英语专业词汇学第三章课本及答案

Chapter 3 Morphological Structure of English Words We have discussed the historical, cultural and social factors that facilitate (使……容易；推动) the development of the English vocabulary. Borrowing, as we see, has been playing an active role in the expansion of vocabulary. In modern times, however, vocabulary is mainly enlarged on an internal basis. That is, we use word-building material available in English to create new words. But before we discuss the actual ways and means to make new words, we need to have a clear picture of the structure of English words and their components (成分) —word-forming elements. This chapter will discuss morphemes(语素；词素), their classification(分类) and identification(辨别), the relationship between morphemes and word-formation(构词法).

3.1 Morphemes

Traditionally, words are usually treated as the basic and minimal units of a language to make sentences, which are combinations of words according to syntactic rules(句法规则). Structurally, however, a word is not the smallest unit because many words can be separated into even smaller meaningful units. Take decontextualization for example. This is one word, but can be broken down into de-, con-, text, -a/ , -iz(e), -ation , each having meaning of its own. These segments (部分) cannot be further

divided; otherwise, none of them would make any sense. Though -ation has a number of variants (变体) such as -tion, -sion, -ion, they belong to the same suffix as they have the same meaning and grammatical function and occur owing to (因为；根据) different sound environment. These minimal meaningful units are known as morphemes (morphe is the Greek word for 'form'; -eme as in 'phoneme' (音素) means 'class of' ). In view of word-formation, the morpheme is seen as 'the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words' (Crystal 1985). Syntactically(从句法上看), however, a morpheme is the minimal form of grammatical analysis (语法分析). For instance, each of the word-forms studies, studying, studied, consists of the morpheme study + ; the forms -es in studies, -ing in studying, -ed in studied are morphemes, which express grammatical concepts (语法概念) instead of deriving new words (See Classifying Morphemes).

3.2 Morphs and Allomorphs(词素变体)

Morphemes are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units (具体单位) known as morphs(形素). 'They are actual spoken, minimal carriers of meaning' (Bolinger and Sears 1981:43). In other words the phonetic or orthographic strings(语音串或拼写字串)or segments (切分成分；节) which realize morphemes are termed 'morphs' (Bauer 1983:15). The morpheme is

to the morph what a phoneme (音位) is to a phone (音素). Most morphemes are realized by single morphs like bird, tree, green , sad, want, desire, etc. . These morphemes coincide (巧合) with words as they can stand by themselves and function freely in a sentence. Words of this kind are called mono-morphemic words. Some morphemes, however, are realized by more than one morph according to their position in a word. For instance, the morpheme of plurality {-s} has a set of morphs in different sound context, e. g. in cats /s/, in bags /z/, in matches /iz/. The alternates (作为替换的事物) /s/, /z/ and /iz/ are three different morphs. The same is true of the link verb morpheme {be}. Its past tense is realized by two distinct orthographic forms was , were, each of which happens to be a word-form, realizing {preterit} and {singular}, and {preterit} and {plural} respectively and each has its own phonetic form /woz/ or /w?:/. Therefore, both was, were and their phonetic forms /woz/ and /w?: / are morphs (See discussion i n Bauer, p15).

An allomorph refers to a member of a set of morphs, which represent one morpheme. Just as we class phones(音素) together as allophones (音位变体) of a single phoneme(音位), so we class morphs together as allomorphs of a single morpheme. Take the plural morpheme {-s} again. Phonetically, it is realized by /s/, /z/, /iz/, all of which are allomorphs. In English, many morphemes can

have more than one allomorph, particularly those freestanding morphemes which are functional words in their own right. Once they occur in connected speech, they may be realized by different forms, depending on whether they are accented or weakened (Look at the data in the table).

Morphem e Allomorph

Strong Weak

{am} /aem/ /?m/, /m/

{ was} /woz/ /W?Z/

{have } /haev/ /h?v/, /v/

{would } /wud/ /w?d/, /?d/,

/d/

{he} /hi:/ /i:/, /i/

{his} /hiz/ /iz/

{for} /fo:/ /f?/

{to} /tu:/ /tu/, /t?/

Then what is the difference between morphs and allomorphs? The relationship can be illustrated by the diagram below.

Morpheme

{would}

morph morph morph morph →allomorph

/wud/ /w?d/ /?d/ /d/

3.3 Classifying Morphemes

Morphemes vary in function. Accordingly, we can classify morphemes into several general categories: free versus bound, derivational versus inflectional, and lexical versus grammatical. However, their boundaries are not as clear-cut as they appear to be due to some overlapping(重叠). For the sake of discussion, we shall define each type in terms of its characteristics.

1. Free versus Bound Morphemes(自由词素和粘着词素)

This is the easiest and most preferred classification in morphological studies, discussed in Hatch and Brown (1995), Crystal (1985), Fromkin and Rodman (1983), Bauer (1983), Bolinger and Sears (1981) and Matthews (2000). Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are free. These morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. They are identical with(和……完全相同) words, for example, man, earth, wind, car and anger.

Morphemes which cannot occur as separate words are bound. They are so named because they are bound to other morphemes to form words or to perform a particular

grammatical function.Bound morphemes are chiefly found in derived words (派生词). Let us take recollection, idealistic and ex-prisoner for example. Each of the three words comprises three morphemes: recollection (re- collect-ion) , idealistic (ideal-ist-ic) , ex-prisoner (ex- prison -er). Of the nine morphemes, collect, ideal and prison can stand by themselves and thus are free morphemes. All the rest re-, -ion , -ist, -ic, ex-and -er are bound as none of them are freestanding units.

Free morphemes are all roots, which are capable of being used as words or as word-building elements to form new words like collect, ideal, prison , whereas bound morphemes consist of either roots or affixes, most of which can be used to create new words like -dict- , -ced- (接近；去), re-, -ion, -ist, -ic and ex-(前). But there are a few affixes which can only indicate such grammatical concepts as tense, aspect, number and case, for example, the -ing in watching, -er in easier, -s in books, and -ed in worked.

The English language possesses a multitude of (大量的) words made up of merely bound morphemes, e. g. antecedent, which can be broken down into ante-, -ced- and -ent. Among them, -ced- is a root meaning 'approach, go to', ante-, a prefix meaning 'before' and -ent, a noun suffix meaning 'a person, a thing', thus the whole word antecedent meaning 'something that goes before'(前

例；前事；先行词；祖先). These examples show clearly that bound morphemes include two types: bound root (See Root, Stem, Base) and affix.

2. Derivational versus Inflectional Morphemes

Morphemes which are used to derive new words are known as derivational morphemes (派生词素) because when these morphemes are conjoined, new words are derived.In English, derivatives and compounds are all formed by such morphemes. For example, a + mor + ai, clear + ance, Life + Like and homo + gen + eous are results of such morphological processes.

Inflectional morphemes(屈折词素), in contrast, indicate the syntactic relationships between words and function as grammatical markers. Inflectional morphemes are confined to suffixes. There is the regular plural suffix -s (-es) which is added to nouns such as machines, fridges, desks, radios and potatoes; the same forms can be added to verbs to indicate the simple present for the third person singular such as likes, works and goes; the form -'s is used to denote the possessive case of nouns such as the children ' s library, the man ' s role and the mother-in-law' s complaints; the suffixes -er, -est are usually attached to simple adjectives or adverbs to show their comparative or superlative degrees like happier—happiest,