MORPHOLOGYMODERN LINGUISTICS SERIES Series Editors Professor Noél Burton-Roberts University of Newcastle upon Tyne Each textbook in the Modern Linguistics series is designed to provide a carefully graded introduction to a topic in contemporary linguistics and allied disciplines, presented in a manner that is accessible and attractive to readers with no previous experience of the topic, but leading them to some understanding of current issues. The texts are designed to engage the active participation of the reader, favouring a problem-solving approach and including liberal and varied exercise material. 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Customer Services Department, Palgrave Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, EnglandMorphology Second Edition Francis Katamba and John Stonham© Francis Katamba 1993, Francis Katamba and John Stonham 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition published 1993 Second edition published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan™ is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039- 1643-3 hardback ISBN-10: 1-4039-1643-8 hardback ISBN-13: 978-1-4039- 1644-0 paperback ISBN-10: 1-4039-1644-6 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katamba, Francis, 1947-— Morphology / Francis Katamba and John Stonham. p. cm. - (Modern linguistics series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4039-1643-8 (cloth) — ISBN 1-4039-1644-6 (pbk) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Morphology. |. Stonham, John T. Il. Title. Ill. Series P241.K38 2006 2006041731 415-dc22 10 9 8 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and EastbourneTo Janet and Eun-SookContents Preface Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Symbols The International Phonetic Alphabet PART I BACKGROUND 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 The Emergence of Morphology 1.2 Morphology in American Structural Linguistics 1.3. The Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar 1.3.1 The place of morphology in early generative grammar 1.3.2 The morphology-phonology interaction 1.3.3. The morphology-syntax interaction 1.3.4 The morphology-semantics interface 1.3.5 The lexicon 1.4 Organisation of the Book INTRODUCTION TO WORD-STRUCTURE 2.1. What is a Word? 2.1.1 The lexeme 2.1.2 Word-form 2.1.3. The grammatical word 2.2 Morphemes: The Smallest Units of Meaning 2.2.1 Analysing words 2.2.2 Morphemes, morphs and allomorphs 2.2.3 Grammatical conditioning, lexical conditioning and suppletion 2.2.4 Underlying representations 2.3. The Nature of Morphemes 2.4 Summary Vurther Reading Exercises TYPES OF MORPHEMES 31 Roots, Affixes, Stems and Bases WIE Roots VL ALiiKen vil xii xiv xv xvi xvii _ Wwww 10 13 13 14 14 17 17 18 19 19 22 23 32 35 39 40 42 42 42 44viii Contents 3.1.3. Roots, stems and bases 46 3.1.4 Stem extenders 47 3.2 Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes 48 3.3. Multiple Affixation 54 3.4 Compounding 55 3.5 Conversion 56 3.6 Morphological Haplology 57 3.7 Morphological Typology 58 3.8 WP and the Centrality of the Word 63 Exercises 65 4 PRODUCTIVITY IN WORD-FORMATION 67 4.1 The Open-Endedness of the Lexicon 67 4.1.1 What is productivity? 68 4.1.2 Semi-productivity 7B 4.1.3 Productivity and creativity 714 4.2 Constraints on Productivity 75 4.2.1 Blocking ld] 4.3 Does Productivity Separate Inflection from Derivation? 81 4.4 The Nature of the Lexicon 83 4.4.1 Potential words 83 4.4.2 Knowledge of language and the role of the lexicon 84 Further Reading 85 Exercises 85 PART II] MORPHOLOGY AND ITS RELATION TO PHONOLOGY 87 5 INTRODUCING LEXICAL MORPHOLOGY 89 5.1 The Lexical Phonology and Morphology Model 89 5.2 Lexical Strata 89 5.2.1 Derivation in lexical morphology 92 5.2.2 Inflection in lexical morphology 100 5.3 Lexical Rules 104 5.4 Differences between Lexical and Post-Lexical Rules 106 Further Reading 109 Exercises 109 6 INSIGHTS FROM LEXICAL MORPHOLOGY 1 6.1 Introduction 1 6.2 Insights mi 6.2.1 Stratum ordering reflecting morpheme sequencing 112 6.2.2 Stratum ordering and productivity 117Contents ix 6.2.3 Stratum ordering and conversion 118 6.2.4 The Strict Cycle Condition 121 Further Reading 130 Exercises 131 7 LEXICAL MORPHOLOGY: AN APPRAISAL 133 7.1 Introduction: The Claims Made by Lexical Phonology 133 7.2. Criticisms of Lexical Phonology 133 7.2.1 Are lexical strata determined by affixes rather than roots? 134 7.2.2. Do affixes uniquely belong to one stratum? 135 7.2.3. How many strata are needed? 139 7.2.4. Are phonological rules restricted to one stratum? 140 7.2.5 Are morphological rules restricted to one stratum? 142 7.3. Conclusion 151 Exercises 151 8 TEMPLATIC MORPHOLOGY 154 8.1 Introduction 154 8.2 Phonological Prelude: Autosegmental Phonology 154 8.2.1 Autosegmental phonology: mapping principles 155) 8.2.2 The skeletal tier 160 8.3 Root and Pattern Morphology 162 8.3.1 Arabic Binyanim 163 8.3.2 Prosodic morphology and non-concatenative morphology 165 8.3.3. The morpheme tier hypothesis 172 8.4 Conclusion 177 Exercises 178 9 'TEMPLATIC AND PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY 180 9.1 What is Reduplication? 180 9.2 Is Reduplication Constituent Copying? 182 9.3. CV Templates and Reduplication 183 9.3.1 Underspecification 184 9.3.2 Reduplication as prefixation 185 9.3.3 Reduplication as suffixation 189 9.3.4 Internal reduplication 190 9.3.5 Reduplication and fixed segmentism 192 94° Prosodic Morphology 194 95 Other Prosodic Phenomena 199 9.5.1 Subiractive morphology 9.5.2 nglixh expletive infixiution 199 201Contents 9.6 Conclusion Exercises 10 OPTIMALITY THEORY AND MORPHOLOGY 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Introduction The Basics 10.2.1 Notation 10.2.2 The interaction of constraints Morphology in Optimality Theory Stratal Optimality Theory Conclusion Further Reading Exercises PART III MORPHOLOGY AND ITS RELATION TO THE LEXICON AND SYNTAX 11 INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY 12 11.1 11.2 11.5 Introduction Inflection and Derivation 11.2.1 Differentiating between inflection and derivation 11.2.2. Relevance and generality 11.2.3. Is morphology necessary? Verbal Inflectional Categories 11.3.1 Inherent verbal properties 11.3.2 Agreement properties of verbs 11.3.3. Configurational properties of verbs Inflectional Categories of Nouns 11.4.1. Inherent categories of nouns 11.4.2. Agreement categories of nouns 11.4.3. Configurational categories of nouns Conclusion Exercises MORPHOLOGICAL MAPPING OF GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Introduction Predicates, Arguments and Lexical Entries Theta-Roles and Lexical Entries Grammatical Relations Grammatical Function-Changing Rules 12.5.1 Passive 12.5.2 Antipassive 201 202 204 204 204 205 206 213 215 219 219 220 221 223 223 223 224 229 234 237 237 242 244 250 250 253 254 261 262 267 267 268 274 276 279 281Contents xi 13 12.6 12.7 12.8 12.5.3. Applicative 12.5.4 Causative The Mirror Principle Incorporation 12.7.1. Noun incorporation 12.7.2 Verb incorporation 12.7.3. Preposition incorporation Conclusion Exercises THE INTERPRETATION OF THE LEXICON, MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 Introduction: The Interface Between Modules Phonological Factors In Compounding Are Compounds Different from Syntactic Phrases? 13.3.1 The notion ‘word’ revisited 13.3.2 Listemes 13.3.3. Unlisted morphological objects 13.3.4 Syntactic objects and syntactic atoms The Character of Word-Formation Rules 13.4.1 Headedness of compounds 13.4.2 The right-hand head rule (RHR) 13.4.3. Left-headed compounds 13.4.4 Headless compounds Compounding and Derivation 13.5.1 Cranberry words 13.5.2 Neoclassical compounds Clitics Conclusion. Exercises Glossary References Language Index Subject Index cluthor Index 282 286 294 295 296 297 298 306 307 308 309 310 315 316 324 328 331 334 336 337 343 348 357 371 373 381Preface This book is an introduction to morphology that presupposes little previous exposure to linguistics. It is meant to be useful both to students of English and to those of linguistics. Most of the first half of the book, as well as the final chapter, is devoted mainly to problems of English word-formation. The remaining chapters cover a range of morphological phenomena in other languages, but even the parts dealing with English raise issues of a general theoretical interest. The detail in which different parts are studied will vary, depending on the kind of student that uses the book. I present morphology from the standpoint of current, mainstream generative grammar. My main concerns are the nature of word-formation processes and the ways in which word-formation interacts with phonology, syntax and the lexicon. I hope that the reader will come away not only with an understanding of the descriptive problems in morphology but also with a firm grasp of the theoretical issues and the analytical tools that are available within the model of generative grammar. On completing a course in morphology based on this book, students should be equipped to tackle the growing morphological literature that has appeared in recent years. There are many people whom I must thank for the help they have given me in writing this book. The book grew out of my morphology course at Lancaster University. I must thank the students who have taken this course over the last four years. Special thanks go to Elena Semino and Saleh al-Khateb, whose Italian and Syrian Arabic data I have used here. I have benefited from discussions with a number of Berkeley linguists, especially Sharon Inkelas, Sam Mchombo and Karl Zimmer. Above all, I must thank in a special way Larry Hyman, with whom I have collaborated on Luganda morphology and phonology for the last ten years. I have learned much of what I know about phonology/morphology through our collaboration. There are also many other linguists whose theoretical and descriptive studies I have drawn on. They have all contributed in an obvious way to my writing this book. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Noel Burton-Roberts, the editor of this series. His rigorous critical comments and positive suggestions have enabled me to avoid some of the pitfalls I would otherwise have encount- ered. There are two other people at Macmillan that I wish to thank for their technical support: they are Doreen Alig and Cathryn Tanner. I should alsoPreface xiii like to thank Valery Rose and David Watson, who both helped with the production of this book. Finally, I thank my wife Janet for her support during the long months and years of writing this book. Lancaster FRANCIS KATAMBAPreface to the Second Edition The first edition of this book, published in 1993, has been an extremely popular textbook for over a decade and has been the introduction to morphology for many students. There have been a number of developments in morphological theory over that period and we felt that it was time to provide an updated version of the book for the next generation of students. This second edition is closely based on the original, but with changes in several areas: first, we have updated the discussion in a number of areas, providing more recent references where appropriate; second, we have added a chapter on Optimality Theory, which has become the dominant paradigm in phonology, although perhaps not yet in morphology; third, we have added new exercises to complement the existing ones in places; and finally, we have taken the opportunity to correct a number of typos/oversights that appeared in the first edition. Hopefully, this new edition will enhance the understanding of another generation of students’ introduction to morphology. In addition to all those who contributed to the first edition, in particular Gyung-ran Kim and Jin-hying Kim, we would also like to thank our editorial constultant, Penny Simmons, for her careful reading of the entire manuscript, and Noel Burton-Roberts, for his encouragement in pursuing this second edition. We would also like to thank Joel Nevis and Eun-Sook Kim for extensive discussion of the manuscript for this second edition. FRANCIS KATAMBA and JOHN STONHAMAcknowledgements The authors and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material: Cambridge University Press for Fig. 3.34 from P. Matthews, Inflectional Morphology (1972) 7.4.3, p. 132; ‘The International Phonetic Association [www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html] for the International Phonetic Alphabet, revised 1989, from Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 19, no. 2. livery effort has been made to trace the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. linally, we would like to thank the many colleagues and their students who have given us much useful feedback on the first edition. We would especially like to single out Gyung-ran Kim and Jin-hyung Kim, who translated the lirst edition of the book into Korean, for their numerous constructive comments.Abbreviations and Symbols ACC ADJ/Adj AdjP ADV/Adv AdvP APPL ASP BVS CAUS DET/De ERG GF GVS FUT Inf. N/n NP/Np OBJ OcP OED P/Prep PP Pron RHR Ss SPE SUBJ/Sub Vv VP Veiner) V(r) vP WFC WP accusative adjective adjectival phrase adverb adverbial phrase applicative aspect Basic verbal suffix (in Bantu) causative determiner ergative grammatical function Great Vowel Shift future infinitive noun noun phrase object Obligatory Contour Principle Oxford English Dictionary preposition prepositional phrase pronoun Right-Hand Head Rule sentence The Sound Pattern of English subject verb verb phrase ver b(intransitive) ver biransitive) verb phrase Well-Formedness Condition Word and Paradigm (morphology)The International Phonetic Alphabet ‘CONSONANTS (PULMONIC) [ni | c|s ee | [tc [Tona [co rave [pb td Itdie sik gla o| | |? [Nast ie epee) eae ‘Tall | R ‘Tap or Flap tl . ee Ficaive | [s zl¢ dlx ylx s/h T[h fi fame | = Pie Approximant | uy 2 a et 1 E a ‘Where symbols appear in pairs, the one tothe right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. (CONSONANTS (NON-PULMONIC) ‘VOWELS Clicks Voiced implosives Ejectives Oo ‘Bilabial 6 Bilabial a ‘Examples: a i o u _—_, CL dxmatarecir |)” niet Ny ! crowoneour | Ff Paw C? desavaneotr Chsemid Sia e—Y¥t0 $ rawointe |S vee |K ve I Abeoter tert | CP uveter 8? Avenlrfretve e\o—3 he—a 2 OTHER SYMBOLS aS «ia D AA Volescs ibalvetrticuie — GB Areclopuaal emives syals ini ome W Voiced ibiatwec writ — Lavoie tap ae YU voiceatatic-puanposions £]—simunsncous J ant X ‘SUPRASEGMENTALS H Veet epg fave eee $F Voiced pala! fieatve Pismo obnpeared Secondary stress 2 preeieatenh fe & ts : ‘founa'ttfan Epiglotal plosive Long e: DIACRITICS. Discrites may be placed above « symbol with a descender, e.g. E] J Hatttong Bunthor & oo at. wr pa = id Mio ox gop Voit = cratywieed DD | pial td ed k ror fed ome id [| _ maior Gntonation) group = a eo aw + Syllable break ai.2ekt » Maerounet_ 2) Lsiaiea Yd Nasal é ae ea ¢ Uesroindes 2 J ramamee Gi]? nasmene Od" , Nance UW Yvewcs 1 OY | T tueatmene Ee en TOUR a ee A contac & = Velwiedor pharygeataod E tne EV ray x é ae a Gime E€ 4% Mis cent ee ee Ses ut me alg a oa tort (B-veicsriaisrrminn | By gm S| he a Nmaytatle & 4 Mbvanced Tongue Root & + Downses = 7 Globalrise * nakiny OA | Reucted tone Ron T Upuep No Geta tatPart I Background1 Introduction 1.1 THE EMERGENCE OF MORPHOLOGY Although students of language have always been aware of the importance of words, morphology, the study of the internal structure of words did not emerge as a distinct sub-branch of linguistics until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, its importance has always been assumed, as attested by its central role in Panini’s fourth-century BC grammar of Sanskrit, the Astadhyayi, for instance. Early in the nineteenth century, morphology played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of Indo-European. In 1816, Franz Bopp published the results of a study supporting the claim, originally made by Sir William Jones in 1786, that Sanskrit, Latin, Persian and the Germanic languages were descended from a common ancestor. Bopp’s evidence was based on a comparison of the grammatical endings of words in these languages. Between 1819 and 1837, Bopp’s contemporary, Jacob Grimm, published his classic work, Deutsche Grammatik. By making a thorough analytical comparison of sound systems and word-formation patterns, Grimm showed the evolution of the grammar of Germanic languages and the relationships of Germanic to other Indo-European languages. Later, under the influence of the Darwinian theory of evolution, the phil- ologist Max Miiller contended, in his Oxford lectures of 1899, that the study of the evolution of words would illuminate the evolution of language just as in biology, morphology, the study of the forms of organisms, had thrown light on the evolution of species. His specific claim was that the study of the 400-500 basic roots of the Indo-European ancestor of many of the languages of Europe and Asia was the key to understanding the origin of human language (cf. Miiller, 1899, cited in Matthews, 1974). Such evolutionary pretensions were abandoned very early on in the history of morphology. Since then morphology has been regarded as an essentially synchronic discipline, that is to say, a discipline focusing on the study of word-structure at one stage in the life of a language rather than on the evolution of words. But, in spite of the unanimous agreement among linguists on this point, morphology has had a chequered career in twentieth- century linguistics, as we shall see. 1.2 MORPHOLOGY IN AMERICAN STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS Adherents to American structural linguistics, one of the dominant schools of linguistion inthe first part of the twentieth century, typically viewed4 Introduction linguistics not so much as a ‘theory’ of the nature of language but rather as a body of descriptive and analytical procedures. Ideally, linguistic analysis was expected to proceed by focusing selectively on one dimension of language structure at a time before tackling the next one. Each dimen- sion was formally referred to as a linguistic level. The various levels are shown in [1.1]. [1.1] Semantic level: deals with meaning t Syntactic level: deals with sentence-structure T Morphological level: deals with word-structure T Phonology (or phonemics): deals with sound systems The levels were assumed to be ordered in a hierarchy, with phonology at the bottom and semantics at the top. The task of the analyst producing a description of a language was seen as one of working out, in separate stages, first the pronunciation, then the word-structure, then the sentence-structure and finally the meaning of utterances. It was considered theoretically repre- hensible to make use of information from a higher level, for example, syntax, when analysing a lower level such as phonology. This was the doctrine of separation of levels. In the early days, especially between 1920 and 1945, American struc- turalists grappled with the problem of how sounds are used to distinguish meaning in language. They built upon nineteenth-century work, such as that of Dufriche-Desgenettes (Joseph, 1999) and Baudouin de Courtenay (1895), and further developed and refined the theory of the phoneme (cf., Sapir, 1925; Swadesh, 1934; Twaddell, 1935; Harris, 1944). As time went on, the focus gradually shifted to morphology. When structuralism was in its prime, especially between 1940 and 1960, the study of morphology occupied centre stage. Many major structuralists investi- gated issues in the theory of word-structure (cf. Bloomfield, 1933; Harris, 1942, 1946, 1951; Hockett, 1952, 1954, 1958). Nida’s coursebook entitled Morphology, published in 1949, codified structuralist theory and practice. It introduced generations of linguists to the descriptive analysis of words. The structuralists’ methodological insistence on the separation of levels that we noted above was a mistake, as we shall see below in Sections 1.3.2 and 1.3.3. Despite this flaw, there was much that was commendable in the structuralist approach to morphology. One of the structuralists’ main contributions was the recognition of the fact that words may have intricate internal structures. Whereas traditionally linguistic analysis had treated the word as the basic unit of grammatical theory and lexicography, the American structuralists showed that words are analysable in terms ofThe Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar 5 morphemes. These are the smallest units of meaning and/or grammatical function. Previously, word-structure had been treated together with sentence-structure under grammar. The structuralists viewed morphology as a separate sub-branch of linguistics. Its purpose was ‘the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words’ (Nida, 1949: 1). The contribution of the structuralists informs much of the discussion in the first part of this book. 1.3 THE CONCEPT OF CHOMSKYAN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR The bulk of this book presents morphological theory within the linguistic model of generative grammar, initiated by Chomsky. Before considering how this theory works, we will sketch the background assumptions made by generative grammarians so that we can place the theory of morphology in the wider theoretical context of generative linguistics. The central objective of generative linguistics is to understand the nature of linguistic knowledge and how it is acquired by infants. In the light of this objective, a fundamental question that a theory of word-structure must address is, ‘what kinds of information must speakers have about the words of their language in order to use them in utterances?’ Attempts to answer this question have led to the development of sub-theories of the lexicon (i.e., mental dictionary) and of morphology. According to Chomsky (1980, 1981, 1986), the central goal of linguistic theory is to determine what it is people know if they know a particular language. Chomsky observes that knowing a language is not simply a matter of being able to manipulate a long list of sentences that have been memorised. Rather, knowing a language involves having the ability to produce and understand a vast (and indeed unlimited) number of utterances of that language that one may never have heard or produced before. In other words, creativity (also called productivity or open-endedness) is an aspect of linguistic knowledge that is of paramount importance. Linguistic creativity is, for the most part, rule-governed. For instance, speakers of English know that it is possible to indicate that there is more than one entity referred to by a noun and that the standard way of doing this is to add -s at the end of a noun. Given the noun book, which we have all encountered before, we know that if there is more than one of these objects we refer to them as books. Likewise, given the nonsense word smilts as in the sentence The smilts stink, you know smilts would refer to more than one of these smelly things. Speakers of English have tacit knowledge of the rule that says ‘add -s for plural’ and they can use it to produce the plural form of virtually any noun, We emphasise (he notion of rule, taking the existence of rules for granted,6 Introduction We will now explain why a generative grammar is a system of explicit rules that may apply recursively to generate an indefinite number of sen- tences that can be as long as one wants them to be. Recursiveness has the consequence that, in principle, there is no upper limit to the length of sen- tences. A grammatical constituent like a noun phrase (NP) or prepositional phrase (PP) can directly or indirectly contain an indefinite number of further constituents of that category as in the sentence John saw the picture of the baby on the table in the attic. The recursion can be clearly seen in the tree diagram in [1.2], which represents that sentence. On the one hand, DPs can have an optional determiner followed by NP and PP, and on the other hand, PPs are expanded as P followed by NP. So, NPs can indirectly contain other NPs since NPs can contain PPs which contain NPs: [1.2] s 7 VP — N Ve PP oe eee es John V DP P DP | 2 | a saw i 7 on i NP the N’ the PP i N PP NP DP picture P DP table in D NP i, , y the 1 the 1 attic baby Note: S — sentence; N —- noun, NP - noun phrase; V - verb, VP — verb phrase; P-— preposition, PP - prepositional phrase; DP - determiner phrase; DET — determiner. One of our concerns will be to determine whether morphology should be recognised as a separate linguistic level (or module) that is independent of syntax and phonology (see [1.1] above and [1.3] below). Do morphological rules have certain properties that they do not share with rules in other parts of the grammar? Are recursive rules of the kind found in syntax necded inThe Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar 7 morphology? This book will address these issues in depth. Here we only attempt to give you a flavour of one of the issues to be explored. There are morphological processes that are similar to syntactic pro- cesses. For instance, certain adjectives that describe periods in history, such as industrial, can have the prefix post- before them as in post-industrial. Furthermore, given the adjective post-industrial, we can place another post- before it to yield post-post-industrial. Clearly, the word-formation process we witness here is recursive. We have the rule attaching post- to a word reapplying to its own output. This raises an interesting question: if mor- phological rules that build words are similar to syntactic rules that build sentences, what reason is there for assuming that morphology is essentially different from syntax? Before we go any further we need to clarify the terms grammar and rule of grammar. These terms are used by linguists in at least four distinct senses. First, in generative linguistics ‘grammar’ can refer to the implicit, totally unarticulated knowledge of rules and principles of their language that people have in their heads. This tacit knowledge enables them to distinguish between well-formed and ill-formed words and utterances in their lang- uage. For example, many English speakers may not be able to explain in an articulate manner why it is ‘correct’ to say a grain but ‘incorrect’ to say *a oat. (An asterisk indicates a disallowed or ungrammatical form.) Never- theless, their knowledge of English grammatical structure enables them to determine that the former is correct and the latter is not. Second, whereas in traditional approaches ‘grammar’ only includes morphology and syntax, in generative linguistics the term ‘grammar’ is employed in a much wider sense. It covers not only morphology and syntax but also semantics, the lexicon and phonology. Hence, there are rules of grammar in every linguistic module. Phonological rules, morphological rules, syntactic rules and semantic rules are all regarded as rules of grammar. Third, grammar and rules of grammar may refer to a book containing a statement of the rules and principles inferred by linguists to lie behind the linguistic behaviour of speakers of a particular language. These rules simply describe regular patterns observed in the linguistic data. Lastly, some grammars are books containing prescriptive statements. Such grammars contain rules that prescribe certain kinds of usage. Outside linguistics, this view of grammar is still prevalent. The reason for this is clear. In everyday life, rules are normally mechanisms for regulating behaviour — the behaviour of pupils in a school, members of a club, inmates of a prison, etc. In many traditional pedagogical grammars, rules serve the same purpose. They are statements like ‘A sentence must not end with a preposition.” They prescribe what the ‘officially or socially approved’ usage is in the opinion of the grammarian. Tn much of modern linguistics, however, rules have a different function. They are not prescriptions of behaviour that the grammarian imposes on8 Introduction speakers, but rather they are statements of principles responsible for the observed regularities in the speech or writing of users of a particular language. The characterisation of regularities in observed patterns of usage is what the American structuralists regarded as the primary objective of linguistic investigations. Their grammatical rules were descriptive state- ments like ‘The article precedes the noun in the English noun phrase.’ This statement reflects the fact that the book, as in I read the book, is allowed whereas *book the, as in *I read book the is disallowed. Chomsky has shifted the focus of linguistic theory from the study of observed behaviour to the investigation of the knowledge that underlies that behaviour. In generative linguistics, rules are intended to go beyond accounting for patterns in the data to a characterisation of speakers’ linguistic knowledge. The primary objective of generative grammar is to model a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. Chomsky characterises linguistic knowledge using the concepts of competence and performance. Competence is a person’s implicit knowledge of the rules of a language that makes the production and understanding of an indefinitely large number of new utterances possible while performance is the actual use of language in real situations. Chomsky proposes that competence, rather than performance, is the primary object of linguistic inquiry. Put simply, knowledge of a language entails mastery of an elaborate system of rules that enables a person to encode and decode a limitless number of utterances in that language. One subset of this rule system is the rules of word-formation that this book introduces you to. In Section 4.1.3 and Section 13.3.3 it will be shown that speakers of a language do not just commit to memory all the words they know. Their competence includes the ability to manipulate rules in order to create new words and to unscramble the meanings of novel or unfamiliar words that they encounter. If knowing a language essentially involves mastering a system of rules, how do humans accomplish this task? Chomsky contends that the linguistic capacity of humans is innate. The general character of linguistic knowledge is determined by the nature of the mind, which is endowed with a specialised language faculty. This faculty is determined in turn by the biology of the brain. The human child is born with a blueprint of language that is called Universal Grammar. According to Chomsky, Universal Grammar is the faculty of the mind that determines the nature of language acquisition in the infant and of linguistic competence. The properties that lie behind the competence of speakers of various languages are governed by restricted and unified ele- mentary principles rooted in Universal Grammar. This explains the striking underlying similarity between languages in their essential structural prop- erties. Admittedly, languages differ from each other, but the structural differences between them occur within the fairly narrow range sanctioned by Universal Grammar. As we shall see (especially in Chapters 3, 8, 9 and 13)The Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar 9 with regard to word-formation, very similar word-building principles recur in language after language. The language faculty of the mind is essentially the same in all humans. Hence, languages can only differ from each other within the limits predetermined by the neurology and physiology of the human brain, which determine the nature of Universal Grammar. Universal Grammar in turn determines the kinds of grammars of particular languages that can be acquired by infants. The differences between the grammars acquired by individual speakers of, say, English and Arabic can be attributed to experience. An individual’s experience serves to specify a particular grammar for the particular language which that individual is exposed to- within the range permitted by Universal Grammar. How is Universal Grammar structured? It is modular in structure: it consists of various sub-systems of principles. Many of its principles consist of parameters that are fixed by experience on the basis of simple evidence of the kind available to the child. Chomsky compares Universal Grammar to un intricate electrical system that is all wired up, but not switched on. The system contains a finite set of switches, each one of which has a restricted number of positions. Exposure to a specific language experience is required to turn on these switches and give them the appropriate setting. The basic idea of parameters is meant to capture the fact that many rules are interdependent. If one choice is made, it may either preclude some other choices or set in motion other related choices. This makes the task of language acquisition simpler than it would be if each rule had to be worked out independently of all other rules. The parametric approach assumes that the infant acquiring a language makes very clever guesses or hypotheses about the rules of the grammar being acquired on the basis of rules already acquired after experience of a particular language. For a concrete example of a parameter, we will consider the Right-Hand Ilead Rule to be discussed in Chapter 13. This parameter is concerned with the position of the head of a grammatical constituent. Some languages, like Unglish, normally place the head on the right, that is, it is the last element of ii constituent. For example, in the noun phrase these big books the right- handmost word, the noun books, is the head. It must come last. (Alter- nittives like *books big these and *these books big are forbidden.) As a rule, the head is the only obligatory element of a constituent like an NP. Books is a well-formed NP but neither these nor big is a permissible NP on its own, Furthermore, in terms of meaning, the head books is the key word in this NP. The function of these and big is merely to specify further the particular books referred to. Note also that these agrees in number with books, that is, they are both plural. wise, at the word level, in a compound like farmhouse, the head, is the last clement and itis the pivotal clement from a semantic point of view. (A farmhouse is a kind of house.) Once an infant has worked out the10 Introduction position of the head for one construction, this can be generalised with a considerable degree of success to other constructions. Universal Grammar consists of a number of modules that are inter- related. This is shown in [1.3] (which you should compare with [1.1] above): [1.3] (i) Lexicon and Morphology (ii) Syntax (iii) Phonetic Form (PF) (which deals with the representation in speech) (iv) Logical Form (LF) (which deals with meaning) As can be seen, Universal Grammar includes the lexicon and morphology. Knowledge of word-structure is a central aspect of linguistic competence. A case can be made for recognising morphology as a separate module of Universal Grammar. Yet, at the same time, morphology (and the lexicon) is like a bridge that links the other modules of the grammar. It is therefore necessary to examine morphology not in isolation, but in relation to the other modules. Morphology interacts with both phonology and ‘syntax, as well as semantics. So, it can only be studied by considering the phonological, syntactic and semantic dimensions of words. 1.3.1 The Place of Morphology in Early Generative Grammar Today the place of morphology in generative grammar is secure, but this is a recent development. After being in the limelight when structuralism peaked in the 1950s, morphology was at first eclipsed when generative grammar came on the scene. Generative grammarians initially rejected the validity of a separate morphological module. From the point of view of advancing our understanding of word- structure, this stance was unfortunate. Since generative grammar has been the dominant school of linguistics since the second half of the twentieth century, it meant that the study of word-structure was in the shadows for more than a decade. Morphology did not re-emerge until the mid-1970s. Fortunately, a few isolated (for the most part non-generative) scholars such as Robins (1959) and Matthews (1972, 1974) made important contributions to morphology during this time, as we shall see. Part of the reason for the widespread neglect of morphology during the early years of generative grammar was the belief that word-formation could be adequately covered if it was partitioned between phonology and syntax. It was argued that no separate morphological level or component was needed in the grammar. Ways were found of describing the structure of words in a model of language that had a phonological component, a syntactic component and a semantic component but no morphological component. Those aspects of word-structure that relate to phonologyThe Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar IL (e.g., the alternation between sane [sem] and sanity [sentti], would be dealt with using devices found in the phonological component. And those aspects of word-structure that are affected by syntax would be dealt with in the syntactic component. The job of the syntactic component of the grammar was thought of as being to generate (i.e., to specify or enumerate explicitly) all the well- formed sentences of a language, without generating any ill-formed ones. Significantly, generating all the sentences of a language was seen as meaning generating all the permissible sequences of morphemes (not words), and showing which morpheme groupings formed syntactic constituents like noun phrases and verb phrases. A specialised morphological component and a properly, articulated lexicon were not part of the picture. Thus, Lees (1960), in the first major descriptive study produced by a generative linguist, used syntactic rules to create derived words like the noun appointment from the verb appoint. As seen in [1.4a], Lees derived the sentence containing the noun appointment from a source sentence with the verb appoint. Likewise, he derived the abstract noun priesthood from a source sentence with the noun priest, as indicated in [1.4b]: [1.4] a. The committee appoints John. The committee’s appointment of John. (Lees, 1960: 67) b. John is a priest. John’s priesthood. (Lees, 1960: 110) We will not examine the particulars of the syntactic rules that Lees uses. Our concern is that Lees saw this type of word-formation as taking place in the syntax and believed that he could dispense with morphology. We will revisit this issue in Chapter 13. I.ct us now turn our attention to questions of phonological realisation. Readjustment rules (which were morphological rules in disguise) played a key role in this area. They operated on the final output of the syntactic component, making whatever modifications were necessary in order to cnible phonological rules to apply to the representation obtained after all syntactic rules had applied. Unfortunately, there seems to have been no constraint on the power of teadjustment rules. For instance, in The Sound Pattern of English (SPE), which appeared in 1968 and was the pivotal work in the development of gen- erative phonological theory, Chomsky and Halle proposed that the syntax should generate both the regular past tense form mended [y[y mend]ypast]y and the irregular past tense form sang [y[v sing]ly past]y. These bracketed strings, which were the output of the syntactic component, would form the input to the reudjustment rules, Next, the readjustment rules would remove12 Introduction all the brackets associated with the past tense. In the case of mend, a general readjustment rule would replace past by d, while in the case of sing a special readjustment rule would delete the item past, along with the associated bracket labels, giving [y singly. The same readjustment rule would also attach the diacritic mark * to the vowel /i/ indicating that eventually a phonological rule would change it into /z2/. The readjustment rules would give the forms [y[y mend]y d]y and [ys*ng]y. These representations — and all other such representations yielded by readjustment rules — were referred to as phonological representations. Finally, phonological representations would be converted into the phonetic representations [mendid] and [sen] by rules in the phonology module. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that readjustment rules were a mistake. They were rules with unbridled power. They could make whatever modifications were deemed necessary to enable phonological rules to apply to strings of morphemes produced by the syntax. It is very undesirable to have a batch of rules that empower us linguists to do whatever we like, whenever we like, so long as we come up with the answer we like. A theory becomes vacuous if it has rules that can insert all manner of elements, remove all manner of elements and make all manner of elements exchange places whenever we choose to, with no principles restricting our freedom. Effectively, this means that we are given carte blanche to start off with any arbitrary input, apply the rules, and come up with the ‘correct’ answer. Furthermore, readjustment rules were a bad idea because they are evidence of a lack of interest in words qua words and in morphology as a linguistic level. Using rules of the syntax to specify permissible sequences of morphemes, regardless of whether they occurred in words or sentences, and using readjustment rules to turn strings generated by the syntax into strings that the phonology could process and assign a pronunciation to was merely skirting round the problem. Words are a central dimension of language. They have certain unique properties that they do not share with other elements of linguistic structure like sentences and speech sounds. A theory of language must include a properly developed model of word-formation that enables the linguist to describe words on their own terms — without overlooking the ways in which word-formation rules interact with rules in other modules. As time went by, this became clear to generative linguists who, in increasing numbers, began to explore more satisfactory ways of dealing with word-structure. 1.3.2. The Morphology—Phonology Interaction As regards the interaction of morphology with phonology, the selection of the form that manifests a given morpheme may be influenced by the sounds that realise neighbouring morphemes. Take the indefinite article in English. It has two manifestations. It is a before a word that begins with a consonantThe Concept of Chomskyan Generative Grammar 13 (e.g., a pear) and an before a word that begins with a vowel (e.g., an orange). The same alternation occurs with the prefix a/an that occurs in forms such as a-sexual and an-aerobic. We cannot describe the phonological shape of the indefinite article without referring to the sound at the beginning of the word that follows it. 1.3.3 The Morphology-Syntax Interaction As regards the interaction with syntax, the form of a word may be affected by the syntactic construction in which the word is used. For instance, the verb walk has a number of forms including walk, walks and walked. The selection of a particular form of this verb on a given occasion is dependent on the syntactic construction in which it appears. Thus, in the present tense, the choice between the forms walks and walk depends on whether the subject of the verb is third-person singular (in which case walks is selected as in he/ she/it walks) or not (in which case walk is selected as in I/you/we/they walk). In the past tense, walk is realised as walked in all cases. Chomsky (1957: 39) deals with all these facts as uncontroversial syntactic phenomena, using the phrase structure rule below: @ in the context NP, PAST Plas [1.5] {é in the context rn } co Note: (i) ‘>’ stands for ‘expand’ or ‘rewrite as’; (ii) C stands for the various verbal suffixes that may be realised as -s (as in walks), © (i.e., zero) as in walk and -ed as in walked. Chomsky’s analysis does not separate phrase structure rules (e.g., Sentence + NP + VP; VP —> Verb + NP) which enumerate permissible com- binations of words in phrases and sentences from rules of word-structure like the one in [1.5] that gives walks from walk. All these rules are banded logether because they are concerned with enumerating permissible combinations of morphemes (see above). Note, however, that this treatment of syntactically motivated alternation in the form of words is controversial. We have merely aired the problem for the present. We postpone detailed discussion until Chapter 11. 1.3.4 The Morphology—Semantics Interface Vurning to semantics, the connection between morphology and the lexicon on the one hand with meaning on the other is obvious since a major role of the lexicon or dictionary is to list the meanings of words. This is because normally the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.14 Introduction There is no reason why a word has the particular meaning that it has. For instance, you just have to memorise the fact that the word faille refers to a kind of headdress worn in the seventeenth century. There is no way that you could discover this fact from the sounds or the structure of the word. We will come back to this topic in Section 13.3.2. 1.3.5 The Lexicon It is less immediately obvious that, in addition to indicating the meaning of words and morphemes, the lexicon must also store other kinds of informa- tion relevant to the application of syntactic and phonological rules. Syntax needs to have access to morphosyntactic properties (i.c., properties that are partly morphological and partly syntactic) such as whether a noun is countable like spades or uncountable like equipment. This affects its behaviour in phrases and sentences. We may say this spade or these spades but we can only say this equipment (not *these equipments). Furthermore, some phonological rules apply to words differently depend- ing on their morphosyntactic properties. For example, some phonological rules are sensitive to the difference between nouns and verbs. Thus, in the word permit, the main stress falls on the first syllable if the word functions as a noun (‘permit,oun), but if it functions as a verb (per'mity-p), main stress falls on the last syllable. Obviously, for phonological rules that assign stress to apply correctly, access to such morphosyntactic information is essential. This information must form part of the entry of the word in the lexicon. The study of morphology, therefore, cannot be self-contained. The struc- turalist doctrine of the rigid separation of linguistic levels sketched in [1.1] is untenable. True, there are some issues that are the internal concerns of morphology, but many morphological problems involve the interaction between morphology and other modules of the grammar. For this reason, much of the space in the chapters that follow is devoted to the interaction between the lexicon and morphology with the other modules. 1.4 ORGANISATION OF THE BOOK The book is organised as follows: Part I (Chapters 1-4) introduces basic concepts and traditional notions which are fundamental to all morphological discussions. Part II (Chapters 5-10) explores the relationship between morphology, phonology and the lexicon in current generative theory, examining several models of morphology. Part II (Chapters 11-13) deals with the relationship between morphology and syntax in current generative theory.Organisation of the Book 15 Over the years, there have been several morphological theories that have been proposed by linguists. One way of introducing you to morphology would be to present a historical and comparative survey. We could have examined various theories in turn, and perhaps compared them. Or, alter- natively, we could have been polemical and proselytising, trying to persuade you that a preferred theory is the best theory. That is not what we shall do in this book. Instead, we present you, sympathetically, but at the same time critically, with one theoretically coherent approach to morphology, namely the theory of morphology in current mainstream generative grammar. This decision is sensible not only because this is the dominant model in the field today, but also because we think it offers the most promising solutions to the perennial problems in morphological analysis. Even so, the book is inevitably selective. We have not attempted to represent every shade of opinion within the generative school. Rather we have focused on ideas and practices that seem to form part of the emerging ‘canon’ in mainstream generative morphology. Obviously, to some extent this is a matter of subjective judgement. In some cases, the judgements here may not be the same as those of some other linguists. In particular, we have only briefly discussed what is now the dominant model of phonology, Optimality Theory, in Chapter 10. The main reason for this is that the treatment of morphology in Optimality Theory remains in a rather nascent state with many questions remaining unaddressed, or even unexplored. Where current Optimality Theoretical analyses are available, principally with respect to reduplication, they will be discussed in the text. Of course, morphological theory in current mainstream generative xrammar does not enjoy a monopoly of insight. The debt owed to other approaches will be evident in this book, especially in the early chapters and in the recommended readings and bibliography. A major feature of the book is that you will be asked to be an active investigator, not a passive reader. We have endeavoured to engage you uctively and practically in doing morphology rather than in merely learning about its history and watching from the stalls how it is done. As you read cach chapter, you are asked to pause at places and answer in-text questions und exercises before proceeding (the questions and exercises are signalled by lines across the page). Each chapter (after this one) ends with further ses dealing with points raised in the body of the text. This insistence on relling you to analyse data is due to our firm conviction that the best initiation for anyone who wishes to become a linguist is to do linguistic analysis right from the start rather than to read about it. In the text new morphological terms appear in bold type and they are explained when they are first introduced. They will also appear in the ilossary al the end of this book where key terms from other branches of linguistics are also explained. ‘Transcriptions of Standard RP. English are16 Introduction drawn from Jones and colleagues (2003). For any other linguistic terms that are unfamiliar, a good dictionary of linguistics, such as David Crystal’s A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (2003) or Laurie Bauer’s A Gloss- ary of Morphology (2004), should be consulted.2 Introduction to Word-Structure 2.1 WHAT IS A WORD? The assumption that languages contain words is taken for granted by most people. Even illiterate speakers know that there are words in their language. True, sometimes there are differences of opinion as to what units are to be treated as words. For instance, English speakers might not agree whether ail right is one word or two and as a result disputes may arise as lo whether alright is the correct way of writing all right. But, by and large, people can easily recognise a word of their language when they see or hear one. And normally their judgements as to what is or is not a word do coincide. English speakers agree, for example, that the form stlody in the sentence The stlody cat sat on the mat is not an English word — but all (he other forms are. 2.1.1 The Lexeme llowever, closer examination of the nature of the ‘word’ reveals a somewhat tore complex picture than painted above. What we mean by ‘word’ is not ulways clear. As we shall see in the next few paragraphs, difficulties in clarifying the nature of the word are largely due to the fact that the term ‘word’ is used in a variety of senses that usually are not clearly distinguished. In taking the existence of words for granted, we tend to overlook the complexity of what it is we are taking for granted. 1 Exercise What would you do if you were reading a book and you encountered the ‘word’ pockled for the first time in this context? [2.1] He went to the pub for a pint and then pockled off. 1 You would probably look up that unfamiliar word in a dictionary, not under pockled, but under pock/e, This is because you know that pockled is hot going to be listed in the dictionary. You also know, though nobody has fold you, that the words pockding und pock/es will also exist. Furthermore, 1718 Introduction to Word-Structure you know that pockling, pockle, pockles and pockled are all in a sense different manifestations of the ‘same’ abstract vocabulary item. We shall refer to the ‘word’ in this sense of abstract vocabulary item using the term lexeme. The forms pockling, pockle, pockles and pockled are different realisations (or representations or manifestations) of the lexeme POCKLE (lexemes will be written in capital letters). They all share a core meaning although they are spelled and pronounced differently. Lexemes are the vocabulary items that are listed in the dictionary (cf. Di Sciullo and Williams, 1987). [ Exercise Which ones of the words in [2.2] below belong to the same lexeme? [2.2] see catches taller boy catching sees sleeps woman catch saw tallest sleeping boys sleep seen tall jumped caught seeing jump women slept jumps jumping We should all agree that: The physical word-forms are realisations of the lexeme See, sees, seeing, saw, seen SEE sleeps, sleeping, slept SLEEP catch, catches, catching, caught CATCH The physical word-forms are realisations of the lexeme jump, jumps, jumped, jumping SUMP. tall, taller, tallest TALL boy, boys BOY woman, women WOMAN 2.1.2 Word-Form As we have just seen above, sometimes, when we use the term ‘word’, it is not the abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning, the lexeme, that we want to refer to. Rather, we may use the term ‘word’ to refer to a particular physical realisation of that lexeme in speech or writing, that is, a particular word-form. Thus, we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different words. In this sense, three different occurrences of any one of these word-forms would count as three words. We can also say that the word-form see has three letters and the word-form seeing has six. And, if’Morphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 19 we were counting the number of words in a passage, we would gladly count see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as five different word-forms (belonging to the same lexeme). 2.1.3 The Grammatical Word I'he ‘word’ can also be seen as a representation of a lexeme that is associated with certain morphosyntactic properties (i.e, partly morphological and partly syntactic properties) such as noun, adjective, verb, tense, gender, number, etc. We shall use the term grammatical word to refer to the ‘word’ in this sense. 1 1 Exercise Show why cut should be regarded as representing two distinct grammatical words in the following. [2.3] a. Usually I cut the bread on the table. b. Yesterday I cut the bread in the sink. \ ! The same word-form cut, belonging to the verbal lexeme CUT, can represent (wo different grammatical words. In [2.3a], cut represents the grammatical Word CUffverb, present, non-3rd person singular} that is, the present tense, non-third person singular form of the verb CUT. But in [2.3b] it represents the wiummatical word cutyyers, pase; Which realises the past tense of CUT. lesides the two grammatical words realised by the word-form cut which we have mentioned above, there is a third one which you can observe in Jane hay a cut on her finger. This grammatical word is cuttoun, singular}: It belongs (ou separate lexeme CUT, the noun. Obviously, CUT, the noun, is related in incuning to CUT, the verb. However, CUT, the noun, is a separate lexeme liom CUT, the verb, because it belongs to a different word-class (see Section 4 below). Vhe nature of the grammatical word is important in the discussion of the relationship between words and sentences and the boundary between morphology and syntax. ?.2 MORPHEMES: THE SMALLEST UNITS OF MEANING Morphology is the study of word-structure. The claim that words have wtructure might come as a surprise because normally speakers think of20 Introduction to Word-Structure words as indivisible units of meaning. This is probably due to the fact that many words are morphologically simple. For example, the, fierce, elephant, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito, etc., cannot be segmented (i.e., divided up) into smaller units that are themselves meaningful. It is impossible to say what the -quito part of mosquito or the -erce part of fierce means. But very many English words are morphologically complex. They can be broken down into smaller units that are meaningful. This is true of words like desk-s and hoot-s, for instance, where desk refers to one piece of furniture and boot refers to one item of footwear, while in both cases the -s serves the grammatical function of indicating plurality. The term morpheme is used to refer to the smallest, indivisible units of semantic content or grammatical function from which words are made up. By definition, a morpheme cannot be decomposed into smaller units which are either meaningful by themselves or mark a grammatical function like singular or plural number in the noun. If we divided up the word fee [fi:] (which contains just one morpheme) into, say, [f] and [i:], it would be impossible to say what each of the sounds [f] and [i:] means by itself, since sounds in themselves do not have meaning. How do we know when to recognise a single sound or a group of sounds as representing a morpheme? Whether a particular sound or string of sounds is to be regarded as a manifestation of a morpheme depends on the word in which it appears. So, while wn- represents a negative morpheme and has a meaning that can roughly be glossed as ‘not’ in words such as un-just and un-tidy, it has no claim to morpheme status when it occurs in uncle or in under, since in these latter words it does not have any identifiable gram- matical or semantic value, because -c/e and -der on their own do not mean anything. (Morphemes will be separated with a hyphen in the examples.) Lego provides a useful analogy: morphemes can be compared to pieces of Lego that can be used again and again as building blocks to form different words. Recurrent parts of words that have the same meaning are isolated and recognised as manifestations of the same morpheme. Thus, the negative morpheme un- occurs in an indefinitely large number of words, besides those listed above. We find it in unsafe, unclean, unhappy, unfit, uneven, etc. However, recurrence in a large number of words is not an essential property of morphemes. Sometimes a morpheme may be restricted to rela- tively few words. This is true of the morpheme -dom, meaning ‘condition, state, dignity’, which is found in words like martyrdom, kingdom, chiefdom, etc. (Glosses, here and elsewhere in the book, are based on definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary OED.) It has been argued that, in an extreme case, a morpheme may occur in a single word. Lightner (1975) has claimed that the morpheme -ric meaning ‘diocese’ is only found in the word bishopric. But this claim is disputed by Bauer (1983) who suggests instead that perhaps -ric is not a distinctMorphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 21 morpheme and that bishopric should be listed in the dictionary as an unanalysable word. We will leave this controversy at that and instead see how morphemes are identified in less problematic cases. r Exercise List two other words that contain each morpheme represented below. [2.4] a. -er asin play-er, call-er -ness asin kind-ness, good-ness -ette asin kitchen-ette, cigar-ette b. ex- asin ex-wife, ex-minister pre- asin pre-war, pre-school mis- asin mis-kick, mis-judge (i) Write down the meaning of each morpheme you identify. (If you are in doubt, consult a good etymological dictionary.) (ii) What is the syntactic category (noun, adjective, verb, etc.) of the form which this morpheme attaches to and what is the category of the resulting word? Hl Your answer should confirm that, in each example in [2.4], the elements recognised as belonging to a given morpheme contribute an identifiable meaning to the word of which they are a part. The form -er is attached to verbs to derive nouns with the general meaning ‘someone who does X’ (where X indicates whatever action the verb involves). When -ness is added to an adjective, it produces a noun meaning ‘having the state or condition (e.g., of being kind)’. The addition of the diminutive morpheme -ette to a noun derives a new noun which has the meaning ‘smaller in size’ (e.g., a kitchenette is a small kitchen and a cigarette is smaller than a cigar). Finally, the morphemes ex- and pre- derive nouns from nouns while mis- derives verbs from verbs. We can gloss the morpheme ex- as ‘former’, pre- as ‘before’ and mis- as ‘badly’. So far we have described words with just one or two morphemes. In fact, it is possible to combine several morphemes together to form more complex words, This can be seen in long words like unfaithfulness and reincarnation, which cor 1 the morphemes un-faith-ful-ness and re-in-carn-at-ion re- spectively. But on what grounds do we divide up these words in this fashion? In the following sections, we will examine the basis on which morphemes ure identilied,22 Introduction to Word-Structure 2.2.1 Analysing Words Up to now, we have used the criterion of meaning to identify morphemes. In many cases, forms that share the same meaning may be safely assigned to the same morpheme. Where the meaning of a morpheme has been some- what obscure, you have been encouraged to consult a good etymological dictionary. Unfortunately, in practice, appealing to meanings listed in ety- mological dictionaries has its problems. r Exercise Consider the following words. [2.5] helicopter pteropus diptera bible bibliography _ bibliophile Historically pter was borrowed from Greek, where it meant ‘feather or wing’. The form bid/- also came from Greek where it meant ‘papyrus, scroll, book’. Do you think pter- and bibi- should be recognised as morphemes in modern English? l ! It seems questionable whether pfer- is a morpheme of modem English. A helicopter is a kind of non-fixed-wing aircraft that most speakers of English know about; pteropus are tropical bats with membranous wings popularly known as ‘flying foxes’ and diptera are two-winged flies (which few of us who are not entomologists know about). Obviously, pter- does occur in modern English words that have the meaning ‘pertaining to wings’. What is doubtful is whether this fact is part of the tacit knowledge of speakers of English who are not versed in etymology. Most people probably go through life without seeing a semantic connection between ‘wings’ and ‘helicopters’. Similarly, as we have already noted, the words bible, bibliography and bibliophile have to do with books. Probably many English speakers can see the book connection in bibliography and bibliophile. But it is unlikely that anyone lacking a profound knowledge of English etymology (and a classical education) is aware that the word bible is not just the name of a scripture book and that it contains a morpheme which is found in a number of other words pertaining to books. Clearly, we need to distinguish between etymological information, whose relevance is essentially historical, and synchronic information that is part of speakers’ competence. Our primary task as morphologists is to investigate speakers’ tacit knowledge of the rules of their language rather than toMorphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 23 perform historical reconstruction. We shall discuss this further in Chapter 4. The cases in [2.5] raise another important point: speakers may have different mental lexicons, based on their personal experience. An entomolo- gist, for instance, may have a morpheme, pter, in their mental lexicon, based on their knowledge of the names of numerous insects containing this morpheme, whereas the average speaker may not. Over-reliance on meaning in the isolation of morphemes puts us in a quandary in cases where etymological meanings are shrouded in the mists of history and lose their synchronic relevance. The common definition of the morpheme as the ‘minimal meaningful unit’ implies the claim that every morpheme has a readily identifiable meaning. But this is problematic. There are cases where we can justify recognising a recurrent word-building unit as a morpheme although we cannot assign it a consistent meaning. This is true of -fer in words like pre-fer, in-fer, de-fer, con-fer, trans-fer and re-fer. An etymological dictionary will tell us that fer comes from the Latin word meaning ‘bear, bring, send’. However, we would be hard-pressed to identify a consistent meaning like ‘bring’ attributable to -fer in every instance above. For this reason, some linguists, such as Aronoff (1976), have argued that it is the word in its entirety rather than the morpheme per se that must be meaningful. Whereas all words must be meaningful when they occur on their own, morphemes need not be. Some morphemes, like ex- ‘former’ as in ex-wife and pre- ‘before’ as in pre-war, have a transparent, unambiguous meaning while others like -fer do not. Their interpretation varies depending on the other morphemes that occur together with them in a word. In view of the above, while semantic considerations must play a role in the identification of morphemes, given the pitfalls of a purely semantic approach, linguists tend to give a higher priority to more formal factors. 2.2.2 Morphemes, Morphs and Allomorphs At one time, establishing mechanical procedures for the identification of morphemes was considered a realistic goal by structural linguists (cf. Harris, 1951; Longacre, 1964). But it did not take long before most linguists realised that it was impossible to develop a set of discovery procedures that would lead automatically to a correct morphological analysis. No scientific discipline purports to equip its practitioners with infallible procedures for arriving at correct theories. Creative genius is needed to enable the scientist to make that leap into uncharted waters that results in a scientific discovery. What is true of science in general is also true of linguistics (cf. Chomsky, 1957). Writing a grammar of a language entails constructing a theory of how that language works by making generalisations about its structure that go beyond the data that are observed.24 Introduction to Word-Structure Nevertheless, although there are no effective mechanical procedures for discovering the grammatical structure of a language in general or, in our case, the structure of its words, there exist reasonably reliable and widely accepted techniques that have been evolved by linguists working on mor- phology. These techniques are outlined in this section. The main principle used in the analysis of words is the principle of contrast. We contrast forms that differ: (i) in phonological shape due to the sounds used; and (ii) in meaning, broadly defined to cover both lexical meaning and grammatical function. Thus, the phonological difference between /bo1/ and /g3:I/ correlates with a semantic difference. The differ- ence in meaning between the two sentences The boy plays and The girl plays is attributable to the difference in lexical meaning between /bo1/ and /g3:1/. Likewise, the difference in grammatical function between play-s (present tense) and play-ed (past tense) is responsible for the difference in meaning between The girl plays and The girl played. DEFINITION: The morpheme is the smallest difference in the shape of a word that correlates with the smallest difference in word or sentence meaning or in grammatical structure. The analysis of words into morphemes begins with the isolation of morphs. A morph is a physical form representing some morpheme in a language. It is a recurrent distinctive sound (phoneme) or sequence of sounds (phonemes). C Exercise Study the data in [2.6] and identify the morphs. [2.6] a. I parked the car. e. She parked the car. b. We parked the car. f. She parks the car. c. I park the car. g. We park the car. d. He parks the car. hh. He parked the car. The morphs are: Morph Recurs in fat/ T [2.6a] and [2.6c] /fi:/ ‘she’ —([2.6e] and [2.6f] [hi:/ ‘he’ [2.6d] and [2.6h] [60/ ‘the’ in all the examples /ka/ ‘car’ in all the examplesMorphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 25 /pa:k/ ‘park’ in all the examples, sometimes with an -ed suffix, sometimes with an -s suffix and sometimes on its own /t/ ‘ed? suffixed to park in [2.6a, b, e, h] /s/ ‘s? suffixed to park in [2.6d, f] fi Exercise For our next example, we shall perform an analysis similar to the one we have just done for English on data from a less familiar language. Now study the data in [2.7], which are taken from Luganda and list all the morphs. (Although Luganda is a tone language, tone is omitted for simplicity’s sake as it is not relevant here.) [2.7] tulilaba kitabo ‘we will see a book’ tuligula katabo ‘we will buy a little book’ baalaba bitabo ‘they saw books’ tulilaba butabo —‘we will see little books’ balilaba kitabo ‘they will see a book’ tulilaba bitabo ‘we will see books’ baatunda butabo ‘they sold little books’ baligula bitabo ‘they will buy books’ baagula katabo ‘they bought a little book’ tutunda bitabo ‘we sell books’ Hint: a. The word meaning ‘book’ appears in all the sentences but in some it is singular and in others plural. b. ‘Book’ sometimes refers to a normal size book and, in other cases, to a little book. c. We have three different verbs. d. The verbs are in different tenses. e. The verbs have different subjects. The answer to [2.7] is given in [2.8]: [2.8] -tabo ‘book’, tu- ‘we’, ki- ‘singular’ (normal size) noun prefix -laba ‘see’, ba- ‘they’, bi- ‘plural’ (normal size) noun prefix -gula ‘buy’, -li- ‘future’, ka- ‘singular’ (small size) noun prefix -tunda ‘sell’, -a- ‘past’, bu- ‘plural’ (small size) noun prefix In [2.8], cach different morph represents a separate morpheme, but this is not always the case. Sometimes different morphs may represent the same morpheme, Mor instance, the past tense of regular verbs in English which is spelled -ed is realised ins speech by /id/, /d/ or /t/. The phonological26 Introduction to Word-Structure properties of the last segment of the verb to which it is attached determine the choice: [2.9] It is realised as: a. /1d/ if the verb ends in /d/ or /t/ e.g. /mend/ ~/mendid/ /pemt/ ~ /pemtid/ ‘mend’ ‘mended’ ‘paint’ ‘painted’ b. /d/ after a verb ending in any voiced sound except /d/ eg. /klizn/ ~ /kliind/ = /wet/ ~ /weid/ ‘clean’ ‘cleaned’ ‘weigh’ ‘weighed’ c. /t/ after a verb ending in any voiceless consonant other than /t/ eg. /pazk/ ~ /pazkt/ /mis/ ~ /must/ ‘park’ ‘parked’ ‘miss’ ‘missed’ Seseeereecee geese eaeeseeeeee essere ag eeae reece teen eeesaeeeEeeTaPeaEeeeee vena EeeSaEeReE ea Eeeee Tear reeee Tene SErREe Pee eee nee eee ereee PREECE TE Exercise Now compare the Luganda forms in [2.10] with those in [2.7] above. [2.10] twaalaba kitabo ‘we saw a book’ twaagula_ bitabo ‘we bought books’ twaatunda kitabo ‘we sold a book’ The first-person plural is represented by the form tu- in [2.7] and by fv- in [2.10]. What determines the selection of tw vs tw-? EE J Observe that here again the difference in form is not associated with a difference in meaning. The morphs tu- and tw- both represent the first- person plural in different contexts. Tu- is used if the next morpheme is realised by a form beginning with a consonant and tw- is selected if the next morpheme is realised by a form that begins with a vowel. Phonologically, the difference between the two forms rests in the syllabicity of the labial segment, /w/ or /u/. When the following segment is a vowel (i.e., syllabic), then the non-syllabic segment, /w/ is chosen. When the following segment is non-syllabic, then /u/ is employed. If different morphs represent the same morpheme, they are grouped together and they are called allomorphs of that morpheme. So, fw- and fw- are allomorphs of the ‘first-person plural’ morpheme. (For simplicity’s sake, for our present purposes, we are regarding ‘first-person plural’ as a single unanalysable concept.) On the same grounds, /1d/, /d/ and /t/ are grouped together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English.Morphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 21: The relationship between morphemes, allomorphs and morphs can be represented using a diagram in the following way: [2.11] a. English Morpheme e.g. ‘past tense’ allomorph allomorph allomorph morph morph morph Itd/ /a/ [t/ b. Luganda Morpheme Morpheme Morpheme e.g. ‘first-person plural’ ‘future’ ‘book’ allomorph allomorph —allomorph allomorph morph morph morph morph /tu-/ /tw-/ /-li-/ /-tabo/ We can say that: (i) /1d/, /d/ and /t/ are English morphs; and (ii) we can group all these three morphs together as allomorphs of the past tense morpheme. Likewise, in Luganda we can say that: (i) tu-, tw-, -li- and -tabo are morphs and furthermore; (ii) tu- and tw- are allomorphs of the same morpheme since they represent the same superordinate concept, the mor- pheme ‘first-person plural’. The central technique used in the identification of morphemes is based on the notion of distribution, that is, the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs. We classify a set of morphs as allomorphs of the same morpheme if they are in complementary distribution. Morphs are said to be in complementary distribution if: (i) they represent the same meaning or serve the same grammatical function; and (ii) they are never found in identical contexts. So, the three morphs /-1d/, /-d/ and /-t/ which represent the English regular past tense morpheme are in complementary distribution. Each morph is restricted to the contexts specified in [2.9]. Hence, they are allomorphs of the same morpheme. The same analysis applies also to Luganda f- and fv-. Both morphs mean ‘we’ and they are in complementary distribution. 7 occurs before consonants and fv- before vowels, They are therefore allomorphs of the first-person plural morpheme. Morphemes realised by an invariant form (¢.g., ture and book) are said to have wo single allomorph (ef Matthews, 1974),28 Introduction to Word-Structure r 1 Exercise Let us now examine some English words, focusing on the pronunciation of the underlined part of each word, which represents the negative morpheme in-. This morpheme can roughly be glossed as ‘not’. [2.12] a. impossible [um 'ppsib}] impatient [mm'perfnt] immovable ['mu:vab}] b. intolerable [m'tolorabt] indecent [n'di:snt] intangible [in'tend3rbt] inactive [in'ektrv] inelegance [in'eligons] c. incomplete incompatible ingratitude ['mkompli:t] [kempetrb}] [my ‘gaetitju:d] (i) Identify the allomorphs of this negative morpheme. (ii) Write a statement accounting for the distribution of each allomorph. t ——_____ Hopefully you have isolated the following allomorphs of the morpheme in-: [my], [1] and [in]. The selection of the allomorph that is used in a particular context is not random. In [2.12] the nasal consonant in the various allomorphs of the morpheme in- is pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on the nature of the sound that immediately follows. To predict the allomorph that is selected in each case, a rule like [2.13] is required: 1 select [im] before a labial consonant (e.g., p, b, f, m) as in [rm]possible, [rm]patient, [1m]movable. t [2.13] a. b. select [1] before the velar consonants [k] (here spelt with ‘c’) and [g] as in [ty]compliance, [m]gratitude. c. select [mn] elsewhere, that is, before an alveolar consonant like [t, d,s, z, n], as in [mJtolerable, [m]tangible and [in]decent or before a vowel as in [inJactive, [mJelegance. L cat sai i 1Morphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 29 The three allomorphs [1m], [1n] and [1] of the morpheme in- are in com- plementary distribution. This means that selecting one precludes selecting the others. No two of them can occur in identical environments. This example illustrates what is a very common state of affairs. If a morpheme has several allomorphs, the choice of allomorph used in a given context is normally phonologically conditioned. This means that the allo- morph selected to represent the morpheme in a particular context is one whose phonological properties are similar to those of sounds found in a neighbouring allomorph of some other morpheme. The phonological resemblance between the nasal in the prefix and the first consonant representing the morpheme before which it is placed is due to assimilation. The pronunciation of the nasal in the prefix is adjusted to match the place of articulation of the first consonant representing the next mor- pheme. Thus, in [2.12] the labial consonant [m] occurs in [1m] before a labial consonant, the alveolar consonant [n] in [in] occurs before alveolar con- sonants and the velar consonant [n] in [1n] occurs before velar consonants. In each case, the two consonants end up sharing the same place of articulation. This example also illustrates another point, namely that spelling is a very poor guide to pronunciation in English (and many other languages). Where the point at issue would otherwise be obscured by the standard orthography, phonetic or phonemic transcription will be used. In the light of this discussion, let us return to the earlier example of the allomorphs of the English regular past tense morpheme in [2.9]. Clearly, the distribution of allomorphs is phonologically conditioned: /-1d/ is chosen after the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ (with /1/ being inserted to separate the alveolar stop of the suffix from the final alveolar stop of the verb to which it is attached); voiced /-d/ is chosen after voiced segments other than /d/ and voiceless /-t/ is chosen after voiceless consonants other than /t/. So far, all the examples of morphs that we have seen have involved only vowels and consonants. But, as the examples from Luganda in [2.14] show, morphemes may also be signalled by tone, that is, the contrastive use of relative pitch (cf. Hyman, 1975; Katamba, 1989; Pike, 1948): [2.14] a. Ayala ‘hunger’ njala ‘fingernails’ mweéézi ‘sweeper’ mwéézi ‘moon’ busa ‘naked’ busa ‘dung’ biggya ‘newness’ biggya ‘envy’ b. ‘s/he fries’ asiiké ‘one who fries’ soma ‘s/he reads’ asoma ‘one who reads’ agoba — ‘s/he chases’ agobaé ‘one who chases’ Note: Interpret the tone diacritics as follows: High tone (HH); * >: Low tone () and * Falling tone (1).30 Introduction to Word-Structure In [2.14a], tonal differences are used to distinguish lexical items. The word-forms are identical in all respects except tone. In [2.14b], on the other hand, tone is used to signal grammatical distinctions. LHLH corresponds to LHHF in the first verb, while in the last two, LHH corresponds to LLF. In each case, the first pattern represents a third-person main clause present tense form of the verb and the second pattern represents the relative clause form. 2.2.3 Grammatical Conditioning, Lexical Conditioning and Suppletion We have seen in the last section that the distribution of allomorphs is usually subject to phonological conditioning. However, sometimes phonological factors play no role in the selection of allomorphs. Instead, the choice of allomorph may be grammatically conditioned, that is, it may be dependent on the presence of a particular grammatical element. A special allomorph may be required in a given grammatical context although there might not be any good phonological reason for its selection. For example, in [2.15a], the presence of the past tense morpheme in the majority of cases has no effect on the selection of the allomorph that represents the verb itself. But, as [2.15b] and [2.15c] show, in certain verbs the presence of the past tense morpheme requires the selection of a special allomorph of the verb: [2.15] Present tense Past tense a. walk = /wo:k/ walked = /wo:kt/ kiss /kis/ kiss-ed —_/kist/ grasp /gra:sp/ grasp-ed /gra:spt/ b. weep = /wi:p/ wep-t /wept/ sweep /swi:p/ swep-t /swept/ c. shake /ferk/ shook /Sok/ take —/terk/ took /tok/ In [2.15b], the choice of allomorph is grammatically conditioned. The presence of the past tense morpheme determines the choice of the /wep/ and /swep/ allomorphs in verbs that belong to this group. For the verbs in [2.15c], the past tense dictates the choice of the allomorphs took and shook of the verbs take and shake respectively. In other cases, the choice of the allomorph may be lexically conditioned, that is, use of a particular allomorph may be obligatory if a certain word is present. We can see this in the realisation of plural in English. Normally the plural morpheme is realised by a phonologically condi- tioned allomorph whose distribution is stated in [2.16]:Morphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 31 [2.16] a. select allomorph /-1z/ if a noun ends in an alveolar or alveo- palatal sibilant (i.e., a consonant with a sharp, hissing sound, eg, /sz$3 tf d3/) Examples: asses mazes fishes badges beaches fesiz/ /merziz/ /fifiz/ /bed3iz/ /bi:tfrz/ b. select allomorph /-s/ if a noun ends in a non-strident voiceless consonant (i.e., any one of the sounds /p t k f 6/). Examples: cups leeks carts laughs moths /kaps/ /litks/ /ka:ts/ /la:fs/_ /mp8s/ c. select allomorph /-z/ elsewhere (i.e., if the noun ends in a voiced non-strident segment, including all vowels and /b d g 6 mnontr wjj/). Examples: bards mugs rooms keys shoes /ba:dz/ /magz/ /ru:mz/ /ki:z//Su:z/ r 7 Exercise Can you explain why the rule in [2.16] fails to account for the realisation of the plural morpheme in the word oxen? \ Hl No doubt, you too have failed to find a plausible explanation, and with good reason. There are cases where, for no apparent reason, the regular rule in [2.16] inexplicably fails to apply. The plural of ox is not *oxes but oxen, although words that rhyme with ox take the expected /1z/ plural allomorph (cf. /foksiz/ foxes and /boksiz/ boxes). The choice of the allomorph -en is Icxically conditioned. It is dependent on the presence of the specific noun ox. Finally, there exist a few morphemes whose allomorphs show no phonetic similarity. A classic example of this is provided by the forms good/better which both contain the lexeme good despite the fact that they do not have even a single sound in common. (Note that better consists of the lexeme good and the comparative -er.) Where allomorphs of a morpheme are phonetically unrelated, we speak of suppletion. ¢ good and better is not unique in English. Find one other example of suppletion, ' : Other examples of suppletion in English include bad ~ worse (not *badder); Roe went (nol goed).32 Introduction to Word-Structure 2.2.4 Underlying Representations Above we have distinguished between, on the one hand, regular, rule- governed phonological alternation (a situation where the choice between alternative allomorphs is regulated in quite predictable ways by the phono- logical properties of the different morphs that occur near each other (see Section 2.2.2) and, on the other hand, cases of suppletion where there is a phonologically arbitrary alternation in the realisation of a morpheme (see Section 2.2.3). This is standard in generative phonology (cf. Chomsky and Halle, 1968; Kenstowicz and Kisseberth, 1979; Anderson, 1974). Merely listing allomorphs does not allow us to distinguish between eccentric alternations like good ~ bett(-er) and regular alternations like that shown by the negative prefix in- or by the regular -s plural suffix. The latter are general and will normally apply to any form with the relevant phonological properties, unless it is specifically exempted. Thus the regular plural rule in [2.16] above is used to attach /-s/, /-z/ or /-1z/ to virtually any noun that ends in the appropriate sound. By contrast, a rule of suppletion or lexical conditioning only applies if a form is expressly marked as being subject to it. Thus, for example, of all English adjectives, only good is subject to the suppletive rule that gives bett-er in the comparative; and only ox is subject to the lexically conditioned rule that suffixes -en to yield the plural oxen. Similarly, a grammatically conditioned rule will only be triggered if the appropriate grammatical conditioning factor is present. For example, the allomorph s/ep- of the morpheme sleep only co-occurs with the past tense (or the past participle) morpheme. It cannot be selected to co-occur with the present tense: s/eep + [past] yields slept /slept/ (not /*sli:pt/) while sleep + [present] gives sleep /sli:p/ (not /*slep/). To bring out the distinction between regular phonological alternation, which is phonetically motivated, and other kinds of morphological alterna- tion that lack a phonetic basis, linguists posit a single underlying repre- sentation or base form from which the various allomorphs (or alternants, i.e., alternative phonetic realisations) of a morpheme are derived by applying one or more phonological rules. The stages which a form goes through when it is being converted from an underlying representation to a phonetic repre- sentation constitute a derivation. For a concrete example, let us consider again the representation of the in- morpheme in [2.13], which is repeated below as [2.17] for convenience: [2.17] a. select [1m] before a labial consonant (e.g., p, b, f, m), as in [mm]possible, [1m]patient, [1m]movable. b. select [1] before the velar consonants [k] (here spelt with ‘c’) and [g] as in [my]compliance, [1y]compatible, [1n]gratitude.Morphemes: The Smallest Unit of Meaning 33 c. select [in] elsewhere, that is, before an alveolar consonant like [t, d,s, z, n], as in [m]tolerable, [m]tangible and [in]decent or before a vowel as in [tnJactive, [m]elegance. The vital point to note is that the three parts of the rule in [2.17] are not independent of each other. By making three separate statements, we have missed a generalisation. A superior solution would be to restate [2.17] as [2.18]. The revised statement, in which we posit a single underlying repre- sentation from which the three allomorphs are derived, captures the fact that the alternation in the realisation of these allomorphs is due to a single factor, namely assimilation. [2.18] The nasal realising the morpheme in- /in/ must appear in the phonetic representation as a nasal consonant that shares the place of articulation of the initial consonant of the form to which it is attached. But how can we be certain that the base form is /m/ rather than /1m/ or [1]? We have seen that the nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of the consonant that follows it. The fact that when a vowel follows we still find [m-] appearing as in [1no:drb4] inaudible, and [mevitob}] inevitable is very revealing. From a phonetic point of view, vowels do not have definite places of articulation, only consonants do. So, a consonant cannot assimilate to the place of articulation of a vowel. The occurrence of [1n-] before vowels is not due to place assimilation. Besides, the alveolar nasal is found regardless of whether the vowel that follows is made in the front of the mouth like [e], or in the back like [9:]. So, the influence of the vowel cannot be responsible for the choice of [1n-]. A simple solution is to assume that [1n-] is the default form, that is, the form selected unless there are explicit instructions to do otherwise. If we posit this form as the underlying representation, we do not need to change it before vowels or before alveolar consonants. We only need to change it before non-alveolar consonants. If, however we posited [1m] or [1n] as the underlying representation, we would need rules to modify them when they appeared not only before non-labial and non-velar consonants respectively but also before vowels. If two analyses can both account properly for the facts, the analysis that provides a simpler solution is preferred. (This basic principle of science is often referred to as Occam (or Ockham)’s Razor.) Obviously, in this case it is the analysis in [2.18] (with /in/ as the base form) that wins. Phonologically conditioned morphological alternations tend to be very general, Often allomorphs representing different morphemes will display the sume phonological alternations if they occur in similar phonological