An Introduction to English Morphology

Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language

General Editor

Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics (University of Edinburgh)

Editorial Board

Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington)

Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh)

Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam)

Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh)

Donka Minkova (UCLA)

Katie Wales (University of Leeds)

Anthony Warner (University of York)

An Introduction to English Syntax

Jim Miller

An Introduction to English Phonology

April McMahon

An Introduction to English Morphology

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy

To Jeremy

© Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, 2002

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

22 George Square, Edinburgh

Typeset in Janson

by Norman Tilley Graphics and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin

A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7486 1327 7 (hardback)

ISBN 0 7486 1326 9 (paperback)

The right of Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

4.1Words and grammar: lexemes, word forms and

7.4More elaborate word forms: compounds within

9.5Characteristics of Germanic and non-Germanic

2AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY

•the distinction between compound words and phrases (Chapters 6, 7)

•the relationship between the internal structure of a word and its meaning (Chapter 7)

•productive versus unproductive word-forming processes (Chapter 8)

•historical reasons for some of the contemporary divisions within English morphology, especially Germanic versus Romance wordformation processes (Chapter 9).

These various contrasts impact on one another in various ways. For example, if one takes the view that the distinction between compound words and phrases is unimportant, or is even perhaps a bogus distinction fundamentally, this will have a considerable effect on how one views the word as a unit of sentence-structure. Linguistic scholars who specialise in the study of words (so-called ‘morphologists’) devote considerable effort to working out the implications of different ways of formulating these distinctions, as they strive to discover the best way (that is, the most illuminating way, or the way that seems to accord most accurately with people’s implicit knowledge of their native languages). We will not be exploring the technical ramifications of these efforts in this book. Nevertheless, I will need to ensure that the way I draw the distinctions here yields a coherent overall picture, and some cross-referencing between chapters will be necessary for that.

Each of Chapters 2 to 9 inclusive is provided with exercises. This is designed to make the book suitable for a course extending over about ten weeks. Relatively full discussions of the exercises are also provided at the end of the book. For those exercises that are open-ended (that is, ones for which there is no obvious ‘right’ answer), these discussions serve to illustrate and extend points made in the chapter.

As befits a book aimed at students of English rather than linguistics students, references to the technical literature are kept to a minimum. However, the ‘Recommendations for reading’ at the end of each chapter contain some hints for any readers who would like to delve into this literature, as well as pointing towards more detailed treatments of English morphology in particular.

Finally, I would like to encourage comments and criticisms. My choice of what to emphasise and what to leave out will inevitably not please everyone, nor will some of the details of what I say. I hope, however, that even those who find things to disagree with in this book will also find it useful for its intended introductory purpose, whether as students, teachers or general readers.