‘I
never heard of “Uglification”, Alice ventured to say. ‘What is it?’ The Gryphon
lifted up both its pavs in surprise. ‘Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed.
‘You know ehat to beauty is, I suppose?’ ‘Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully: ‘it
means to make anything prettier,’ ‘Well, then,’ the Gryphon went on, ‘if you
don’t know what uglify is, you are a simpleton.’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland
When
the Moch Turtle listed the different branches of Arithmetic for Alice as
‘Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and derision’, Alice was very confused.
She wasn’t really a simpleton, since uglification was not a common word in
English until Lewis Carroll used it. There are many ways in which words enter a
language. Some of these are discussed in Chapter 11 on language change.
LEXICAL
GAPS
Speakers
of a language may know tens of thousands of words. Dictionaries, as we noted,
include hundreds of thousands of words, all of which are known by some speakers
of the language. But no dictionary can list all possible words, since it is
possible to add to the vocabulary of a language in many ways. There are always
gaps in the lexicon words which are not in the dictionary but which can be
added. Some of the gaps are due to the fact that a permissible sound sequence
has no meaning attached to it (for example, blick, or slarm, or krobe). Note
that the sequence of sounds must be in keeping with the constrains of the
language. *Bnick is not a ‘gap’ because no word in English can begin with a
(bn).
Other
gaps are due to the fact that possible combinations of morphemes have not been
made (for example, ugly+ify or linguistic+ism). Morphemes can be combined in
this way because there are morphological rules in every language that determine
how morphemes combine to form new words.
The
Mock Turtle added –ify to the adjective ugly and formed a verb. Many verbs in
English have been formed in this way: purify, amplify, simplify, falsify. The
suffix –ify conjoined with nouns also forms verbs: objectify, glorify,
personify. Notice that the Mock Turtle went even further; he added the suffix
–cation to uglify and formed a noun, uglification, as in glorification,
simplification, falsification, and purification.
DERIVATIONAL
MORPHOLOGY
Bound
morphemes such as –ify and –ations are called derivational morphemes. When they
are added to root morphemes or stems a word is derived. This method of word
formation reflects the wonderful creativity of language.
Suppose
you hear someone say: ‘He likes to be nussed.’ You might ask ‘Is he really nussable/’
even if you don’t know what the verb nuss means. Children do this all the time.
This means we must have a list of the derivational morphemes in our mental
dictionaries as well as the rules that determine how they are to be added to
roots or stems to form new stems or words. We saw earlier that morphemes occur
in a fixed order, as un+loved but not *loved+un. In addition, the order in
which each new morpheme is affixed in a complex word is significant. A word is
not a simple sequence of morphemes but has a hierarchical structure. Consider
the word unsystematically, composed of five morphemes. As shown in the example
earlier, the root is system, a noun, to which ew added –atic, an adjectival
suffix, and then added the prefix un-, which is added to adjectives to form the
new adjective stem (or word) unsystematic. If we had added the prefix un-
first, we would have derived a non-word *unsystem since un- cannot be added to
nouns. The hierarchical structure of
this word can be diagrammed as follows:
This
diagram shows that the entire word unsystematically is an adverb stem which is
composed of an adjective stem unsystematical plus –ly, an adverbial
derivational suffix. The adjective stem itself is composed of an adjective stem
unsystematic, which is composed of anadjectival prefix un- and another
adjective stem systematic (composed of the noun system and the adjective suffix
–atic plus the adjective suffix –al).
If
this seems very complicated, it is. Morphological rules of word formation are
complex. Yet every speaker of English knows them and uses them to form new
words such as uglify or squishable or linguisticism, and to understand words
not heared before, for example, the first time one hears the word Chomskyan. We
also unconsciously use these rules in rejecting some forms as being impossible
as words in English, for example, *nationism.
As
the examples show, a derived word may give additional meaning to the original
word (such as the negative meaning of words prefixed by un-) and may be a
different grammatical class from the underived word. When a verb is suffixed
with –able, the result is an adjective, as in desire+able or adore+able. Or.
When the suffix –en is added to an adjective, a verb may be derived, as in
dark+en. One may form a noun from an adjective, as in sweet+ie. A few other
example are :
Noun
to adjective : boy+ish, virtu+ous, Elizabeth+an,pictur+esque, affection+ate,
health+ful, alcohol+ic,life+like.
Verb
to noun :
acquitt+al,clear+ance,accus+ation,confer+ence,sing+er,conform+ist,predict+ion,free+dom
Adjective
to adjective : pink+ish, in+flammable
Many
prefix fall into this category: ( a+moral, auto+biography, ex+wife,
super+human, mono+theism, re+print, semi+annual, sub+standard )
There
are also suffixes of this type : ( vicar+age, green+ish, priest+hood, Americ+an
Brisbane+ite, commun+ist, music+ian, pun+ster )
When
new words enter the lexicon by the application of morphological rules, it is
often the case that other complex forms will not. For example, commun+ist
enters tha language, words such as commun+ite (as in Trootsky+ite) or commun+ian
(as in grammar+ian) are often not used. There may however exist alternative
forms: for example, Chomskyan and Chomskyist and perhaps even Chomskyite (all
meaning ‘follower of Chomsky’s views of linguistics’). Linguist and
linguistician are both used, but note that the possible word linguite is not.
The redundancy of such alternative forms, all of which conform to the regular
rules of word formation, may explain some of the accidental gaps in the lexicon.
This further shows that the actual words in the language constitute only a
subset of the possible words.
There
are many other derivational morphemes in English and other languages, such as
the suffixes meaning ‘diminutive’, as in the words pig+let and sap+ling.
Some
of the morphological rules are productive, meaning that they can be used freely
to form new words from the list of free and bound morphemes. The suffix –able
appears to be a morpheme that can be freely conjoined with verbs to derive an adjective
with the meaning of the verb and the meaning of –able, which is something like
‘able to be’ as in accept+able, blam(e)+able, pass+able, change+able,
adapt+able, and so on. The meaning of –able has also been given as ‘fit for
doing’ or ‘fit for being done’. Such a rule might be stated as :
1.VERB+ABLE
= ‘ABLE TO BE VERB-ed’ e.g. accept+able =’able to be accepted’
The
productivity of this rule is illustrated by the fact that we find –able in such
morphologically complex words as un+speakabl(e)+y and un+get+at+able.
We
have already noted that there is a morpheme in English meaning ‘not’ which has
the form un- and which, when combined with adjectives such as afraid, fit,
free, smooth, American, and Australian, forms the antonyms, or negatives, of
these adjectives; for example, unafraid, unfit, unAustralian, and so on.
We
can also add the prefix un- to derived words that have been formed by
morphological rules:
Un+believe+able,
un+accept+able, un+speak+able. The rule that forms these words may be stated as
: un +adjective = ‘not-adjective’
This
seems to account for all the examples cited. Yet we find happy and unhappy,
cowardly and uncowardly, but not sad and *unsad or brave and *unbrave. Forms
such as the last two (marked with an asterisk) may be merely accidental gaps in
the lexicon. If someone refers to a person as being *unsad we would know that
the person referred to was ‘not sad’, and an *unbrave person would not be
brave. But, as the linguist Sandra Thompson points out, it may be the case that
the ‘un-rule’ is not as productive for adjectives composed of just one
morphemes as for adjectives that are themselves derived from verb(3). The rule
seems to be freely applicable to an adjectival form derived from a verb, as in
unenlightened, unsimplified, uncharacterised, unauthorized, undistinguished, and
so on.
It
is true, however, that one cannot always know the meaning of the words derived
from free and derivational morphemes from the morphemes themselves. Thompson
has also pointed out that the un- forms of the following have unpredictable
meanings :
Unloosen
(loosen, let loose), unrip (rip, undo by ripping), undo (reverse doing),
untreat (go back through in the same steps), unearth (dig up), unfrock (deprive
a cleric of ecclesiastic rank), unnerve (fluster)
Although
the words above must be listed in our mental lexicon since their meanings
cannot be determined by knowing the meanings of their parts, morphological
rules must also be in the grammar, revealing the relation between words and
providing the means for forming new words. Morphological rules may be more or
less productive. The rule that adds an –er to verbs in English to produce a
noun meaning ‘one who perform an action (once or habitually)’ appears to be a
very productive morphological rule; most English verbs accept this suffix:
lover, hunter, predictor (notice that –or and –er have the same pronunciation),
examiner, exam-taker, analyzer, and so forth. Now consider the following :
Sincerity
from sincerete, warmth from warm, moisten from moist
The
suffix –ity is found in many other words in English, such as chasity, scarcity,
and curiosity; and –th occurs in healt, wealth, depth, width, and growth. We
find –en in sadden, ripen, redden, weaken, deepen. Still the phrase *The
fiercity of the lion sounds somewhat strange, as does the sentence *I’m going
to thinen the sauce. Someone may be use the word coolth, but, as Thompson
points out, when such words as fiercity, thinnen, fullen, or coolth are used,
usually it is either an error or an attempt at humour.
It
is possible that in such cases a morphological rule that was once productive
(as shown by the existence of related pairs such as scarce/scarcity) is no
longer so. Our knowledge of the related pairs, however, may permit us to use
these examples in forming new words, by analogy with the existing lexical
items.
PULLET
SURPRISES
That
speakers of a language know the morphemes of that language and the rules for
word formation is shown as much by the ‘errors’ made as by the non-deviant
forms produced. Morphemes combine to form words. These words form our internal
dictionaries. ‘No’ speaker of language knows all the words. Given our knowledge
of the morphemes of the language and the morphological rules, we can often
guess the meaning of a word word we do not know. Sometimes we guess wrongly.
Amsel
Greene collected errors made by her students in vocabulary-building classes and
published them in a book called Pullet Surprises. The title is taken from a
sentence written by one of her high-school students : ‘In 1957 Eugene O’Neill
won a Pullet Surprise.’ Knowledge of English morphology. Consider the
creativity of these students in the following examples :
Word
:deciduous,longevity,fortuitous, bibliography, adamant, diatribe. Polyglot,
gullible, homogeneous.
Student’s
definition : deciduous (able to make up one’s mind), longevity (being very
tall) fortuitous (well protected), bibliography (holy geography), adamant
(pertaining to original sin), diatrible (food for the whole clan) polyglot
(more than one glot) gullible (to do with sea birds), homogeneous (devoted to
home life)
The
student who used the word indefatigable in the sentence:
She
tried many reducing diets, but remained indefatigable.
Clearly
shows morphological knowledge: in, meaning ‘not’ as in ineffective; de, meaning
‘off’ as in decapitate; fat, as in ‘fat’; able as in’-able’; and combined
meaning, ‘not able to take the fat off’.
(3)
S.A Thompson, 1975, ‘On the issue of productivity in the lexikom’, Kritikon
Litterarum, 4, pp. 332-49.
