2.2. Distributional Types of Morphemes

The distribution of a unit is the total of all its environments; in other words, the distribution of a unit is its environment in generalised terms of classes or categories.

The aim of distributional analysis (дистрибутивный анализ) is to fix and study the units of language in relation to their textual environments (the adjoining elements in the text).

Examples:

1) The/boat/s/were/gain/ing/speed

The analyzed lingual material is divided into morphs (морфы) – a combination of phonemes that has a meaning which cannot be subdivided into smaller meaningful units.

2) un-pardon-able.

The environment of a unit may be either ‘right’ or ‘left’: in this word the left environment of the root is the negative prefix un-, the right environment of the root is the qualitative suffix -able. The root -pardon- is the right environment for the prefix, and the left environment for the suffix.

Three types of distribution:

1) Contrastive distribution,

2) non-contrastive distribution,

3) Complementary distribution (дополнительная дистрибуция).

The morphs are said to be in contrastive distribution if their meanings (functions) are different. Such morphs constitute different morphemes.

Example:

the suffixes -(e)d and -ing in the verb-forms returned, returning.

The morphs are said to be in non-contrastive distribution if their meaning (function) is the same. Such morphs constitute ‘free alternants’ (free variants) of the same morpheme.

Example:

the suffixes -(e)d and -t in the verb-forms learned, learnt.

Complementary distribution can be understood as relation of formally different morphs having the same function in different environments. Two or more morphs are said to be in complementary distribution if they have the same meaning and the difference in their form is explained by different environments. They are considered to be the allomorphs of the same morpheme, i.d. an allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morph.

Examples:

1) The plural morpheme –s. It occurs is several allomorphs depending on its phonological environment namely /-s/, /-z/, /-iz/ which stand in phonemic complementary distribution.

2) The past tense morpheme –ed occurs in several allomorphs /-id/, /-t/, /-d/.

3) The plural allomorph -en in oxen, children and the zero suffix of sheep stand in morphemic complementary distribution with the other allomorphs of the plural morpheme.

So the notion of complementary distribution helps establish the identity of grammatical elements.

As a result of the application of distributional analysis to the morphemic level, the following distributional types of morpheme are distinguished:

I) according to the degree of self-dependence (по степени самостоятельности)

1) Free morphemes (свободные морфемы)

2) Bound morphemes (связанные морфемы)

Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as component segmental parts of words. Free morphemes can build up words by themselves.

Example:

handful

the root hand is a free morpheme

the suffix -ful is a bound morpheme.

There are very few productive bound morphemes in the morphological system of English. Most of them are homonymous:

1) the morpheme -(e)s [-z, -s, -iz]: the plural of nouns, the possessive case of nouns, the third person singular present of verbs;

2) the morpheme -(e)d [-d, -t, -id]: the past and past participle of verbs;

3) the morpheme -ing: the gerund and present participle;

4) the the morphemes -er, -est: the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs.

The auxiliary word-morphemes do, be, have, will, shall, would, should, adverbial elements more, most, the infinitive particle to, articles can be called ‘semi-bound’ (полусвязанные) morphemes, since, being used as separate elements of speech strings, they form categorial unities with their notional stem-words.

II) according to formal presentation (формальная представленность)