleaning ‘activity of professionally cleaning houses’
d. ball park ‘a park or grassy stadium where ball games are played’
e. underground ‘(something) which is under the ground’

7.6 Headedness of Compounds

Compounds are structures, i.e. there is a hierarchy between their parts.

→ Most compounds are endocentric, i.e. they have a head.

The HEAD is the most important part of a compound. But what does ‘most important’ mean?
In grammar we take for the head the element which assigns a category to the larger unit, i.e. the one
which takes relevant inflection and determines the syntactic distribution.

a. velké město a'. velk-o-město

b. ve velk-ém měst-ě b'. ve velk-o-měst-ě
c. grandchild c'. grandchildren
d. overtake d’. overtook
e. baby sit e’. baby sat
f. man eater f’. man eaters/*men-eaters

In semantics we consider meaning: grandchild is a kind of a child; a man eater is a kind of eater. But
semantics is an uncertain guide: if one overtakes, is one taking? If you baby sit, how much do you sit?

7.7 Right-hand Head Rule

Consider the following compounds consisting of distinct categories. Which of them decides about the
category of the complex?

(31) a. N+N=N water-lily, bookcase

b. A+N=N hothouse, high-court
c. P+N=N undergraduate, oversight
d. V+N=N playboy, showman, think tank
e. A+A=A short-lived, good-natured

41
 f. P+A=A overconfident, outspoken, inbred, downtrodden
g. N+A=A world-wide, user-friendly
h. P+V=V underestimate, outscore, overrate, downplay
h.
i.
N+V=V
A+V=V
baby sit, sandblast, chain smoke
deep fry !!!
(32) Right-hand Head Rule (Williams, 1981):
In morphology we observe that the head of a morphologically complex word is the
right-hand member of that word .

This holds for all regular compounds in English and Czech as well, and in many languages.
This Right Hand Head Rule explains why the regular and productive inflection in a compound is based
on the right hand member, as seen in Section section 6.3.

(33) a. short-lived → *shorter-lived

b. *trouser, trousers, trouser-pocket(s)
c. *binocular, binoculars, binocular-case(s)
d. dry clean  *dried-cleaned

(34) BUT a. craftsman, craftsmen

b. better-known, best-known, menservants, women priests
c. ladies’ man, bull’s-eye, Achilles’ heel

The RHHR explains why the gender and number of a Czech compound is the gender of the right hand
member. It further explains the partial semantic correlation between a compound’s meaning and that
of its right hand member, as seen e.g. in (27).

(35) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the relations between the following couples of words. Is the interpretation
'transparent'? Why?
a. Elisabeth's sonnet b. Elizabethan sonnet
c. give Mary the cold shoulder d. give Mary the cold soup
e. that new men’s department f. that man’s new apartment

(36) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the relations between the words in the following compounds. Are the interpretations
'transparent'? Why (not)?
a. exercise book b. play-boy c. steeple-chase d. wall flower

(37) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain the distinction between an idiom and a compound. Analyze and contrast the syntactic
behavior of two examples of both.

42
(38) EXERCISE ================================================
Paraphrase and translate the examples below. Consider several types of arguments showing that the
following are/are not idioms/compounds. Recall that the arguments are to be (i) stress-based, (ii)
morphological, (iii) syntactic, (iv) semantic.

a. Flying saucer b. big cheese c. talk show (Noun)

d. talk shop (Verb) e. Big Apple f. capital punishment

(39) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the contrasted structures. Why are some OK while others are * as idioms?

a. Mary held her/his head. b. Mary held her/*his tongue.

c. Her head was being held by Mary. d. *His tongue was being held by Harry.
e. The ice was finally broken by Harry. f. *It was the ice that Harry broke.

(40) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the contrasted structures. Why are some OK while others are *?

a. eat outside - Where did he finally eat? -Outside.

b. eat out - Where did he finally eat? -*Out.
c. look well - How did he look? -Well.
d. look ahead - How/Where did he look? -*Ahead.
e. take advantage - What did she take of him? -*Great advantage.

(41) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the categorial composition and define the head of the following compounds.
Argue in favor of your choice of the head.

a. skyline h. overreact
b. wet-suit i. light green
c. near-sightedness j. call girl
d. foolproof k. hanger on
e. hard-hearted l. downplay
f. near-sighted m. brother-in-law
g. chicken supreme n. heir apparent

(42) EXERCISE ================================================

Translate the following idiomatic verbal Predicates into Czech.

a. to hit the road/ the highway leave, start traveling

b. to hit the street(s) become public news
c. to hit the pavement go on strike
d. to hit the air(waves) become news
e. to hit the ice start a game of hockey
f. to hit the floor get up out of bed

43
g. to hit the roof/ceiling lose temper violently
h. to hit the jackpot get rich quick
i. to hit the sack/ hay go to bed tired
cf. to have a roll in the hay have sex
j. to hit the big time become famous (entertainer)
k. to hit the spot be exactly the right thing
l. to hit the bull's eye make an exact remark
m. to hit the nail on the head say something exactly true
n. to hit some place e.g. London become the fashion there, e.g. in London
o. to hit a sore spot/a nerve say something really bothering somebody
p. to hit on someone to interact with someone with sexual intent
q. to hit it off get on together really well
r. to hit the dirt get on the ground to avoid shooting
s. to hit paydirt discover gold (literally or metaphorically)
t. to hit home say the most relevant thing in a context

(43) EXERCISE ================================================

Give examples of similar idiomatic verbal structures with the following weak Verbs. Be sure you are
not giving frequent but purely literal combinations (e.g. ‘get on the train’).

to get i. ................................................. ii. ................................................

iii. ................................................. iv. ................................................
v. ................................................. vi. ................................................

to make i. ................................................. ii. ................................................

iii. ................................................. iv. ................................................
v. ................................................. vi. ................................................

to look i. ................................................. ii. ................................................

iii. ................................................. iv. ................................................
v. ................................................. vi. ................................................

to put i. ................................................. ii. ................................................

iii. ................................................. iv. ................................................
v. ................................................. vi. ................................................

to take i. ................................................. ii. ................................................

iii. ................................................. iv. ................................................
v. ................................................. vi. ................................................

44
8 SOME SPECIAL KINDS OF (ENGLISH) COMPOUNDS

See Huddleston & Pullum (2002) pp. 1644-1666, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) pp. 264-290.

8.1 Nominal Compounds: Bracketing ambiguities (“Bracketing Paradox”)

English compounds of the form N+N are productive and recursive, i.e. an already compound Noun
can modify or be modified by another Noun. Modifying Adjectives can also be related to any of the
Nouns. So a given string of say, three nouns, has an ambiguous (more than one) interpretation,
which depends on how the listener relates the elements (which hierarchy is assigned to the structure).
In Czech, a translation must disambiguate the structure.

(1) a. old hospital building (i) [N old hospital] building

A + N + N (ii) old [N hospital building]
b. American history teacher (i) [N American history] teacher
(ii) American [N history teacher]

c. new government budget reserve.... Is new the government, budget, or reserve?

d. Italian pasta sauce pan lid price....Is Italian the pasta, sauce, pan, lid, or price.

Stress patterns sometimes disambigurate the structure, but are of course unavailable in writing.

8.2 Verbal Compounds (Incorporation)

- comprised of a head derived from a Verb;

- a non-head is usually interpreted as complement/adjunct of the Verb, where complements have
a thematic role;
- the meaning is rather transparent.

Incorporation of Object/Adverbial into Verb: The basis is a Verb plus its argument. Because of the
RHHR, the verb is last.

The verb’s argument is preposed (“incorporated”), and the compound must be deverbalized by a
nominal or adjectival derivational suffix. It is an old, productive Germanic derivational process.

Predicate VERB nominal OBJECT

(2) Verb phrase source: lend money, make shoes, sell books, make hay, lay bricks….

(3) a. N = N+V+er moneylender, shoemaker, and productively budget breaker, …

b. N = N+V+ing hay-making, brick-laying, and productively present buying,…
c. A = N+V+en hand-written, time-worn, and productively machine driven,…
d. A = N+V+ing God-fearing, self-seeking, and productively floor cleaning,…

45
Besides objects, an initial incorporated element can be an adjunct of time/place/manner/etc.

(4) a. time consuming, back breaking (labor) b. low-flying, long-lasting

c. Sunday closing, eye-popping d. alcohol related, steam driven

In a non-productive set of lexicalized verbal compounds, the N suffixes -er/-ing need not be used. In
this case, the initial element must be adverbial. (See section 5.3 on Back Formation.)

(5) Some lexicalized verbs: babysit, dry clean, chain smoke, bar tend, sand blast
(6) a. My aunt baby sat/ *house-cleaned all weekend.
b. It’s dangerous to chain smoke /*cigar smoke like that.
c. They will sand blast the old cathedral soon.

Some incorporating compounds (esp. those which originated from adjuncts) are subject to
"backformation" when the nominalizing suffix (-er/-ing) which is otherwise unseparable is taken away
and a verb is formed which normally would be ungrammatical.

(7) a. babysiting/-er [a regular Germanic compound] >>> to babysit

b. chainsmoking [a regular Germanic compound] >>> to chainsmoke

8.3 Other types of Endocentric (English) Compounds

(i) Alliterative and Rhyming Compounds

(ii) Cranberry and Neoclassical Compounds
(iii)
(iv)
Coordinate Compounds
Marked Left-headed Compounds !!!
8.3.1 Alliterative and Rhyming Compounds

Alliterative compounds use ABLAUT, combining high front vowel + low vowel. These have often
entered the written language.

(8) wishy-washy, mish-mash ‘random combination’, shilly-shally ‘act indecisively’(a verb), spic
and span ‘very clean’, tip-top ‘best’, be-bop, hip hop, pitter-patter, tick-tock

Rhyming is typical for slang, nursery rhymes, child language, etc. (special stylistic value).

(9) a. backpack, lovey-dovy, hocus pocus, honky tonk, Black-Jack, claptra, super duper
b. goody-goody good person in naive way, or as adjective
c. namby-pamby weak, ineffective person, or as adjective
d. chalk talk strategy session given by a sports coach
e. hanky-panky immature, almost child-like sexual play

In both types, the head is on the right (RHHR): shilly-shallying, goody-goodies, mish-mashes.

46
8.3.2 Cranberry and Neoclassical Compounds (analogical formations)

Some bound morphemes appear only in one or few combinations = 'cranberry' morphemes.

(10) a. N + N → N straw+berry, goose+berry

b. A + N → N blue+berry, black+berry
c. N → N??+N cran+berry
d. fishmonger, war monger, iron monter (fish+*monger, war+*monger)
e. lukewarm (*luke+warm); to jay walk (*jay+walk); a werewolf (*were+wolf)

In compounding, the morphemes tend to be of the same origin e.g. the above are all Germanic.
Some compounds were taken from a foreign language as already compounds, or invented as technical
or scientific terms. Their structure may be non-transparent to an English speaker, since their parts are
not used separately. On the other hand, speakers can acquire in varying degrees awareness of their
structure, as in (11) below.

(11) a. hydrology, hydrolysis, hydrometerm, hydroelectric

b. theocracy, theology, theosophy, theocentric
c. television, telephone, telescope, telepathy
d. biology, biophysics, biography, geology, geophysics, geography,geometry

(12) tele+vis+ion → tele+v??+ise ... back formation due to nontransparency?

8.3.3 Coordinate/ copulative compounds ('Dvandva' compounds)

Though semantically coordinate, morphology can detect a hierarchy, using inflection and the RHHR.
These are common in English only as modifying members of compounds as in (12).

(13) boy-friend, North-West, player-manager, washer-dryer, father-son

a. Josephine often has two or three boy-friends at the same time.
b. Next day they took a North-Westerly direction.
c. Some teams could save money by using player-managers.
d. You can now purchase washer-dryers as single machines.
e. Mother-daughter trips are an increasingly common type of vacation.
f. Saturday-Sunday breaks in nearby cities are getting common.

8.3.4 Left-hand Headed Compounds in English

These are marked and unusual in English. Inflection again reveals which element is the head.

(14) a. N-PREPOSITION:
i. passer-by, passers-by, *passer-bys
ii. hanger on, hangers on, *hanger ons
iii. stand by, *standsby, standbys
iv. walk on, *walks on, walk ons

47
 b. LEGAL BASIS:
i. mother-in-law, mothers-in-law, *mother-in-laws
ii. postmaster general, postmasters general, *postmaster generals
iii. heir apparent, heirs apparent, *heir apparents
iv. wife-to-be, wives-to-be, *wife-to-bes
v. lady-in-waiting, ladies in waiting, *lady in waitings

Language manuals frequenly mention the French origin of, for example, several legal terms. This may
explain why in menus and cooking, with or without French sources, left headed N-A and N-N
compounds are common and not pronounced as foreign phrases:

(15) chicken supreme, chicken Kiev, salad Nicoise, eggs Florentine, oysters Rockefeller, lobster
Newberg, peach melba, beef Stroganoff, veal Marengo, speghetti Bolognese

8.4 Headless Compounds in English (Exocentric Compounds)

Compounds can be: a. endocentric (have a head). These are by far the most common.
b. exocentric (have no obvious (semantic?) head).

8.4.1 Metaphoric ('Bahuvrihi') semantically opaques compounds

In English, some compounds appear headless only w.r.t. to semantics/meaning, but syntactically
(and morphologically) the unit almost always does have a right-hand head. One common class of such
compounds are “dead metaphors”; speakers have little or no concept that a metaphor is involved.

It is impossible to define which part is more important with respect to meaning. Morphology,
however, takes the rightmost element for the head of the complex.

(16) a. lazy-bones are NOT ‘bones’ but a lazy person

b. wall-flower is NOT a ‘flower’ but someone who doesn’t dance
c. loud-mouth is NOT a ‘mouth’ but a noisy person
d. numb-skull is NOT a ‘skull’ but a stupid person

8.4.2 Verb-Preposition Compound Nouns (formed from Phrasal Verbs)

Phrasal verbs are idiomatic combinations such as hold NP up ‘delay’ or ‘rob’, put NP down ‘insult’,
buy NP off ‘bribe’, carry NP out ‘successfully conclude’, take NP in ‘trick’.

Phrasal verbs are not compounds. Recall that compounds have parts that cannot be separated, but
object NPs can always separate the two parts of phrasal verbs (though they need not).
There are other reasons why phrasal verbs are not single constituents:

(17) a. Regular compounds are stressed on the left member, but in phrasal verbs, the
prepositional particle receives stress.
b. The RHHR requires that a right member be a head of a productive combination, but
inflection shows that the V is the head of a phrasal verb:

48
(18) a. lock out locked out *lock outed
b. take off took off *take offed
c. phone in phoned in *phone ined

Phrasal Verbs represent combinations that are more semantic than actually syntactic. Their head is the
Verb, and the two elements can be separated. The process of formation of a phrasal Verbs is matter of
diachrony; many are well established, others are more recently created.

(19) a. I locked him out.

There was a lock-out after the strike.
b. They took their coats off outside.
The plane took off. (intransitive)
c. I phoned my order in to the restaurant.
She often put her friends down.

Phrasal verbs do give rise, however, to a special and quite productive type of English compound
nouns. These compounds are exocentric i.e. they lack a head. Rather their internal structure is V+P:

(20) a. a take away, a mess up, a sell off, a pick up, a break up
b. some hold ups (robberies), put downs (insults), take offs (plane)
c. a phone in (event to raise money)
d. some buy outs (big company buying a small one),
e. a lock out (management technique during a strike)
f. a run about (old car)

8.4.3 Quotational Compounds

Hyphenated phrases, clauses, parts of sentences are called quotational compounds. Few are in
common use. They also contain grammatical morphemes, not only bases. Some are nouns as in (a-b),
and others are usually N-premodifiers in parts of bigger texts (c-d).

(21) a. stick-in-the mud

b forget-me-not (flower name)
c. devil-may-care (attitude), touch-and-go (situation)
d. fly-by-night (company), come as you are (party)

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the possible meanings of the following compounds. Explain the term 'bracketing ambiguity’
and show the bracketings which capture the alternative meanings.

a. old city tower light

b. house pet food dish
c. international crime prevention office manager
d. army housing scheme
e. market price fluctuations

49
(23) EXERCISE ================================================
Discuss a possible meaning and the grammaticality of the following:

a. girl friend girl friends *girls friend

b. clear-cut clear cuts *clearer-cut
c. playboy playboys *playedboy
d. downplay downplayed *far downplayed
e. near miss near misses *nearer miss

(24) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the semantic structure of the following compounds. Find the semantic/syntactic
(morphological) head. Explain the meaning/ specificity of the following examples.

a. butterfingers (inept catcher)

b. outdoors
c. blue-green
d. dare-devil (reckless person)
e. blockhead (idiot)
f. spoil-sport (grumpy person)
g. turncoat (renegade)
h. stick-in-the-mud

(25) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain the origin (steps in the derivation) of the following expressions:

a. bookseller, party drinker

b. church-going, house sitting
c. computer-matched, drug related
d. eye-catching, hard-hitting
e. walie-talkie, sci-fi, Super duper pooper scooper
f. fuddke-faddle, flim-flam, wig-wam

(26) EXERCISE ================================================

What kind of compounds are the following? Discuss their characteristics.

a. night-light, pretty-pretty (prettiness that goes over the top) , lovey-dovey

b. zigzag, sing-song, tick-tock, knick-knack
c. blue-green, South-West
d. coffee-maker, beer-drinking
e. hard-to-follow story, catch-me-if-you-can game, do it yourself shop
f. put up (with), take away (from), stand up (for)

50
9 MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY OF LANGUAGES

See also: Comrie (1989) pp. 33-54, 210-226; Crystal (1987) pp. 84-86, 283-341; Greenberg (1961).

Depending on what one counts as a language, there are 3,000 - 10,000 languages (alive/dead,
language/dialect, pigeon/Creole, style/ slang).

Ranked in terms of numbers of speakers: Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian,
Portuguese, Japanese, German, French, Punjabi....

(1) A. Genetic Classification

A classification based on (assumed) origin. Language families...

th
August Schleicher (early 19 c. Comparative Linguistics).
!!!
Both Czech and English are Indo-European languages. And so are Hindi, Persian, Latvian, Slavic
languages, Romance languages, Germanic languages, ...
English is West or North Germanic (there is a debate), Czech is West Slavic.
But Hungarian, Estonian, Basque, Georgian, Hebrew, Turkish, Tamil, etc. are not I.-E.

(2) B. Morphological Classification (Typology)

A classification based on the characteristics of individual morphemes (which kind prevails) and their
combinations into bigger units (words).

Discussing the morphological typology of a language, which criteria are relevant ? Classification from
August von Schleger (1767-1845):

(3) a. Isolating, analytic, root languages

b.
c.
d.
Inflecting, synthetic, fusional languages
Agglutinative languages
Polysynthetic, incorporating languages
!!!
Compared to Czech, English is more isolating/analytic, while Czech is more synthetic/fusional.
However, neither of them is an extreme version and both show mixed characteristics.

BUT many other typological classifications exist (Sapir 1921, Skalička, etc.). A more contemporary
approach to morphological typology distinguishes languages with respect to two main parameters
(INDEXES):

1 Number of MORPHEMES PER WORD analytic vs. synthetic

2 Number of SYNTACTIC FEATURES PER MORPHEME agglutinative vs. fusional

51
9.1 Index of Synthesis

- measures the average number of morphemes per word.

(Isolating/ANALYTICAL vs. Polysynthetic languages)

ANALYTICAL a. isolating
c. agglutinating
c. fusional
d. incorporating
SYNTHETIC e. polysynthetic

Most/All major category words in Czech have more than one morpheme. In English monomorphic
words are more frequent due to the lack of inflection.

(4) a) monomorpheic words: proti, a, bez blue, very, elephant

b) polymorphematic words: ne-u-věři-tel-ný, un-kind-ly, four-th

9.1.1 Isolating Languages

ONE WORD = ONE MORPHEME

(5) Mandarin Chinese Wǒ măi júzi chī.

I buy orange eat
'I bought some oranges to eat.'

(6) Vietnamese Khi toi den nhá ban toi, chúng toi bát dau lám bái.
when I come house friend I PLURAL I begin do lesson
'When I came to my friend's house, we began to do lessons.'

Compared with typical Indo-European languages, these highly isolating languages have:

- many monosyllabic, invariable words (with larger phonetic repertory, e.g. tonic vowels),
- many non-categorial stems (Since they do not fit I.-E. “standard” with its Latin-based
terminology, many of these are indiscriminately called 'particles'),
- fixed orders of morphemes and words.

Isolating/analytic characteristics are far more frequent in English than in Czech, but both languages
have numerous free grammatical morphemes.

(7) a. to read, will have been reading, woman-doctor, take advantage of

b. by šel, smál se, budu číst

52
9.1.2 Polysynthetic and Incorporating Languages

ONE SENTENCE = ONE WORD

Polysynthesis: the number of compound morphemes is large and single words can often form rather
complex sentences. In such ʼwordsʼ, however, only one of the morphemes, however, is lexical.

(8) Yupik Angya- ghlla - ng - yug - tuq

(Eastern Siberia) boat AUGMENT-GET-DESIDERATIVE-3Sg
'He wants to get a big boat.'

Incorporation: a number of lexical morphemes combine into one word. This is possible in many
languages (in compounds), but if it prevails, the language is taken for incorporating.

(9) Chukchi Tź - meynź - levtź - pźyt - źrkźn

(Eastern Siberia) 1S great head ache IMPERF
'I have a fierce headache.'

(10) Tiwi (Australia) Ngi - rru - unthing - apu - kani

I PAST for some time eat repeatedly
'I kept on eating.'

Compared with typical Indo-European languages, these languages have:

- long, complex words,

- fuzzy categories (especially if one is using Latin-based terminology),
- fixed orders of elements/morphemes.
Polysynthetic and incorporating characteristics are of rare occurrence in both English and Czech, but
derivational and compounding phenomena have some traces of incorporation.

(11) a. re-nation-al-is-abi-lity, dis-establish-ment-arian

b. chain-smoking, fresh orange juice maker, heat sensitive rocket reentry shield
c. do-it-yourself, catch-me-if-you-can
d. utřinos, vlezdoprdelka, červeno-modro-bílá, černo-košil-áč

The index of synthesis of Czech and espeically of English is relatively low, on a world scale.

9.2 Index of Fusion

Classification w.r.t. the way the (grammatical) morphemes combine.

This measures the segmentability and invariance of expressing grammatical features “F”:

(12) (i) agglutinating languages (simple concatenation of morphemes with one feature),
(ii) fusional languages (one element containing several inseparable features).

53
Again, current linguistics realizes that even individual constructions can contain both aspects. For
example, in the English verbal form were re-undergoing, were expreses Fi = PAST, STATIVE, PLUR,
while re-under-go-ing concatenates four morphemes of one feature each.

9.2.1 Agglutinating Languages

(Latin gluten = glue). Examples are Turkish, Finnish, Japanese, Swahili.

ONE WORD = MORE (CLEAR-CUT) MORPHEMES, 1 PER FEATURE

modern - ise - er - s
BASE M1=F1 M2=F2 M3=F3

Individual morphemes are clearly separable (sometimes with phonetic changes at boundaries). Each
has one function/meaning/feature, often identical with distinct parts of speech.

(13) Swahili Mimi ni - na - ku - penda wewe.

me I-PRES -you-love you
'I love you.'

(14) Turkish a. SG/NOM adam b. PL/NOM adam - lar

SG/GEN adam-in PL/GEN adam - lar - in
SG/LOC adam-da PL/LOC adam - lar - da

9.2.2 Fusional / Inflectional Languages

ONE WORD = MORE FEATURES IN UNSEGMENTABLE MORPHEMES

Latin, Greek, Arabic

BASE M=F1, F2, F3

Each inflectional morpheme expresses a complex of meanings/functions which cannot be sequentially

separated. The paradigms are complex, however. Marked/unmarked contrasts in combinations appear,
and zero morphemes are frequent. 1

(15) a. Spanish: Le compr-é un libro a él.

him-DAT buy-1sg/ Past a book to him
'I bought him a book.'

1
Notice how a non-English examples are glossed:
(i) original data (often in italics)
(ii) ʻa glossʻ - i.e. precise translation with grammatical information as needed,
(iii) free translation

54
Is a zero morpheme present, when 'nothing' is present? Is it fused or agglutinating?

(16) a. On by šel domů. b. Viděla ho v zahradě.

heNOM Aux3S wentSM home saw3SF himACC in gareden
ʻHe would go home.ʼ ʻShe saw him in the garden.ʼ

a. on ... [Person: 3, Number: singular, Gender: masculine, Case: nominative]

b. by ... [Person: 3, Mood: conditional]
c. šel ... [Number: singular, Gender: masculine, Tense: present]

(17) He read-s a lot.

a. Person: 3 [BUT: they read / *they reads]
b. Number: singular [BUT: one book / *one books, I read / *I reads]
c. Tense: present [BUT: we read / *we reads]

(18) The agglutination/fusion contrast can be considered with

a. distinct kinds of morphemes,
b. the same kind of morphemes.

In Indo-European languages (both English and Czech), the standard word template consists of 1 or 2
stems, derivational morpheme(s), and inflectional morpheme(s) in this order. Observing the following
examples, check that the distinct kinds of morphemes usually do not fuse.

Notice that fusion is a phenomena concerning mainly inflection.

(19) a. black-bird-s, baby-sit-ing, under-ground
b. modern-is-ation-s, inter-nation-al-is-abil-ity
c. under-gradu-ate-s, person-al-ise-s
d. she stop-s, it leng-th-en-ed
(20) a. velko-město
b. ne-u-věři-tel-ný
c. nej-ne-obvyk-le-jší
d. viděl-y zelen-é stromy

Standard Indo-European word structure (mostly synthetic)!

(21) ONE WORD = ONE BASE + grammatical (derivational & inflectional) morpheme(s)

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

Which kind of typological characteristics do the following English structures show?

a. The boy loves the girl.

b. The mightiest Emperors loved the finest Empresses.
c. The most handsome male athletes will love the most beautiful female athletes.

55
(23) EXERCISE ================================================
Find examples with all the following typological characteristics in:

analytical /isolating
CZECH
....................................................
....................................................
agglutinative ....................................................
....................................................
fusional ....................................................
synthetic ....................................................
ENGLISH !!!
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................

(24) EXERCISE ================================================

Give some contrasting examples of English (analytic) and Czech (synthetic) morphology in the
categories of:

Verb .................................................... ....................................................

....................................................
Noun ....................................................
....................................................
Adjective ....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
....................................................

(25) EXERCISE ================================================

Find the Predicates and divide the verbal complexes into morphemes. Which kind of typological
characteristics do they show?

(a) In January I will have been living in this town for ten years.
(b) The building had been being built for two years already when the fire happened.

(26) EXERCISE ================================================

Consider the agglutination/fusion of the following kinds of morphemes in English. Give examples of
combinations of:

a. lexical and derivational morphemes .....................................................................................

b. lexical and inflectional morphemes .....................................................................................
c. two lexical morphemes ....…………….................................................................................
d. two derivational morphemes .........................................................................................................
e. two inflectional morphemes ……....................................................................................................

(27) EXERCISE ================================================

Compute the Index of Synthesis with the preceding and following expressions.

a. psát ...................................................................................................................
b. to write ...................................................................................................................
c. přeskočila jsem ...................................................................................................................
d. I jumped over ...................................................................................................................

56
e. Petrovi ...................................................................................................................
f. to Peter ...................................................................................................................
g. nejkrásnější ...................................................................................................................
h. the most beautiful ...................................................................................................................

(28) EXERCISE ================================================

Consider the word 'take' in the following example and discuss which problems may arise when
computing the indexes, discussing answers to the following questions:
What is a 'word'? (minimal free form?) Is there some zero morpheme?

(i) Leo will take a shower every other day.

(ii) Susan has made a promise to help us.

(29) EXERCISE ================================================

Relate the following phenomena to the typological characteristics of English and contrast them with
Czech.

a. the length of a 'word' (pronunciation)

b. the definition of 'word'
c. word order

(30) EXERCISE ================================================

Illustrate the index of synthesis and consider the degree of fusion by contrasting an example of an
‘analytic English Verb/Adjective’ with a ‘synthetic Czech Verb/Adjective’.

a. a Verb .................................................... ....................................................

b. an Adjective .................................................... ....................................................
c. a Noun .................................................... ....................................................

(31) EXERCISE ================================================

Explain briefly the main principles of each classification and compare English and Czech with respect
to:
CZECH ENGLISH
(i) genetic classification ........................................... ...........................................
(ii) morphological typology ........................................... ...........................................
(ii) word-order typology ........................................... ...........................................

(32) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss the typological characteristics of the following kinds of languages. Give examples in both
English and Czech.

a. analytic /isolating ..............................................................................................................

b. synthetic .................................................................................................... .........
c. agglutinating .................................................................................................... .........
d. fusional .................................................................................................... .........

57
(33) EXERCISE ================================================
The following words are in Swahili (a language of the Niger-Congo family).

(i) Identify the morphemes occurring in each word - fill in the right column.
(ii) What is the order of the main sentence members in Swahili?
(iii) Which type of language is Swahili?
(See Demers & Farmer 1991, pp 29-32.)

Swahili English English Swahili

1. aliwaandika (S)He wrote youpl. I / me 1.

2. ninakujua I know yousg. yousg 2.

3. anasoma (S)He reads. (s)he / him/ her 3.

4. ulituuliza Yousg asked us. we / us 4.

5. tulikuona We saw you sg. youpl 5.

6. anamjua (S)He knows him/ her. they / them 6.

7. mtasoma Yousg will read. PRES 7.

8. walimpiga They hitPAST him/ her. FUTURE 8.

9. umeandika Yousg have just written. PAST 9.

10. mlimpiga Youpl hitPAST him/ her. PERF 10.

11. anakujua (S)He knows you sg. write 11.

12. mtaniona Youpl will see me. ask 12.

13. nimembusu I have just kissed him/her. read 13.

14. walisoma They readPAST . see 14.

15. nitawabusu I will kiss youpl . know 15.

16. tumewaandika We have just written youpl hit 16.

17. utanibusu Yousg will kiss me. kiss 17.

18. utatupiga Yousg will hit us.

19. wamewauliza They have just asked them

20. tumewauliza We have just asked them.

58
(34) EXERCISE ================================================
Each of the following words in Telugu (a Dravidian language spoken in India) is translated into
English by an entire sentence. Analyze the words by identifying the morphemes occurring in each
word - fill in the right column.
(See Demers & Farmer 1991, pp 25-28)

Telugu English English Telugu

1. ceppεεnu I told. tell 1.

2. cepparu Youpl will not tell. sing 2.

3. cuustaam We will see. see 3.

4. ceppεεm We told. laugh 4.

5. ceppanu I will not tell. ask 5.

6. ađugutaađu He will ask. beat 6.

7. cuustunnaađu He is seeing. do 7.

8. ceppεεyi They told. PAST 8.

9. kođataanu I will beat. -ing 9.

10. paađataanu I will sing. I 10.

11. ceppεεru Youpl told. yousg 11.

12. ceppεεvu Yousg told. he 12.

13. ceppavu Yousg will not tell. we 13.

14. ceppam We will not tell. youpl 14.

15. ceppεεđu He told. they 15.

16. cuusεεđu He saw. NEG FUT 16.

17. kođatunnaayi They are beating. CAUSATIVE 17.

18. ceestunnaanu I am doing. FUTURE 18.

19. ađugutaam We will ask. Youpl are singing. 19.

20. ceppincunu I cause (someone) to tell. They will not laugh. 20.

21. navvincum We cause (someone) Yousg will cause 21.

22. to laugh. (someone) to ask.

23. ceesεεnu I did.

59
(35) EXERCISE ================================================
The following words are in Classical Nahuatl (a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico).

i. Identify the morphemes occurring in each word - fill in the right column.
Recall that some morphemes can be phonetically empty (Ø).
ii. What is the word order in Nahuatl?
iii. Which type of language is Nahuatl? (See Demers & Farmer 1991, pp 33-36.)

Nahuatl English English Nahuatl

1. nicho:ka I cry I 1.

2. nicho:kani I am crying yousg 2.

3. ankochinih Youpl are sleeping he 3.

4. tikochih We sleep we 4.

5. kochiya He was sleeping youpl 5.

6. kwi:kas He will sing they 6.

7. ankochiyah Youpl were sleeping PRES 7.

8. nicho:kas I will cry PRES PROG 8.

9. cho:kayah They were crying PAST PROG 9.

10. tikochi Yousg sleep FUTURE 10.

11. ancho:kah Youpl cry 11. tikwi:ka

12. tikochis Yousg will sleep 12. cho:kani

13. ticho:kayah We were crying 13. nikochiya

14. cho:ka He cries We cry 14.

15. kochini He is sleeping They will sing 15.

16. ancho:kayah Youpl were crying Yousg are sleeping 16.

17. ticho:kanih We are crying

18. kwi:kah They sing

19. tikwi:kani Yousg are singing

20. cho:kanih They are crying

21. nikwi:kaya I was singing

60
10 PARTS OF SPEECH / WORD CATEGORIES

See also: Huddleston & Pullum (2002) p. 22; Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) pp. 188-203.

(1) EXERCISE ================================================

Consider the set of objects below in Table 1. Assuming you are to divide them, how would you do it?
How many groups could you make?

Table 1

Table 2:

61
(2) EXERCISE ================================================
Define the criteria applied in the division in Tables 1-4. State the properties of the elements appearing
in the leftmost/ rightmost group. Which division do you prefer? Why?

Table 3

Table 4

(3) EXERCISE ================================================

Into which group in which Table above would a. b. c.
you put the following objects?

62
(4) EXERCISE ================================================
Compare Table 5 and Table 6. Which is ‘better’? Why? State all the reasons.

Table 5

Table 6
.

(5) EXERCISE ================================================

Into which group in which Table above would a. b. c.
you put the following objects?

63
(6) EXERCISE ================================================
Assuming ‘words’ in a language to be ‘objects’, which division is applied to form parts of speech?
Which of the above Tables is closest to the system which results in the traditional 9-11 word classes?
Can you explain
a. - why we should divide the lexicon?
b. - what are the criteria for the division?
c. - how many parts of speech do we have (have to have)?

10.1 The Nature of Categories

From the beginning of the theoretical study of language in ancient Greece, words were grouped into
several categories according to various properties. The label for a part of speech expresses a
number of properties shared by specific groups of words. I.e. some specific conceptual field,
morphological format and/or structural relations and usage in a clause can be derived from the
categorial status of a given word.

(7) "Taxonomy is to be valued if it provides a convenient and revealing conceptual organization of

the entities in its realm... in our case something in terms of which grammatical and semantic
generalizations can be easily formulated;" Fillmore (1977:68).

(8) CRITERIA (properties relevant) FOR ESTABLISHING PARTS OF SPEECH

1. SEMANTIC or “notional” - based on the meaning of words and/or their role or
function in a larger group of words (often vague).

2. MORPHOLOGICAL - based on the word-internal structure;

each category has some typical morphology:
a. derivational morpheme(s) / affixes
b. inflectional morpheme(s) / affixes
3. SYNTACTIC - a. based on distribution in well-formed sentences
b. co-occurrence restrictions (includes modification)

4. PHONETIC - minor, complementary criteria mentioning e.g. a particular stress pattern or

some specific phoneme. E.g. Classical Greek Nouns had stress on different syllables, while
Verbs and Adjectives had a fixed rule for penult/ final stress placement. In Igbo (Nigeria),
Verbs begin with consonants while Nouns begin with vowels.

In an ideal case all the above criteria applied to one lexical item agree, but often they need not. In this
situation some of the criteria are taken for more important, according to the kind of grammatical
definitions used and specific characteristics of the studied language. The definitions of word categories
may therefore vary in different theoretical frameworks.

In traditional grammar, notional and morphological criteria prevailed over the syntactic. Czech
traditional grammar uses the following word categories: Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns, Numerals,
Verbs, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Particles and Interjections. For English the

64
categories of Articles (more generally, Determiners) and Modals could be added. The usual criteria
for inflecting word categories are morphological, while with non-inflecting word categories, syntactic
criteria are more appropriate.

The notion of a word category is closely related to the notion of ‘word’ and its definition may differ in
different languages as well.

‘MAJOR’ or ‘OPEN CLASS’ or ‘LEXICAL’ CATEGORIES:

N (Nouns) A (Adjectives, certain classes of Adverbs) V (Verbs) P (Prepositions in a broad sense).
Only these have an unlimited number of items and productively form new items.

‘MINOR’ or ‘CLOSED CLASS’ (NON-LEXICAL, GRAMMATICAL) CATEGORIES: P (some

Prepositions), Pronouns, Auxiliaries, Complementizers (some Conjunctions), certain Adverbial
Particles, Quantifiers-Numerals, etc.

The existence of the major lexical categories appears universal, but the importance and roles of their
members may differ substantially. Sometimes lexical categories are classified by shared grammatical
features; e.g. Nouns and Adjectives may share a general feature “+N”.

The number and character of minor or non-lexical categories may differ across languages. Each
closed category has a limited number of items (a closed or fixed list).

10.2 Semantic-Notional Criteria for establishing a Category (often imprecise)

Even though the following properties don’t decide many cases, they reflect fundamental aspects of
categories. Yet, why should courage be a Noun and brave an Adjective (or a Verb)?

(9) Prototypical correlations of syntactic categories (see Croft 1991, p. 55, 65, 79)

Noun Adjective Verb

Unmarked semantic class material objects properties actions

Stativity state state process, activity

Persistence persistent persistent transitory

Valency 0, sometimes 1 1, sometimes 2 1 to 4

Gradability non-gradable gradable non-gradable

Pragmatic function reference modification predication

10.3 Morphological Criteria for establishing an item's Category (very reliable)

a. derivational affixes...................create a new word, usually with of a different category

b. inflectional endings.................create a new form within a paradigm of the same word

65
10.3.1 Derivational Morphology

Derivational morphemes derive a new word, often in a different part of speech (category),
e.g. the Verb ‘write’ + derivational morpheme ‘-er’ = action Noun ‘writer’; ‘write’ + derivational
morpheme ‘-able’ = passive Adjective ‘writable’.

The presence of a derivational morpheme (in the relevant position) is almost always a clear and
sufficient argument in favour of some category. However, not all words contain derivational
morphemes and in languages where conversion and homonymy is frequent (e.g. English), a
derivational morpheme can mislead. For example, British English ‘fiver’, based on a numeral, is a five
pound note, and drug slang includes e.g. a ‘downer’.

(10) Righ-hand Head Rule (“RHHR”) - a head of a (complex) word in English, an element that
provides the category for the whole word, is the rightmost element.

(11) a. nation-al =A
b. nation-al-ise = not an A, but a V
c. nation-al-is-ation = not an A or a V, but an N
d. government: Effective government of desert areas is difficult.

e. moving: -ing = N: Divorce and moving are difficult. He avoided more moving.
-ing = A: Her poetry was very moving. / The en ding seemed so moving.
-ing = V: He was/began/ kept moving his office. I’ll be moving soon.

The RHHR applies to all regular and productive English compounds.

And it applies invariably in derivational morphology.

10.3.2 Inflectional Morphology

Inflectional morphemes change a word/part of speech (category) within its own paradigm:

(12) e.g. the Noun muž has a Case/Number paradigm:

muž, muže, muži, mužem, mužích, mužů, mužům.

(13) e.g. the Noun child also has a Case/Number paradigm:

child, child's, children, children’s.

Inflectional morphemes (e.g. plurals of Nouns) are specific to each part of speech:

(14) e.g. Nominal paradigm = nominal declension: Number, Case, Diminutives, etc.
Verbal paradigm = verbal conjugation: Tense, Aspect, Person, Negation, etc.

Inflectional paradigms can differ a lot across languages. Japanese nouns have case and politeness
inflections, but none for number. Japanese verbs are inflected for tense, negative, causative, passive,
politeness and other notions, but not for person or number.

66
10.3.3 Grammaticalization as a source of Morphology

Inflection encodes conceptual/notional features (="meaning") which a language has

grammaticalized.

(15) Process of grammaticalization

LEXICAL morpheme → DERIVATIONAL morpheme → INFLECTIONAL morpheme

!!!
Grammaticalization of a lexical semantic feature is a diachronic process (through time).
A semantic feature which becomes grammaticalized (in a given language) is:

i. simplified in meaning (appears only as a choice between a limited number of options),

ii. regular (has a canonical representation with a limited number of exceptions),
iii. often productive (always possible in suitable contexts, can be used with new words).

(16) a. Free grammar: a tiny/ small/ little apple

b. Lexical compounds: female/ woman/ she doctor
c. Derivation: lion-ess, actr-ess, host-ess, laundr-ess,*doctor-ess, *author-ess
cf. care-ful, sorrow-ful, health-ful, respect-ful, hope-ful, *anger-ful, *despair-ful
d. Productive inflection: jablí-čko, doktor-ka, pekař-ka, autor-ka

Lexical morphemes (independent words) like tiny/small/little or female/woman/she can diachronically

lose their full semantic (lexical) richness and become simplified to grammatical formatives, in the
extreme case becoming a regular/predictable/productive bound morpheme. E.g. we see that English
full becomes a suffix –ful, losing some meaning.

Grammatical morphemes are nonetheless still semantic in that they are related to aspects of reality
which can also be expressed lexically. They represent some simplified version of it.

(17) Real vs. grammaticalized notion e.g. number 6, number three hundred and seven

a. Integers (an infinite scale): 1/2/3/.../789/.../8723... ∞

b. Grammaticalized Number: one vs. many, several, few, lots of, bunch of
c. Inflection: book vs. book-s (-s can mean any of these)

(18) Real vs. grammaticalized notion of Time = Tense

a. Time, an infinite line: E.g. Future time: tomorrow, two days from now, next year
b. Tense, Grammaticalized: established points (with respect to the speech act)
Past vs. Present vs. Future (= what precedes/occurs with/follows a speech act)

(19) He stopped. (-ed means preceding the speech act)

He will (have) come. (will means following the speech act)

67
Languages can differ as to which categories use which grammaticalized features (i.e., have specific
kinds of inflectional morphology). Compare these English and Czech examples w.r.t. (= with respect
to) grammaticalization of (a/b) Gender and (c/d) Countability:

(20) a. The Great Emper-ess [Fem] was sitting on the throne worried.
The Great Emper-or [Masc] was sitting on the throne worried.

b. Velk-á císař-ovna seděl-a na trůněustaraná.

Velk-ý císař seděl na trůně ustaraný.

c. Mary bought many / few / *much /*little books.

Mary seems to have so much / little / *many / *few time(*s).

d. Marie koupila mnoho / málo knih.

Marie má mnoho / málo času.

10.3.4 Types of Features

Inflectional morphology on a lexical item reflects features of the following three types:

(21) PRIMARY a. inherent (part of a lexical entry)

!!!
b. optional (depends on the choice of the speaker)

SECONDARY c. configurational (‘kongruenční’, ‘agreement’, case)

The kinds of features are illustrated in the following:

(22) a. Anna [Fem/*Masc] is an actress [Fem/*Masc].

- Anna/ -ess/ -ka are always/ inherently of the Feminine Gender feature.

b. Julie buys/ bought [Past]/ will buy [Fut] a book [Sing] / many books [Plur].

- the choice of value for theTense feature in bought /will buy depends on speakers.
- the choice of Number in book/ books depends on the speaker (it is optional).

c. Hillary introduces/*introduce her friends to Bill.

They introduce/*introduces their friends to Peter.

- the Agreement feature on the Predicate introduce(s) depends not on the Verb (it is not inherent), but
on some other (related) element - on characteristics of the Subject. Speakers cannot chose the Verb
form, once they chose the Subject.

d. Jiřina poslal Petrovi velk-ou knih-u [Fem, Sg, Acc]:

- Gender [feminine]: inherent feature (the item kniha is formally feminine).

68
- Number [singular]: optional feature (the speaker is able to choose plural: knihy).
- Case [accusative]: configurational (the Czech Verb poslat requires accusative Case and no other for
its direct Object).
- Adj agreenment: velk-ou [Fem, Sg, Acc]: All features on the Adjective are secondary, i.e.
configurational; they reflect properties of the superordinate element (knihu) to show that Adj. is its
(pre-) modifier (the role of agreement is to show the relationship).

(23) Inflectional morphology is the strongest signal of categorial status.

Every specific part of speech has its own
unique intrinsic grammatical categories, !!!
- e.g. a grammatical category Tense is typical for Verbs, Gender for Nouns, and Grading for
Adjectives. Other categories at most reflect/mirror the grammatical category of another part of speech
(Verbs or Adjectives can mirror Gender/Number, but it is not intrinsic to them).

In a language with rich inflectional morphology (e.g. Czech) each major class lexical item can have
some typical inflectional ending, which identifies the part of speech rather clearly.

However, in a language with poor inflectional morphology (e.g. English) the morphological signal is
frequently absent and co-occurring elements in the syntax decide the category.

(24) a. stop - stops

b. to stop, he stop-s vs. the stop, two stop-s
c. zastav-it, zastav-il vs. zastáv-ka, zastáv-ky

(25)

...
List of English bound inflectional morphemes

Category Morpheme Example Meaning/ Function

!!!
Type
1. N -s book-s Number [plural] Optional
2. N 's Mary's Case [Saxon genitive] Configurational
3. Pron -s/-r hi-s/ou-r Case [Possessive] Configurational
4. Pron -self our-selves Reference [Reflexive] Configurational
5. V -s (he) read-s Agreement/ Tense [3sgPres] Configurational
6. V -ed wash-ed Tense [Past] Optional
7. V –en/ ed writt-en Aspect [Perfect] Optional
8. V –ing read-ing Aspect [Progressive] Optional
9. A -er strong-er Grading [Comparative] Optional
10. A -est strong-est Grading [Superlative] Optional

69
(26) EXERCISE ================================================
The inflectional morphemes –en, –er and -ing have derivational counterparts. What is the
meaning/function of those morphemes? Give examples.

-en ........................................................................................................................................................

-er ........................................................................................................................................................

-ing ......................................................................................................................................................

(27) EXERCISE ================================================

Discuss what the underlined morphology in the examples below signals.

a. Jan a Marie jd-ou do kina.

b. Zelen-ou si neber.
c. Petra js-em viděl-a já.
d. John i-s in the garden.
e. There we-re some boys there.
f. The man who-m I gave it to.

(28) EXERCISE ================================================

In the following examples circle all the morphemes which show the feature of Number. Explain the
distinctions between Czech and English.

(a) Those other young girls came back from Prague very tired.
(b) Ty druhé mladé dívky se vrátily z Prahy velmi unavené.

(29) EXERCISE ================================================

Give examples of 2 more derivational morphemes that create each word category:

Nouns: (i) govern+MENT, V + ment = N

(ii)............................................................. (iii).................................................................

Verbs: (i) modern+ISE, A + ise = V

(ii)............................................................. (iii).................................................................

70
Adjectives: (i) water + Y, N + y = Adj

(ii)............................................................. (iii).................................................................

Adverbs: (i) east + WARD, X + ward = Adv erb

(ii)............................................................. (iii).................................................................

(30) EXERCISE ================================================

(i) Give the pronunciation of the morphemes –s and –ed. What are the options?
(ii) What is 'assimilation in voicing'?
(iii) Under which conditions does the pronunciation involve [-i-]?
(iv) Can you state the rule about inserting [-i-] in some general way?

a. books a. cat's a. he talks a. he talked

b. dogs b. dog's b. he reads b. he arrived
c. trees c. Mike's c. he tries c. he tried
d. masses d. James's d. he fusses d. he trusted
e. hedges e. Butch's e. he amuses e. he traded

(31) EXERCISE ================================================

Which kind of morpheme are the –S/-ER/-ING/-ED morphemes in the following examples? Consider
what category the word in the following context is. Justify your choices.

a. i. I saw Adam'-s brother in front of the house.

ii. These article-s were written by my father.
iii. Josephine stop-s at every corner.

b. i. Joan is a bit quick-er than Louise.

ii. She is a quick read-er.

c. i. Bill was shoot-ing the rabbits.

ii. His shoot-ing (of the rabbits) went on and on.
iii. Those shoot-ing sounds/ stars surprised me.

d. i. The staff was soon retir-ed (by the management).

ii. My father is happily retir-ed (*by the management).
iii. A retir-ed (*by Harriet) person (*by the management).

71
11 SYNTACTIC CRITERIA FOR ESTABLISHING A CATEGORY

Syntactic criteria for establishing the category of an item are based on its distribution, i.e. co-
occurrence restrictions. Each part of speech appears in some typical environments.

There are typical elements which are subordinate to it (lower in a structural hierarchy) and typical
elements which are superordinate to it (higher in a hierarchy).

For Nouns: subordinate elements (what depends on N?) are Adjectives, Articles, Numerals, etc. while
superordinate elements (what does the NP depend on?) are Verbs, Prepositions, etc.

(1) a. N: book, friend, water, courage, fact

b. NP: [NP the new book], [NP a friend of mine], [NP the water to drink]
c. V, [ _ NP]: to publish [NP the new book], to see [NP a friend of mine]
P, [ _ NP]: about [NP the new book], about [NP the water to drink]

11.1 Heads, Phrases and Pro-forms

Heads. Every part of speech can become a head of a more complex structure = a phrase.

(2) pre-modifier(s) HEAD post-modifier(s)

brother
that big out of mine
right was the door
usually a bother

Phrases. The form of a pre-/post-modification is typical for a specific head/part of speech. Some
types of modifiers can be more/ less obligatory in a given type of phrase.

(3) a. N: boy [NP the little boy of mine ]

b. A: small [AP much smaller than Theo ]
c. V: read [VP to never read the article ]
d. P: up [PP right up the hill ]

The form of pre-modification (i.e. the kind of “specifier”) and of post-modification (the categories of
the “complements”) may be very typical for a specific head/part of speech. Some, like articles with
count nouns or nouns after many prepositions, can be more or less obligatory. The main function of
each part of speech is to head its phrase (to project into phrases).

72
(4) Universal phrasal projection of a category X: Heads, Specifiers and Complements

XP

SPEC(X)

X0
X'

X-complement
!!!
(5) a. X=N:boy [NP the little boy of hers ] *[NP little boy of hers ]
b. X=A: small [AP much smaller than Theo ] *[AP much smaller than ]
c. X=V: find [VP to never find the article ] *[VP to never find ]
d. X=P: toward [PP right toward a door ] *[PP right toward ]

In a sentence, a constituent (phrase) can appear as (i) simple/bare, or (ii) complex. We call both
“phrases” and say that sentences consist of phrases, not of words.

Sentence functions (sentence members, syntagmas) like ‘Subject’, ‘Object’, ‘Attribute’ and ‘Predicate’
are phrases, although they can be ‘bare’ phrases (i.e. they can be only one word) or in other cases
whole clauses (sentences inside sentences).

(6) a. We saw rabbits / [NP that little rabbit of mine ]. Object is NP

b. This boy was small / [AP much smaller than Adam ]. Predicate is AP
c. I hate hurrying / [VP to always work so late ]. Object is VP
d. Few campers went up / [PP right up the hill ]. Adverbial is PP
e. This is a big / [AP an extremely big] step. Attribute is AP

Pro-forms. The main or major parts of speech N, V, A, P (in fact their phrases NP, VP, AP, PP)
typically have PROFORMS: grammatical words which can replace them.

The kind of proform used for such substitution is in itself a signal of the kind of phrase. (Pronouns
replace NPs, Adverbials like there, then replace PPs, do so replaces VP, such replaces AP.)

(7) The little boy was already running in the city's only park at 8 o’clock.

a. NP [NP He ] was already running in the city's only park at 8 o’clock.

b. VP She wonders if [the little boy ] [VP did so ].
c. PP The little boy was running [PP there ] at 8 o’clock.
d. NP The little boy was running in [NP our ] only park at 8 o’clock.
e. PP The little boy was running in the city's only park [PP then ].
f. AP [AP Such] a boy was running in the city's only park at 8 o’clock.

73
11.2 Categorial Prototypicality

Ideally the words of the same part of speech have the same (general) type of meaning, the same
(predictable) forms, and the same syntactic distributions/functions/pragmatics.

Grammatical categories have ‘best case’ members and members that systematically depart from the
‘best case’. An optimal grammatical description not only brings out morphosyntactic properties that
are typical, but also the degree of categorial deviation from the ‘best case.’

To ‘know´ the characteristics of a specific part of speech means to know to which extent the members
of the category are ‘the same’ (what they have in common), and to what extent they can differ from
the best case (what are the frequent deviations).

(8) a. book/ books; flaw/ flaws but sheep/ *sheeps; courage/ *courages
b. writing, arriving, doing but *musting/ *shoulding/ *bewaring
c. more/ very/ how important but *more/ *very /*how infinite

11.2.1 “Fuzzy” Categories

Some linguistis believe in so called “Fuzzy” Categories. They claim the boundaries between
categories are (sometimes) indistinct. Then perhaps they believe there are no categories, and parts of
speech are only an “invention” of formalists.

One can, however, claim that the reason for the ‘fuzziness’ of categories lies in the multiple criteria
for each category; see (8) on page 64. ‘Category’ is defined separately in each linguistic component;
so the results of the multiple definitions can conflict and seem contradictory.

If we still must choose only one category, our choice depends on what we focus on (recall that
categories are abstract collections of features and properties). Fuzziness, more likely than being a
phenomena, usually signals a wrong or incomplete analysis. Consider these examples:

i. Meaning is adaptable and there is no morphology:

(9) a. ...stop... - meaning??? V?, N?, A?
b. The nearest stop is... N, *V, *A
c. The stop lights are broken. A, *N, *V
d. He should stop soon. V, *N, *A

ii. Meaning is adaptable and morphology is ambiguous:

(10) a. ...reading... - meaning of –ing???, V?, N?, A?
b. Reading about that is sad. ?V, ?N
c. This reading is easy. N, *V, *A
d. He was reading a book. V, *N, *A
e. Take those reading glasses. A, *N, *V

74
iii. Meaning is adaptable, morphology signals X and distribution (syntax) signals Y:

(11) Should we sit there or nearer the boss?

-er suggests near is an A; coordination with here and the verb go suggest it is a P.

(12) That’s a must see movie.

-must suggests see is a verb; the syntax suggests must see is an A.

(13) Safer would be better than faster.

-the –er suggests that safer, faster are As; syntax suggests that they are N.

11.3 Some non-lexical categories or minor parts of speech

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) pp. 188-203; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik (2004)
pp. 393-398; Dušková (1994) pp. 136-140, 273-306; Svoboda and Opělová-Károlyová (1989) pp.
138-162; Crystal (1987) pp. 91-93

Minor parts of speech (closed categories) have a limited, basically fixed number of members. They are
lists of specific words. They can be (i) grouped together with some major category that they share
properties with, or (ii) kept separate because of some special property.

(14) a. Pronouns = Nouns, Adjectives ?

b. Numerals = Nouns, Adjectives ?
c. Conjunctions = Prepositions ?

In English and Czech, these categories influence morphology, but don’t exhibit it themselves.

On the other hand, these non-lexical categories are central to grammatical systems, i.e. syntactic
distribution.

(15) Numerals

a. I saw those three hundred (and) thirty-three silver fire-brigade vehicles.

b. The fifth policeman we see twice or three times a day.
c. The purpose of those plants is threefold. First, they take up space; second….
d. Many of them are ugly but a few are not so bad.
e. They drank barrels of beer. Mike drank a lot of wine, too.

(16) Prepositions, Conjunctions, Adverbs (of location): Perhaps the same category?

a. I haven’t done anything since Sunday/ after the party.

b. Samuel hasn’t done anything since /after (he got up).
c. Peter arrived after she finished her work in the garden/ after(ward).
d. I arranged for a vacation and for her to get a free trip. For she really deserved it.
e. What are you looking at /for? What are you looking forward to?

75
Consider the notion “transitivity” wrt distinctions among: Preposition/Conjunction/Adverb. A class of
words with the same properties of meaning and syntax (e.g. possible pre-modifiers) are called
Prepositions when they precede NPs, Conjunctions when they precede Clauses, and Adverbs of
Location when they stand alone.

(17) EXERCISE ================================================

Recall the (semantic-notional) definitions you were using at primary school to characterize the
category (part of speech): For each one, to what extent is it adequate?
“Nouns are names of persons, places and things.” Verbs express ??... Pronouns ??....

(18) EXERCISE ================================================

Use the ambiguous? / fuzzy? expressions use, love, top, after, back, book, open in at least two ways
in contexts which clearly disambiguate their category as N, V, A or P. Think of other English words
which are 'fuzzy' in a similar way.
use ......................................................................................................................................................
love ....................................................................................................................................................
top ......................................................................................................................................................
since ...................................................................................................................................................
back ...................................................................................................................................................
book ...................................................................................................................................................
open.....................................................................................................................................................

(19) EXERCISE ================================================

In the following complexes find the elements which are subordinate / superordinate to the underlined
head. Which categories are these elements?

a. Joe saw my younger brother.

b. She fell in love with that brother of mine last year.
c. Hillary always falls in love with quite young boys.
d. My brother is really much younger than her.
e. She is in very good terms with his mother.

(20) EXERCISE ================================================

The underlined words are in fact bare phrases (i.e. phrases which contain only a head). Replace them
(in the text) by complex phrases which contain:

i. the head and some premodifier(s),

ii. the head and some postmodifier(s),
iii. the head and both pre-modifier(s) and post-modifier(s).

a. [NP Mary ] went to [NP school].

b. [AP Little] girls had gone to the [AP closest ] shop.
c. And Mary [VP went], too.
d. And [PP then] Mary went [PP there], too.

76
(21) EXERCISE ================================================
i. What types of phrases are the underlined parts of sentences? Which are their heads?
ii. Replace the underlined parts of the sentence by one word (and/or its proform).

a. My older brother will help you.

b. In the afternoon Mike will make supper in the kitchen.
c. Not everybody can read a novel in one day.

(22) EXERCISE ================================================

Say which part of speech the following proforms replace. Give examples in context. E.g. 'she': She is
at home. → My sister is at home. She=NP

a. he, his, these ......................................................................................................................

b. one ......................................................................................................................
c. here, now ......................................................................................................................
d. do so ......................................................................................................................
e. such ......................................................................................................................

(23) EXERCISE ================================================

Consider the underlined words. Decide about their category and explain which criteria from those
given in (8) on page 64 were the most important for your decision.

a. I wrote the long letters. = N: 2b (plural inflection); 3a (Article the shows N).
b. I saw three big whugs in my garden. = ..........................................................
c. I want to plymise this book. = .........................................................
d. He is much hompler than George. = .........................................................
e. I was trumbling the whole afternoon yesterday. = .........................................................
f. Marcel is the most shimable guy I’ve ever met. = .........................................................
g. The book is fin the table, not under the chair. = .........................................................
h. The letter is down the stairs. = ..........................................................
i. I hate bending down. = ..........................................................
j. They prefer to talk in the shower. = ..........................................................
k. She prefers talking German to German talking. = ..........................................................
= ..........................................................
l. He reads a newspaper every day. = ..........................................................

77
12 ATTACHMENTS

12.1 Irregular Plurals

Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Singular Plural attorneys general /

attorney general
attorney generals
abacus abaci / abacuses
automaton automata / automatons
addendum addenda
avocado avocados
adieu adieux / adieus
axis axes
agenda agendas
baby babies
aircraft aircraft
bacillus bacilli
album albums
bacterium bacteria
alga algae
bamboo bamboos
algebra algebras
banjo banjos / banjoes
alibi alibis
Bantu Bantu / Bantus
alumna alumnae
barracks barracks
alumnus alumni
basis bases
amoeba amoebae / amoebas
beano beanos
analysis analyses
annex annexes
antenna antennae / antennas Singular Plural

antithesis antitheses Bedouin Bedouin / Bedouins

Apache Apache / Apaches belief beliefs

apex apices / apexes bellows bellows

apparatus apparatuses bench benches

appendix appendices binoculars binoculars

aquarium aquaria / aquariums bison bison

archipelagos / bistro bistros
archipelago
archipelagoes
bloomers bloomers
area areas
box boxes
arena arenas
boy boys
arsis arses
breeches breeches
asylum asylums
briefs briefs

78
britches britches Singular Plural
brother brothers / brethren child children
buffalo buffalos / buffaloes Chinese Chinese
bureau bureaux / bureaus chrysanthemum chrysanthemums
bus buses city cities
bush bushes clergy clergy
buzz buzzes cliff cliffs
cactus cacti / cactuses clip-ons clip-ons
café cafés clippers clippers
calculus calculi coccyx coccyges / coccyxes
calf calves cod cod / cods
calypso calypsos codex codices / codexes
cameo cameos commander-in-chief commanders-in-chief
candelabra commando commandos
candelabrum
/candelabrums
concerto concertos
cargo cargos / cargoes
contralto contraltos
carp carp / carps
conundrum conundrums
casino casinos
copy copies
cattle cattle
corduroys corduroys
cello cellos
corps corps
census censuses
corpus corpora / corpuses
cervix cervices / cervixes
corrigendum corrigenda
chairman chairmen
cortex cortices / cortexes
chassis chassis
courts martial / court
chateau chateaux / chateaus court martial
martials
chef chefs craft craft
cherub cherubim / cherubs crisis crises
Chicano Chicanos criterion (90%
criteria
occurrence) / criteria
chief chiefs
crocus crocuses
crossroads crossroads
crucifix crucifixes
curriculum curricula / -lums
customs (= duties
customs
paid on goods)
cutters cutters

79
dado dados / dadoes essay essays
datum /data data excursus excursuses
deer deer faux pas faux pas
demo demos feedback (uncount.) feedback
desideratum desiderata fibula fibulae / fibulas
diagnosis diagnoses Filipino Filipinos
dice dice fish fish / fishes
dilemma dilemmas flannels flannels
disco discos fly flies
do dos focus foci / focuses
dodo dodos / dodoes foetus foetuses
domino dominoes folio folios
donkey donkeys foot feet
forceps forceps
formula formulae / formulas
Singular Plural
forum forums
dozen dozen (after num.)
fox foxes
draughts draughts
fungus fungi / funguses
drawers drawers
gallows gallows
duck duck /ducks
ganglion ganglia / ganglions
dwarf dwarf / dwarves
genesis geneses
dynamo dynamos
genus genera / genuses
echo echoes
geranium geraniums
electron electrons
giraffe giraffes
elephant elephants
glasses glasses
elf elves
goggles goggles
elk elk / elks
goods goods
ellipsis ellipses
goose geese
embargo embargoes
grandchild grandchildren
embryo embryos
grotto grottos / grottoes
emphasis emphases
Singular Plural
encyclopedia encyclopedias
grouse grouse
erratum errata
grown-up grown-ups
Eskimo Eskimos
guerrilla guerrillas

80
guy guys kangaroo kangaroos
half halves kennels kennels
halo halos / haloes kibbutz kibbutzim / kibbutzes
handkerchief handkerchiefs Kikuyu Kikuyu / Kikuyus
harmonium harmoniums kilo kilos
headquarters headquarters kiss kisses
helix helices / helixes knickerbockers knickerbockers
hero heroes knickers knickers
hiatus hiatuses knife knives
hippopotamus hippopotami /- muses labium labia
homunculus homunculi lacuna lacunae / lacunas
honey honeys Singular Plural
honoraria / lady ladies
honorarium
honorariums
larva larvae
hoof hoofs / hooves
larynx larynges / larynxes
Hopi Hopi / Hopis
latex latices / latexes
horizon horizons
leaf leaves
hundred hundred (after num.)
Lebanese Lebanese
hypothesis hypotheses
libretto librettos
ibex ibices / ibexes
life lives
ice (uncountable) ice
links links
impetus impetuses
lion lions
importance
importance
(uncountable) loaf loaves
(mat. ) indices / locus loci
index
(biblio.) indexes
loss losses
innings innings
lice / (louses when
innuendos / louse
innuendo used for person)
innuendoes
love (uncountable) love
Inuit Inuit / Inuits
maestro maestros
iris irises
Maltese Maltese
Japanese Japanese
man men
jeans jeans
mango mangoes
Jones Joneses
manifestos /
judge judges manifesto
manifestoes
jumbo jumbos man-of-war men-of-war

81
manservant menservants negro negroes
Mary Marys neurosis neuroses
match matches neutron neutrons
mathematics mathematics news news
matrix matrices / matrixes nucleus nuclei / nucleuses
mausoleum mausoleums oaf oafs
maximum maxima / maximums oasis oases
means means oats oats
measles measles octopus octopi / octopuses
media / (mediums – offspring offspring
medium / media
“spiritualists”)
opus opera / opuses
memo memos
overalls overalls
memoranda /
memorandum
memorandums ovum ova
metamorphosis metamorphoses ox oxen
metropolis metropolises p (=penny, pence) p
mews mews panties panties
milieu milieux / milieus pants pants
millennium millennia / -niums paparazzo paparazzi
million million (after num.) paralysis paralyses
minimum minima parenthesis parentheses
money moneys / monies partridge partridges
moose moose passer-by passers-by
moratorium moratoria /-toriums patio patios
mosquito mosquitoes patois patois
motto mottos / mottoes pelvis pelvises
pendulum pendulums
Singular Plural
penis penises
mice (but computer
mouse pentagon pentagons
mouses)
muff muffs persona personae / personas

mulatto mulattos / mulattoes peso pesos

mumps mumps pharynx pharynges / pharynxes

narcissus narcissi / narcissuses pheasant pheasants

Navaho Navaho / Navahos phenomenon (90%

phenomena
phenomena
nebula nebulae / nebulas

82
phobia phobias quay quays
photo photos quid (= pound(s)) quid
photograph photographs quiz quizzes
physics physics quota quotas
piano pianos radio radios
pincers pincers radius radii / radiuses
pinetum pineta rectus recti
Singular Plural reef reefs
plateau plateaux / plateaus referendum referenda / -dums
plectrum plectra / plectrums reflex reflexes
pliers pliers reindeer reindeer /reindeers
plus pluses / plusses rendezvous rendezvous
podium podia / podiums replica replicas
police police retina retinae / retinas
policeman policemen roof roofs
policewoman policewomen rose roses
polygon polygons rumba rumbas
portfolio portfolios safe safes
Portuguese Portuguese salmon salmon / salmons
positron positrons scales scales
potato potatoes scarf scarfs / scarves
premium premiums scenario scenarios
prion prions scissors scissors
prolegomenon prolegomena Singular Plural
proof proofs secateurs secateurs
prospectus prospectuses self selves
proton protons seraph seraphim / seraphs
proviso provisos / provisoes serf serfs
psychosis psychoses series series
puff puffs shampoo shampoos
pyjamas pyjamas sheaf sheaves
quail quail / quails shears shears
quantum quanta sheep sheep
quarto quartos shelf shelves

83
shorts shorts taxi taxis / taxies
Sioux Sioux terminus termini / terminuses
skeleton skeletons
ski skis / ski Singular Plural

slacks slacks testis testes

soliloquy soliloquies Texano Texanos

solo solos thesaurus thesauri / thesauruses

soprano sopranos thesis theses

Sotho Sotho / Sothos thief thieves

species species thousand thousand (after num.)

spectacles spectacles thrombosis thromboses

spectrum spectra / spectrums tibia tibiae / tibias

spinifex spinifexes tights tights

stadium stadia / stadiums time (uncountable) time

staff staff tomato tomatoes

stairs stairs tongs tongs

status statuses tooth teeth

stereo stereos tornado tornados / tornadoes

stimulus stimuli torpedo torpedoes

stratum strata tortix tortices / tortixes

studio studios tough toughs

stylus styli / styluses trio trios

surroundings surroundings trolley trolleys / trollies

swine / (swines when trousers trousers

swine
used as abuse term) trout trout / trouts
Swiss Swiss
trunks trunks
syllabus syllabi / syllabuses
tutu tutus
symposia /
symposium tweezers tweezers
symposiums
synopsis synopses two twos

synthesis syntheses ultimatum ultimate / ultimatums

tableau tableaux / tableaus uterus uteri / uteruses

taboo taboos vertebra vertebrae / vertebras

taco tacos veto vetoes

tattoo tattoos video videos

84
Vietnamese Vietnamese wharf wharfs / wharves
virtuoso virtuosos wife wives
virus viruses wolf wolves
volcano volcanos / volcanoes woman women
vortex vortices / vortixes works works
waif waifs Xhosa Xhosa / Xhosas
weirdo weirdos zero zeros
werewolf werewolves zoo zoos

12.2 Extended Irregular Verb Dictionary

Englishpage.com > Irregular Verb Dictionary (Common Forms)

Alternate forms are separated by /. The first form listed is the most commonly used.

Infinitive Simple Past Past Participle

A
abide abided / abode abided
alight alighted / alit alighted / alit
arise arose arisen
awake awakened / awoke awakened / awoken

B
backbite backbit backbitten
backslide backslid backslidden / backslid
be [ am, is, are] was, were been
bear bore born / borne
beat beat beaten / beat
become became become
befall befell befallen
beget begat / begot begotten
begin began begun
behold beheld beheld
bend bent bent
bereave bereaved / bereft bereaved / bereft

85
beseech besought / beseeched besought / beseeched
beset beset beset
bestrew bestrewed bestrewn / bestrewed
bet bet / betted bet / betted
betake betook betaken
bethink bethought bethought
bid (farewell) bid / bade bidden
bid (offer amount) bid bid
bind bound bound
bite bit bitten
bleed bled bled
blow blew blown
break broke broken
breed bred bred
bring brought brought
broadcast broadcast / broadcasted broadcast / broadcasted
browbeat browbeat browbeaten / browbeat
build built built
burn burned / burnt burned / burnt
burst burst burst
bust busted / bust busted / bust
buy bought bought

C
cast cast cast
catch caught caught
chide chided / chid chided / chidden
choose chose chosen
clap clapped / clapt clapped / clapt
cling clung clung
clothe clothed / clad clothed / clad
colorbreed colorbred colorbred
come came come
cost cost cost

86
creep crept crept
crossbreed crossbred crossbred
cut cut cut

D
dare dared / durst dared / durst
daydream daydreamed / daydreamt daydreamed / daydreamt
deal dealt dealt
dig dug dug
dight dighted / dight dighted / dight
disprove disproved disproved / disproven
dive (jump head-first) dove / dived dived
dive (scuba diving) dived / dove dived
do did done
draw drew drawn
dream dreamed / dreamt dreamed / dreamt
drink drank drunk
drive drove driven
dwell dwelt / dwelled dwelt / dwelled

E
eat ate eaten
enwind enwound enwound

F
fall fell fallen
feed fed fed
feel felt felt
fight fought fought
find found found
fit (tailor, change size) fitted / fit fitted / fit
fit (be right size) fit / fitted fit / fitted
flee fled fled
fling flung flung
fly flew flown
forbear forbore forborne

87
forbid forbade forbidden
fordo fordid fordone
forecast forecast forecast
forego (also forgo) forewent foregone
foreknow foreknew foreknown
forerun foreran forerun
foresee foresaw foreseen
foreshow foreshowed foreshown / foreshowed
forespeak forespoke forespoken
foretell foretold foretold
forget forgot forgotten / forgot
forgive forgave forgiven
forsake forsook forsaken
forswear forswore forsworn
fraught fraught fraught
freeze froze frozen
frostbite frostbit frostbitten

G
gainsay gainsaid gainsaid
get got gotten / got
gild gilded / gilt gilded / gilt
give gave given
go went gone
grind ground ground
grow grew grown

H
hagride hagrode hagridden
halterbreak halterbroke halterbroken
hamstring hamstrung hamstrung
hand-feed hand-fed hand-fed
handwrite handwrote handwritten
hang hung hung
hang (kill by hanging) hanged / hung hanged / hung

88
have had had
hear heard heard
heave heaved / hove heaved / hove
hew hewed hewn / hewed
hide hid hidden
hit hit hit
hold held held
hurt hurt hurt

I
inbreed inbred inbred
inlay inlaid inlaid
input input / inputted input / inputted
inset inset inset
interbreed interbred interbred
intercut intercut intercut
interlay interlaid interlaid
interset interset interset
interweave interwove / interweaved interwoven / interweaved
interwind interwound interwound
inweave inwove / inweaved inwoven / inweaved

J
jerry-build jerry-built jerry-built

K
keep kept kept
kneel knelt / kneeled knelt / kneeled
knit knitted / knit knitted / knit
know knew known

L
lade laded laden / laded
landslide landslid landslid
lay laid laid
lead led led

89
lean leaned / leant leaned / leant
leap leaped / leapt leaped / leapt
learn learned / learnt learned / learnt
leave left left
lend lent lent
let let let
lie lay lain
lie (not tell truth) lied lied
light lit / lighted lit / lighted
lip-read lip-read lip-read
lose lost lost

M
make made made
mean meant meant
meet met met
misbecome misbecame misbecome
miscast miscast miscast
miscut miscut miscut
misdeal misdealt misdealt
misdo misdid misdone
mishear misheard misheard
mishit mishit mishit
mislay mislaid mislaid
mislead misled misled
mislearn mislearned / mislearnt mislearned / mislearnt
misread misread misread
missay missaid missaid
missend missent missent
misset misset misset
misspeak misspoke misspoken
misspell misspelled / misspelt misspelled / misspelt
misspend misspent misspent
misswear misswore missworn

90
mistake mistook mistaken
misteach mistaught mistaught
mistell mistold mistold
misthink misthought misthought
misunderstand misunderstood misunderstood
miswear miswore misworn
miswed miswed / miswedded miswed / miswedded
miswrite miswrote miswritten
mow mowed mowed / mown

N
No irregular verbs beginning with "N."

O
offset offset offset
outbid outbid outbid
outbreed outbred outbred
outdo outdid outdone
outdraw outdrew outdrawn
outdrink outdrank outdrunk
outdrive outdrove outdriven
outfight outfought outfought
outfly outflew outflown
outgrow outgrew outgrown
outlay outlaid outlaid
outleap outleaped / outleapt outleaped / outleapt
outlie (not tell truth) outlied outlied
output output / outputted output / outputted
outride outrode outridden
outrun outran outrun
outsee outsaw outseen
outsell outsold outsold
outshine outshined / outshone outshined / outshone
outshoot outshot outshot
outsing outsang outsung

91
outsit outsat outsat
outsleep outslept outslept
outsmell outsmelled / outsmelt outsmelled / outsmelt
outspeak outspoke outspoken
outspeed outsped outsped
outspend outspent outspent
outspin outspun outspun
outspring outsprang / outsprung outsprung
outstand outstood outstood
outswear outswore outsworn
outswim outswam outswum
outtell outtold outtold
outthink outthought outthought
outthrow outthrew outthrown
outwear outwore outworn
outwind outwound outwound
outwrite outwrote outwritten
overbear overbore overborne / overborn
overbid overbid overbid
overbreed overbred overbred
overbuild overbuilt overbuilt
overbuy overbought overbought
overcast overcast overcast
overcome overcame overcome
overcut overcut overcut
overdo overdid overdone
overdraw overdrew overdrawn
overdrink overdrank overdrunk
overeat overate overeaten
overfeed overfed overfed
overhang overhung overhung
overhear overheard overheard
overlay overlaid overlaid
overleap overleaped / overleapt overleaped / overleapt

92
overlie overlay overlain
overpay overpaid overpaid
override overrode overridden
overrun overran overrun
oversee oversaw overseen
oversell oversold oversold
overset overset overset
oversew oversewed oversewn / oversewed
overshoot overshot overshot
oversleep overslept overslept
oversow oversowed oversown / oversowed
overspeak overspoke overspoken
overspend overspent overspent
overspill overspilled / overspilt overspilled / overspilt
overspin overspun overspun
overspread overspread overspread
overspring oversprang / oversprung / oversprung
overstand overstood overstood
overstrewn
overstrew overstrewed
/ overstrewed
overstride overstrode overstridden
overstrike overstruck overstruck
overtake overtook overtaken
overthink overthought overthought
overthrow overthrew overthrown
overwear overwore overworn
overwind overwound overwound
overwrite overwrote overwritten

P
partake partook partaken
pay paid paid
plead pleaded / pled pleaded / pled
prebuild prebuilt prebuilt
predo predid predone

93
premake premade premade
prepay prepaid prepaid
presell presold presold
preset preset preset
preshrink preshrank preshrunk
presplit presplit presplit
proofread proofread proofread
prove proved proven / proved
put put put

Q
quick-freeze quick-froze quick-frozen
quit quit / quitted quit / quitted

R
read read (sounds like "red") read (sounds like "red")
reawake reawoke reawaken
rebid rebid rebid
rebind rebound rebound
rebroadcast rebroadcast
rebroadcast
/ rebroadcasted / rebroadcasted
rebuild rebuilt rebuilt
recast recast recast
recut recut recut
redeal redealt redealt
redo redid redone
redraw redrew redrawn
reeve reeved / rove reeved / rove
refit (replace parts) refit / refitted refit / refitted
refit (retailor) refitted / refit refitted / refit
regrind reground reground
regrow regrew regrown
rehang rehung rehung
rehear reheard reheard
reknit reknitted / reknit reknitted / reknit
relay (e..g. tiles) relaid relaid

94
relay (pass along) relayed relayed
relearn relearned / relearnt relearned / relearnt
relight relit / relighted relit / relighted
remake remade remade
rend rent / rended rent / rended
repay repaid repaid
reread reread reread
rerun reran rerun
resell resold resold
resend resent resent
reset reset reset
resew resewed resewn / resewed
retake retook retaken
reteach retaught retaught
retear retore retorn
retell retold retold
rethink rethought rethought
retread retread retread
retrofit retrofitted / retrofit retrofitted / retrofit
rewake rewoke / rewaked rewaken / rewaked
rewear rewore reworn
reweave rewove / reweaved rewoven / reweaved
rewed rewed / rewedded rewed / rewedded
rewet rewet / rewetted rewet / rewetted
rewin rewon rewon
rewind rewound rewound
rewrite rewrote rewritten
rid rid rid
ride rode ridden
ring rang rung
rise rose risen
rive rived riven / rived
roughcast roughcast roughcast
run ran run

95
S
sand-cast sand-cast sand-cast
saw sawed sawed / sawn
say said said
see saw seen
seek sought sought
self-feed self-fed self-fed
self-sow self-sowed self-sown / self-sowed
sell sold sold
send sent sent
set set set
sew sewed sewn / sewed
shake shook shaken
shave shaved shaved / shaven
shear sheared sheared / shorn
shed shed shed
shine shined / shone shined / shone
shit shit / shat / shitted shit / shat / shitted
shoe shoed / shod shoed / shod
shoot shot shot
show showed shown / showed
shrink shrank / shrunk shrunk
shrive shrived / shrove shriven
shut shut shut
sight-read sight-read sight-read
sing sang sung
sink sank / sunk sunk
sit sat sat
skywrite skywrote skywritten
slay (kill) slew / slayed slain / slayed
slay (amuse) slayed slayed
sleep slept slept
slide slid slid

96
sling slung slung
slink slinked / slunk slinked / slunk
slit slit slit
smell smelled / smelt smelled / smelt
smite smote smitten / smote
sneak sneaked / snuck sneaked / snuck
sow sowed sown / sowed
speak spoke spoken
speed sped / speeded sped / speeded
spell spelled / spelt spelled / spelt
spend spent spent
spill spilled / spilt spilled / spilt
spin spun spun
spit spit / spat spit / spat
split split split
spoil spoiled / spoilt spoiled / spoilt
spoon-feed spoon-fed spoon-fed
spread spread spread
spring sprang / sprung sprung
stall-feed stall-fed stall-fed
stand stood stood
stave staved / stove staved / stove
steal stole stolen
stick stuck stuck
sting stung stung
stink stunk / stank stunk
strew strewed strewn / strewed
stride strode stridden
strike (delete) struck stricken
strike (hit) struck struck / stricken
string strung strung
strip stripped / stript stripped / stript
strive strove / strived striven / strived
sublet sublet sublet

97
sunburn sunburned / sunburnt sunburned / sunburnt
swear swore sworn
sweat sweat / sweated sweat / sweated
sweep swept swept
swell swelled swollen / swelled
swim swam swum
swing swung swung

T
take took taken
teach taught taught
tear tore torn
telecast telecast telecast
tell told told
test-drive test-drove test-driven
test-fly test-flew test-flown
think thought thought
thrive thrived / throve thrived / thriven
throw threw thrown
thrust thrust thrust
tread trod trodden / trod
troubleshoot troubleshot troubleshot
typecast typecast typecast
typewrite typewrote typewritten

U
unbear unbore unborn / unborne
unbend unbent unbent
unbind unbound unbound
unbuild unbuilt unbuilt
unclothe unclothed / unclad unclothed / unclad
underbid underbid underbid
underbuy underbought underbought
undercut undercut undercut
underfeed underfed underfed

98
undergo underwent undergone
underlay underlaid underlaid
underlet underlet underlet
underlie underlay underlain
underrun underran underrun
undersell undersold undersold
undershoot undershot undershot
underspend underspent underspent
understand understood understood
undertake undertook undertaken
underthrust underthrust underthrust
underwrite underwrote underwritten
undo undid undone
undraw undrew undrawn
unfreeze unfroze unfrozen
unhang unhung unhung
unhide unhid unhidden
unhold unheld unheld
unknit unknitted / unknit unknitted / unknit
unlade unladed unladen / unladed
unlay unlaid unlaid
unlead unleaded unleaded
unlearn unlearned / unlearnt unlearned / unlearnt
unmake unmade unmade
unreeve unreeved / unrove unreeved / unrove
unsay unsaid unsaid
unsew unsewed unsewn / unsewed
unsling unslung unslung
unspin unspun unspun
unstick unstuck unstuck
unstring unstrung unstrung
unswear unswore unsworn
unteach untaught untaught
unthink unthought unthought

99
unweave unwove / unweaved unwoven / unweaved
unwind unwound unwound
unwrite unwrote unwritten
uphold upheld upheld
upset upset upset

V
vex vexed / vext vexed / vext

W
wake woke / waked woken / waked
waylay waylaid waylaid
wear wore worn
weave wove / weaved woven / weaved
wed wed / wedded wed / wedded
weep wept wept
wet wet / wetted wet / wetted
whet whetted whetted
win won won
wind wound wound
withdraw withdrew withdrawn
withhold withheld withheld
withstand withstood withstood
wring wrung wrung
write wrote written
X
No irregular verbs beginning with "X."
Y
No irregular verbs beginning with "Y."
Z
No irregular verbs beginning with "Z."

100
12.3 LIST OF SOME ENGLISH BOUND MORPHEMES

12.3.1 Negative affixes

Discuss the distinction among the NEGATIVE AFFIXES w.r.t. their origin and diachronic/synchronic
productivity.

un- unable, unabridged, unclothed, unadvanced, unalloyed, unadorned, unambiguous,

unambitious, unaffected, unaltered, uneducated, unfinished, unhurried, unknown,
Germanic unloved, unread, unspoken, untouched, unwelcome
in- (i) inability, inadequate, inaccessible, inarticulate, inhospitable, intolerable,
insatiable, invisible
(ii) imperfect, impossible, improbable, implacable, immature, immoral, immobilized,
immoderate, imbalance, impassionate, immortal
(iii) irresistible, irreclaimable, irregular, irreligious, irrelevant, irreparable,
irresolute, irresponsible, irresistible, irrational,
Latin/French (iv) illogical, illegal, illegible, illiterate, illusion, illiberal, illicit
non- nonsense, nontoxic, nonstop, nonconformist, nonevil, nonprofit, nonplus, nonage,
nontaxable, nonphenomenal
non-American vs. un-American
dis- disarm, disagree, disabled, disadvantage, discourage, disease, dishonor, disgrace,
disgusting, discredit, disloyal, distrust, discontented, dissolved, disregard, dispose,
disapprove, disinherit
-less baseless, artless, careless, effortless, friendless, graceless, fearless, helpless, homeless,
hopeless, noiseless, powerless, sleepless, tasteless, voiceless, trackless, weightless
-less+ness carelessness, effortlessness, hopelessness, sleeplessness, shamelessness, lifelessness,
restlessness
-free fat free, insect free, caffeine free, noise free, dust free

12.3.2 Some of the more frequent English suffixes

In the empty line below the morpheme

a. State/Define the meaning and kind of the morpheme.
b. State the resulting categorial change.
c. Discuss the origin and the diachronic/synchronic productivity.

-able (i) capable, bearable, agreeable, acceptable, comfortable, enjoyable, transferable,

laughable, manageable, portable
(ii) terrible, forcible, horrible, edible, transmissible, visible

parade, brigade, barricade, marinade, cannonade, tirade, cavalcade, decade,

-ad(a/e) lemonade, serenade, myriad, monad

-age carriage, courage(ous), outrage(ous-ly), marriage, marriage(able), envisage, damage,

101
 salvage, storage, pillage, visage

-al sensual, autumnal, animal, aural, cerebral, decimal, gradual, intellectual, infernal,
internal, manual, mental, natural, optional, oral, spiritual, technical, usual,
phenomenal

-ance/y (i) alliance, elegance, reluctance, intolerance, relevance, resistance, assistance,

-ence/y attendance, allowance, endurance, vigilance, militancy
(ii) difference, competence, conference, existence, influence, obedience, patience,
fluency, urgency

-a/e/ory (i) N: factory, memory, dictionary, category, burglary, depository, dormitory, bakery,
bravery, bribery, repertory, reformatory, witchery
(ii) Adj: necessary, primary, voluntary, obligatory, stationary

-ate advocate, dedicate, educate, abbreviate, deviate, enumerate, exaggerate, fascinate,

segregate, emancipate

-dom boredom, Christendom, dukedom, earldom, freedom, kingdom, martyrdom,

officialdom, random, whoredom, wisdom, Yankeedom

-ee employee, referee, alienee, donee, invitee, hiree, divorcee, appellee, biographee,
recipient devotee, deportee, fiancée, mortgagee, nominee, refugee, trustee, expellee

-en (i) silken, frozen, oaken, woolen, wooden, golden, brazen

(ii) broaden, brighten, hasten, heighten, lighten, roughen, soften, frighten
N→A made of N; silk+en = made of silk,
A/N→V made st. A/N; to light+en = to make it light
-er (i) baker, fighter, dancer, killer, toiler, wrecker, painter
(ii) waiter, starter, hamburger/frankfurter, banger, breezer, poster
-or/-ar actor, beggar, radiator, carburetor, censor, debtor/creditor, doctor, editor, jailor,
liar, professor, rector, sailor, tractor

-(e/a)sis analysis, anabasis, genesis, hypnosis, neurosis, psoriasis, symbiosis

action, process, condition
-ful frightful, careful, doubtful, graceful, grateful, fearful, beautiful, dutiful, helpful, joyful,
pitiful, restful, shameful, tearful, tactful, worshipful

-fy diversify, fortify, ratify, simplify, terrify, testify, verify, unify, amplify, solidify,
intensify, modify, typify

-ian Cuban, African, Dominican, Ethiopian, Italian, Jamaican, Somalian, Libyan,

Mongolian, Liberian, Syrian, Tunisian, Ugandian, Australian

-cian logician, musician, technician, physician, magician, electrician, dietician

-ic poetic, endemic, barbaric, acidic, geologic, metallic, drastic, heroic, majestic, prosaic,

102
 patriotic, strategic, satanic, emphatic, realistic

-ile domicile, docile, agile, fertile, fragile, imbecile, juvenile, infantile, mobile, projectile,
senile, reptile, sterile, volatile, versatile

-ine (i) columbine, divine, saturnine, supine

(ii) feminine, genuine, masculine, routine

-ise/-ize modernize, memorize, centralize, liberalize, penalize, nationalize, privatize,

acclimatize, familiarize, fertilize
ise >>> isa(+tion)
-ish brutish, foolish, childish, clownish, amateurish, bluish, bookish
Scottish, Irish, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Turkish, Jewish

-ism alcoholism, baptism, barbarism, colloquialism, despotism, heroism, Nazism, nihilism,

charisma, plagiarism, romanticism, terrorism

-ite Israelite, Semite, suburbanite, appetite, favorite, exquisite, dynamite, meteorite,

graphite, stalagmite, stalactite, pyrite
→ N // -A native of, quality of, mineral product // property of
-ity clarity, absurdity, debility, ambiguity, authority, captivity, ability, charity, complexity,
dignity, eternity, fraternity, humanity

-ive explosive, declarative, affirmative, additive, aggressive, assertive, authoritative,

cohesive, abusive, cooperative, exhaustive, expletive

-ment instrument, apartment, achievement, statement, testament, government

-ology morphology, biology, ethnology, philology, ontology, theology

-oid asteroid, Negroid, thyroid, tabloid

-ous serious, delicious, gracious, homogenous, mysterious, obvious, spacious, malicious,

nervous, tremendous, voracious, obnoxious, ridiculous

-ship hardship, friendship, apprenticeship, authorship, scholarship, fellowship, lordship,

ladyship, championship, citizenship, dictatorship

-(s/t)ion diction, celebration, action, injection, formation, infection, function, junction,

limitation, location, option, partition, question, reflection, suspension, verification

-tude attitude, gratitude, multitude, solitude, similitude, latitude, longitude

-ure censure, exposure, future, legislature, overture, literature, picture, prefecture,

pressure, procedure, tenure, temperature, culture

103
-wise (i) counterclockwise, edgewise, marketwise, timewise, crosswise, othewise, moneywise
(ii) streetwise, worldlywise
→Adv /Adj
-y cheery, catty, arty, crafty, furry, dreary, faulty, dirty, foxy, hairy, itchy, misty, rosy,
salty, sleepy, wary
N→A tends/inclines to have the property of the N

12.3.3 Prefixes of Germanic origin

be- beloved, bedeck, belabor, bemused, bewail, bequest, betoken, benighted, bestow,
bereave

for- forward, forego, forget, foresee, foretell

with- without, withstand, withdraw

out- outcome, outrun, outrageous, outswim, outlast, outtalk, output

over- overcome, overrule, overthrone, oversee, overact, overestimate

12.3.4 Non-German prefixes

ab- absolve, abnormal, abolish, abortion, abbreviate, abdicate, absorb, abstract, abstain,
aberration
amb- ambivalent, ambiguous, ambidextrous, ambulance, ambition
around, about, both
an- anemia, anesthetic, anomaly, anonym, anorganism, anecdote
absence of
ad- adaptable, addict, adequate, adhere, adjacent, adjunct, admire, advance, advocate,
advise, administer

ana- anabasis, analogy, analyze, anachronism

up, back, again, too
ante- antecede(nt), antedate, antemeridian, antebellum, anterior

bi(n/s)- biceps, bicycle, biennial, bimonthly, bifocal, bigamy, bilabial, bilingual

con- (i) connect, congress, congregation

(ii) combine, compound, cooperation, collect, correlate, coherence

de- deprive, defend, depend, deform, decay, debark, denude, depose

di- dichotomy, diameter, dilemma, dialog, diphthong, dioxide, dicephalous

104
en- (i) environment, entrap, encamp, encourage, endanger, enroll, signature
(ii) embark, embrace, embitter, employ, embody, employable, embellish

ex- (i) extract, exclaim, extend, exclude, exit, exact, excel, excite, expression, excavate,
e- exception
ec-/ef- (ii) elaborate, eject
(iii) eclipse, eccentric, efficient, effort, effect, effervescent

in- (i) interior, influx, inhale

(ii) impress, imprison, immigrate, important

mal- malign, malady, malcontent, malefactor, maltreated, malediction, malevolent,

malicious, malapropism

post- postfix, postmeridian, postmortal, postnatal, postpone, postgraduate

pro- proceed, process, procedure, proclaim, produce, product, profess, professor, project,
prolific, progress, profluent

sub- subdivide, subscribe, submarine, submission, subject, subpoena

sys- system, syllogism, syllable, symbol, symmetry, symphony, syndrome, synonym,

syl/m/n- synthesis
with, together
trans- transatlantic, transportable, translate, transform, transmit, transplant

re- rebuild, recall, reflect, refold, regain, reiterate, rejoin, relate, relive, remind, remarry,
repay, resell, return, reverse, rewarm, rewrite

12.3.5 Some morphemes of Greek origin

auto- autobiography, autocracy, autogenesis, automat, automatic, automobile, autonomy,

autonomous
Gr. autos (→ self)
-chron- chronic, chronicle, chronology, synchronic
Gr. chronos (→ time)
-itis bronchitis, arthritis, sclerosis, appendicitis
Gr.: ‘inflammatory disease’ (in Greek: derived feminine Adjective
-drome- dromedary, airdrome, hippodrome, syndrome
Gr. dromos (→ running)
eu- euphony, eureka, euphemism, Eudora, euphoria, euthanasia, eurhythmics
Gr. (→ well, good)
hypo- hypochondria, hypocrite, hypotaxis, hypothetical
Gr. (→ sub, under, less)
mon(o) monad, monarchy, monogamy, monologue, monotony

105
 Gr. monos (→ one, alone)
-pa.ed- (i) pedagogue, pedophilia, pediatrics
(ii) pedestrian, pedometer, orthopedian, pedestal, podium
Gr. paidos (→ boy =child/foot )
-phil- philologist, philosophy, philodendron, philanthropy, philharmonic, Philadelphia,
philatelist
Gr. philos (→ love)
pro- progress, project, procedure, produce, promote, professor, proletariat
Gr. pro (→ forward, before)
-soph- Sophia, sophisticated, sophomore, philosopher
Gr. sophos (→ wisdom)
-the(o) theocracy, theocentric, theology, theologist, atheist
Gr. theos (→ God)

12.3.6 Some of the more frequent roots of Latin origin

-ali/ter alias, alibi, alien, alienable, alter (ego)r, alternation, alternative

Lat. ali, allo, alter (→ other)
-a/enni/u- annual, per annum, annuity, anniversary, biennial, triennial...
Lat. annus (→ year)
-aud- audible, auditor, audience, auditorium, inaudible, audibility, audiovisual
Lat. audire (→ hear/listen)
cap/cep(t)- capable, caption, captive, accept, deception, exception, perceptive,
Lat. capere (→ take)
cise/cide concise, circumcise, caesura, decide, decisive, precise, homicide, suicide
Lat. caesus (→ kill, cut)
-cla(i)m- reclaim, claimable, declaim, proclaim, exclamatory, unclaimed
Lat. clamare (→ call out)
-clud/s- conclusion, recluse, exclude, inclusive, seclusion, preclusion, occlusion
Lat. claudere (→ shut)
-co(u)rd- cordial, courage, discouraged, court (-martial), courtesy, courtship
Lat./Fr. court (→ heart)
-fac(t)- (i) fact, factory, faculty, factive, satisfaction, facility, manufacturer
-fic(t)- (ii) efficient, certificate, personification, proficient
-fec(t)- (iii) affect, defective, effective
Lat. facer (Lat. clamare to make, the deed, construct)
-fer- coniferous, circumference, deference, fertile, fertilization, conference, reference,
inference, preference, suffer, transfer
Lat.→ferre (→ bring, bear, yield)
-fin- final, finish, finite, affinity, confine, define, definitive, infinite, finance
Lat. finis (→ end)
-gen- gene, genetics, genial, genius, generic, general, generate,
genitals, Gender, genre, genuine, progeny, indigenous
Lat. genus (→ race, kind)
-id morbid, splendid, horrid, tepid

106
V→ ADJ Lat.(French): ADJ ‘having the quality of the Verbs’. In ModE: frozen
-ist artist, biologist, chemist, dentist, evangelist, violinist, humanist, legalist, monarchist,
naturalist, pianist, racist, chartist, communist
N→ N Lat. ‘advocate of X’ (co-occurs with -ism) (anarchist)
N→ ADJ ‘practitioner of X’ (violinist, *drumist)
‘advocating X’ (sexist)
-mar- mariner, marina, mermaid, marsh, marshy, Margaret
Lat. mar (→ sea)
-mem- memory, remember, memoir, memorandum, memento, commemoration
Lat. meminisse (→ remember)
mitt/ss mission, missile, admission, submission, commit, submit, transmit, permit
Lat. mittere, missus (→ send)
-nat-, -nasc- native, nation, nativism, internationalism, nature, natural, naturalize, naive, naivity,
innate, renascence
Lat. natus (→ be born)
-omni- omnibus, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnicompetent
Lat. omnis (→ all)
-port- port, porter, portable, export, importer, exportation, deportee, report, reporter,
reporting, support
Lat. portare (→ carry)
-spond/s sponsor, respond, response, responsible, correspond, irresponsible
Lat. spondere (→ pledge, answer)
-scrib/p describe, script, transcript, ascribe, prescribe
Lat. scribere/scriptus (→ write)
-tempo- temporary, extempore, contemporary
Lat. tempus (→ time)
-tend/s intend, intention, Tense, intensity, intensification, attention, detention
Lat. tensus (→ stretch, strain)
-tent- tenant, tenable, contented, intention, retain, continue, maintain
Lat. teneo (→ hold)
-trib- tribute, Attribute, contribute, distribute
Lat. tribuere (→ pay, bestow)
-vin.c(t)- victory, victim, convict, convince, invincible
Lat. vincere (→ conquer)
-vis- visa, vis-à-vis, visage, visible, vision, visionary, visit, visitor, vista, visual, visualize,
invisible, evident, provide, provisional, providential
Lat. visus (→ see)
-viv(i)/-ta vital, vitamin, vivacity, revive, survive, vivisection
Lat. vita (→ alive, life)
-voc/k- voice, vocal, vocabulary, vocation, invoke, evoke, provoke
Lat. vox, vocis (→ voice, call)

107
13 RELATED LITERATURE

a. The list A below gives practical manuals of English grammar which can help students not fully
familiar with the pratical usage of the structures discussed. The working knowledge of these manuals
is assumed for the course.

b. The list B provides bibliography for the more theoretical manuals covering the topics in more
detail. They provide some discussion of the phenomena, provide much more data and demonstrate
alternative terminologies and analyses.

c. The list C provides bibliography for the cited works and some additional literature related to the
topics discussed in the course.

=======================================================================

A. PRACTICAL MANUALS
Alexander, L.G. (1993): Longman Advanced Grammar. Reference and Practice. Longman.
Hewings, Martin (2005): Advanced Grammar in Use (2nd edition) with answers and CD ROM. CUP.
Jones, Leo (1991): Cambridge Advanced English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan (1975) A Communicative Grammar of English. Longman, London.
Murphy, Raymond (2004): English Grammar in Use With Answers and CD ROM : A Self-Study
Reference and Practice Book for Intermediate Students of English. 3rd edition. CUP.
Svoboda, Aleš & Opělová-Károlyová, Mária (1998) A Brief Survey of the English Morphology.
Filozofická fakulta Ostravské univerzity, Ostrava.

=======================================================================
B. THEORETICAL MANUALS

Biber et al. (1999) Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman, London.
Biber et al. (1999) Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman, London.
Dušková, Libuše (1994) Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny. Academia Praha, Prague.

Huddleston, Rodney and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Huddleston, Rodney and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2005): A Students Introduction to English
Grammar. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Leech, Geoffrey (1971) Meaning and the English Verb. 3rd edition. Longman, London 2004.
Quirk, R., and Greenbaum, S. (1991): A Student´s Grammar of the English language. Longman1991.

108
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (2004) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language. Longman, London.

=======================================================================

C. FURTHER RELATED / CITED LITERATURE

Aarts, Bas (2008) English Syntax and Argumentation, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire.
Akmajian, A., Demers, R.A., Farmer, A.K. & Harnish, R.M. (1990) Linguistics: An Introduction to
Language and Communication. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Chomsky, Noam (1977) Essays on Form and Interpretation. NOAM CHOMSKY. New York and.
Amsterdam: Elsevier North-Holland.
Chomsky, Noam (1981), Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht.
Comrie, Bernard (1989) Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Blackwell, London.
Croft, William (1991) Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations. Chikago: University
of Chikago Press.
Crystal, David (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Demers, Richard A. & Farmer, Ann K. (1991) A Linguistics Workbook. The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass.
Fillmore, Charles (1977): 'The Case for Case Reopened.' In P. Cole and J. Saddock (ed.) Syntax and
Semantics 8:1977. (59-82)
Finegan, Edward & Besnier, Niko (1990) 'Structured Meaning in Words.' In: Language: Its Structure
and Use. HBJ.
Fromkin, Victoria & Rodman, Robert (1990) 'Morphology : The Words of Language.' In: An
Introduction to Language. HBJ.
Haegemann, Liliane (2006) Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis,
Blackwell, London.
Katamba, Francis (1993) Morphology. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Matthews, P.H. (1974) Morphology. Cambridge University Press.
Spenser, Andrew (1991) Morphological Theory. Blackwell, Oxford UK & Cambridge USA.

109
14 INDEX

Abbreviation, 26 circumfix, 19
ablaut, 22 classification, 10, 51, 57
accent subordination, 38 genetic classification, 51
Acceptability, 10 morphological classification, 51
Acronyms, 26 Clipping, 26
adequacy, 9 Cliticization, 22
descriptive adequacy, 9 code
explanatory adequacy, 9 commusniaction, 9
observational adequacy, 9 coining, 25
Adjectival phrase, 73 communication code, 3
Adverb, 76 competence, 10, 11
affix Grammatical Competence, 12
Germanic prefixes, 104 Morphological Competence, 12
Greek morphemes, 105 Phonological competence, 12
negative affixes, 101 Pragmatic Competence, 11
non-Germanic prefixes, 104 Semantic Competence, 11
Affixation, 22 Syntactic Competence, 12
affixes, 18, 19 complement, 73
agglutinating, 52, 54 compound, 37
agglutinative, 51 compounding, 25, 36
agreement, 17 compounds
allomorph, 21 alliterative compounds, 46
allophones, 4 bahuvrihi compounds, 48
alternation, 22 copulative, 47
analytic, 51 cranberry compounds, 47
animal communication, 3 dvandva compounds, 47
apophony, 22 endocentric compounds, 48
Back Formation, 26 exocentric compounds, 48
bases, 19 left-headed compounds, 47
best case category, 74 quotational compounds, 49
Blends, 26 rhyming compounds, 46
bracketing concatenation, 21
Bracketing Paradox, 45 configurational
Case, 69 feature, 69
categories conjugation, 18
closed-class, 65 conjugations, 18
grammatical, 65 Conjunction, 75, 76
lexical, 65 Conjunctions, 75
major, 65 consonant mutation, 22
minor, 65 content words, 19
non-lexical, 65, 75 contracted forms, 19
open class, 65 contraction, 22
parts of speech, 64 conversion, 22
prototypical correlations, 65 partial Conversion, 26

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 true Conversion, 26 Index of Synthesis, 52
declension, 18 Indo-European, 55
declensions, 18 Indo-European languages, 52
derivation, 25 Inflecting, 51
derivational, 65 inflection, 36
diachronic, 9 inflectional, 65
Discrete infinity, 4 English inflectional morphemes, 69
Double articulation', 4 morphology, 69
duality of patterning, 5 inherent
'Duality of patterning, 4 feature, 68
endings, 18 Innateness Hypothesis, 4
endocentric, 41 intuitions, 10
feature, 17 intuitive judgment, 11
configurational, 69 isolating, 51, 52
optional, 69 Language Faculty, 3
features, 68 langue, 10
agreement, 68 Levels of Linguistic Analysis, 4
configurational, 68, 69 Lexical morphemes, 16
grammaticalized, 68 lexicon, 25, 64
ingerent, 68 loan words, 25
inherent, 68 Message Model, 3
language specific features, 9 Model of Communication, 3
optional, 68, 69 morpheme
primary, 68 zero morpheme, 55
secondary, 68 neologism, 25
free variation, 21 Non-lexical morphemes, 16
function(al) words, 19 Number, 67, 69
fusion, 55 Numeral, 75
fusional, 51, 52, 54 Numerals, 75
fuzziness, 74 opaque, 37, 40
fuzzy, 76 optional
fuzzy categories, 53, 74 feature, 69
Grammatical meanings, 16 orthography, 37
grammatical relations, 41 paradigm, 66
grammaticalised Paradigm, 6
feature, 68 paradigms, 4
grammaticality, 11, 12 parole, 10
Grammaticality, 12 Parole, 10
grammaticalization, 67 parts of speech
Grammaticalization, 67 categories, 64
grammaticalized, 17 performance, 10
head, 41, 72 periphery, 25
Chinese, 52 phonemes, 4
Chukchi, 53 Phonetics, 5
idiom, 37, 38, 39 Phonology, 5
in(ter)fix, 19 phrasal verbs, 48
incorporating, 51, 52 phrase, 37, 72
Incorporation, 45 polysynthetic, 51, 52

111
 Portmanteau words, 26 specifier, 73
Possessive, 69 stems, 16
post-modifiers, 72 stress, 38
Pragmatics, 5 structuralism, 16
prefix, 19, 36 substitution, 73
pre-modifiers, 72 suffix, 19, 36
Preposition, 76 Suppletion, 22
Prepositions, 75 Swahili, 54
proforms, 73 synchronic, 9
projection syntagma, 4
phrasal, 73 Syntagma, 6
Pronoun, 75 synthetic, 51
prototypicality Taxonomy, 10, 18, 19, 64
categorial, 74 Tense, 69
Quotation compounds, 26 tonic, 52
quotational compounds, 49 transmitter, 3
receiver, 3 transparent, 36, 40
reduplication, 23 typological, 51
Reflexive, 69 Unacceptability, 10
Righ-hand Head Rule, 66 Universal Grammar, 3
Right Hand Head Rule (RHHR), 41 Verb
root phrasal, 64, 65, 69, 76
Latin roots, 106 Vietnamese, 52
Semantics, 5 Yupik, 53
Semiotics, 4 Zero affixation, 22
species-specific abilities, 9

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