1. Overt morphemes (открытые)

2. Covert morphemes (скрытые)

Overt morphemes are explicit not zeroed morphemes building up words. Covert morphemes are implicit morphemes, i.d. a morpheme having no explicit representation in the actual expression (a contrastive absence of morpheme expressing a certain function). The notion of covert morpheme coincides with the notion of zero morpheme.

Example:

dogs – two morphemes, both overt: one lexical (root) and one grammatical expressing the plural.

dog – two morphemes, the overt root and the covert grammatical suffix of the singular.

III) according to segmental relation (сегментное отношение)

1. Segmental morphemes (сегментные)

2. Supra-segmental morphemes (супрасегментные).

Supra-segmental morphemes are intonation contours, accents, pauses.

These elements of language form the secondary line of speech (вторичная звуковая линия языка), accompanying its primary phonemic line. These units are functionally connected not with morphemes, but with larger elements of language: words, word-groups, sentences, supra-sentential constructions.

IV) according to grammatical alternation (грамматическое чередование)

1. Additive morphemes (аддитивные)

2. Replacive morphemes (субституционные).

Additive morphemes are outer grammatical suffixes, since, as a rule, they are opposed to the absence of morphemes in grammatical alternation.

look+ed;

small+er,

The root phonemes of grammatical interchange are considered as replacive morphemes, since they replace one another in the paradigmatic forms.

dr-i-ve — dr-o-ve — dr-i-ven;

m-a-n — m-e-n; etc.

This type of grammatical means can be understood as a kind of partial suppletivity (частичный супплетивизм).

V) according to linear characteristic (линейная характеристика)

1) Сontinuous (linear) morphemes (непрерывные)

2) Discontinuous morphemes (прерывные).

The continuous morpheme is an uninterrupted string of phonemes building up a morpheme.

The discontinuous morpheme is a grammatical unit built up of an interrupted string of phonemes. It is seen in the analytical grammatical form comprising an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix.

Example:

be ... ing — for the continuous verb forms (e.g. is going);

have ... en — for the perfect verb forms (e.g. has gone);

be ... en — for the passive verb forms (e.g. is taken)

To sum up:

The morpheme is a recurrent meaningful from which cannot be further analyzed into smaller recurrent meaningful forms. It is syntactically or positionally bound and cannot take any arbitrary position. It never expresses both a lexical and a grammatical meaning. Lexical morphemes have consistent meaning beyond whatever grammatical information they also carry. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand, function only to express grammatical meaning. Grammatical meaning is recurrent and systemic, it is general and abstract, while lexical meaning is free and independent, concrete and material.

Seminar 2 Morphological structure of the word

1) Be ready to define the following terms:

morphology, morpheme, zero morphemes, marginal morphemes, central morphemes, root morphemes/roots, lexical morphemes, grammatical morphemes, affixal morphemes/ (affixes), prefixes, suffixes, inflexions/grammatical suffix, distribution, textual environments, morphs, contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution, complementary distribution, allomorphs, free morphemes, bound morphemes, semi-bound morphemes, overt morphemes, covert morphemes, segmental morphemes, supra-segmental morphemes, additive morphemes, replacive morphemes, сontinuous/linear morphemes, discontinuous morphemes.

2) Be ready to discuss the following questions:

1. Notion of the morpheme.

2. The principles of the traditional study of the morphemic composition of the word.

3. The terms ‘suffix’ and ‘inflection.

4. Notion of the morph.

5. The difference between a morpheme and an allomorph.

6. Distributional analysis in studying morphemes. Types of distribution.

7. Distributional morpheme types.

3) Practical assignments:

3.1. Do the morphemic analysis of the words on the lines of the traditional and distributional classifications.

MODEL: ‘inseparable’

The traditional classification:

the word ‘inseparable’ is a three-morpheme word consisting of the root ‘-separ-‘, the prefix ‘in-‘ and the lexical suffix ‘-able’.

The distributional analysis:

the root ‘-separ-‘ is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme; the prefix ‘in-‘ is bound, overt, continuous, additive; the suffix ‘-able’ is bound, overt, continuous, additive.

a) unmistakably, children's (books), disfigured, underspecified, surroundings, presume, kingdom, brotherhood, plentiful, imperishable, unprecedented, oxen, embodiment, outlandish;

b) hammer, students' (papers), sing – sang – singing – singer, really, proficient – deficient – efficient, gooseberry;

c) quiet, bell, unbelievably, glassy, uncommunicative, inexplicable;

d) inconceivable, southernism, semidarkness, adventuresses, unfathomable, insufficiency, to prejudge.

3.2. Define the type of the morphemic distribution according to which the given words are grouped.

MODEL: insensible – incapable

The morphs ‘-ible’ and ‘-able’ are in complementary distribution, as they have the same meaning but are different in their form which is explained by their different environments.

a) impeccable, indelicate, illiterate, irrelevant;

b) undisputable, indisputable;

c) published, rimmed;

d) seams, seamless, seamy.

3.3. Group the words according to a particular type of morphemic distribution.

MODEL: worked – bells – tells – fells – telling – spells – spelled – spelt –felled – bell.

spells – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-s’ and ‘-ed’ are in contrastive distribution (= fells – felled);

bell – bells: the allomorph ‘-s’ and the zero allomorph are in contrastive distribution;

spelt – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-t’ and ‘-ed’ are in non-contrastive distribution;

worked – spelled: the allomorphs ‘-ed’ [t] and ‘-ed’ [d] are in complementary distribution, etc.

a) burning – burns – burned – burnt;

b) dig – digs – digging – digged – dug – digger;

c) light – lit – lighted – lighting – lighter;

d) worked – working – worker – workable – workoholic.

3.4. Group the words according to a particular type of morphemic distribution:

1. mice, leapt, appendices, kittens, cats, witches, leaping, children, leaped, leaps, formulae, stimuli, matrices, sanatoria;

2. geese, dogs, chickens, deer, mats, bade, bid, phenomena, formulae, formulas, genii, geniuses, scissors;

3. genera, brethren, brothers, trout, gestures, blessed, blest, tins, pots, matches, antennae, antennas;

4. anthems, classes, lice, handkerchiefs, handkerchieves, bereft, bereaved, grouse, cleaved, cleft, clove.

4) Analyze the following texts:

Text 1

Francis W.N. The Structure of American English. Building Blocks of Speech: Morphemics

Morphs and Allomorphs

The linguist who has completed a phonemic analysis of a language ... is in about the position a chemist would be in when he had succeeded in isolating the elements. We have somewhat of an advantage over the chemist, for while he must keep a hundred and two elements, we have only 45 phonemes to worry about. But this doesn’t help us a great deal. The number of possible combinations of our 45 phonemes is for all practical purposes as great as the number of possible compounds of a hundred and two elements. There are so many, in fact, that only a small percentage of them are used in actual speech. Our next duty in studying the structure of English, therefore, is to see what combinations are used, and what they are like. The study of these matters is the province of morphemics. ...

... we know that the phonemes by themselves have no meaning. Therefore, we conclude that the meaning must somehow be associated with the way the phonemes are combined. ... Because these units have recognizable shape, we call them ‘morphs’, a name derived from the Greek word for ‘shape’ or ‘form’. A morph, then, is a combination of phones that has a meaning. Note that each morph, like each phone, or each person or each day, happens only once and then it is gone. Another very similar combination of very similar phones may come along right after it; if so, we will call this second combination another morph similar to the first one. If we are sure enough of the similarity, which must include similarity of both the phones and the

meaning, we can say that the two morphs belong to the same morph-type or allomorph. An allomorph can thus be defined as a family of morphs which are alike in 2 ways: (1) in the allophones of which they are composed, and (2) in the meaning which they have. Or if we wish to be a bit more precise, we can define an allomorph as a class of phonemically and semantically identical morphs. ...

We may sum up the material of this section, then, as follows: A morph is a meaningful group of phones which cannot be subdivided into smaller meaningful units.

An allomorph is a class of morphs which are phonemically and semantically identical; that is, they have the same phonemes in the same order and the same meaning.

Morphemes

With the recognition of the uniquely occurring morphs and their association in sets of identical allomorphs, we have made a good start toward moving up the ladder of linguistic structure to the next level. One thing seems certain even this early: we shall find a much greater number and variety of units on this level than we did on the phonemic level. The number of different combinations that can be made from 33 segmental phonemes is very large indeed. In fact, we can be sure that no matter how many allomorphs we may discover, they will be only a small percentage of the total mathematical possibility. It is here, in fact, that the great diversity and adaptability of language begins to show itself. And it is here that we must give up the hope of being as exhaustive in our treatment as we were in our discussions of phonetics and phonemics, that we cannot hope to list all the allomorphs in English. Instead we can deal only with representative types and illustrations of morphemic structure. [...]

Definition: A morpheme is a group of allomorphs that are semantically similar and in complementary distribution.

As we have suggested in the title of this chapter, morphemes are the building blocks out of which the meaningful utterances of speech are put together. A morpheme is a group of allomorphs, each of which is a combination of phonemes; but, as we pointed out in the first chapter, in structure of the kind the language shares with many other natural and man-made phenomena, the whole is more than the sum of all its parts. When phonemes are organized into an allomorph, meaning is added to make a new thing, just as when hydrogen and oxygen are organized into water, a substance emerges that has new and different qualities which could not have been guessed from a knowledge of the qualities of its components. From here on up the ladder of increasingly complex linguistic structure, we shall observe increasingly complex and precise indications of meaning, for after all it is to communicate meanings that language had been created, therefore, morphemes, the smallest structural units possessing meaning, occupy a key position in linguistic structure. They are the fundamental building blocks out of which everything we say is built.