Farida Athumani Dereza

 On the Ning Nang Nong On the Ning Nang Nong Where the cows go Bong! And the Monkeys all say Boo! There's a Nong Nang Ning Where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo. On the Nong Ning Nang All the mice go Clang! And you just can't catch 'em when they do! So it's Ning Nang Nong! Cows go Bong! Nong Nang Ning! Trees go Ping! Nong Ning Nang! The mice go Clang! What a noisy place to belong, Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong! SPIKE MILLIGAN ENGLISH WORDS 25 We cannot find two otherwise identical sentences which differ in meaning simply because the word cats is pronounced as kæt−skæt−s and *kæt−zkæt−z respectively. Likewise, it is not possible to have two otherwise identical sentences with different meanings where the word dogs is pronounced as dgzdgz and *dgsdgs. In other words, the difference between the allomorphs ss and zz of the plural morpheme cannot be used to distinguish meanings. 3.3.2 Contrast Different morphemes CONTRAST meanings but different allomorphs do not. If a difference in meaning is attributable to the fact that one minimal meaningful unit has been replaced by another, we identify the morphs involved as manifestations of distinct morphemes. So, in 3.73.7 on p. 36 the indefinite article realised by a or an is a distinct morpheme from the definite article realised by the since a semantic difference is detectable when a or an is replaced with the. A further example of contrast is given in 3.103.10: 3.103.10 a. I unlocked the door. I re-locked the door b. She is untidy. The two sentences in 3.10a3.10a mean very different things. Since they are identical except for the fact that where one has un- the other has re-, the difference in meaning between these two sentences is due to the difference in meaning between the morphemes realised by re- (meaning 'do again') and un- (meaning 'reverse the action'). Now, contrast the un- of unlocked with the un- of untidy. In both cases we have the same morph un- (which is spelt and pronounced in exactly the same way). But it is obvious that un- represents different morphemes in these two word-forms. In I unlocked the door the morph un- found in unlocked realises a reversive morpheme which is attached to verbs—it reverses the action of locking. But in untidy it realises a negative morpheme attached to adjectives—untidy means 'not tidy'. If a person is untidy, it does not mean that at some earlier point they were tidy and someone has reversed or undone their tidiness. If morphemes were made up of phonemes a simple correlation of morphs with morphemes is what we would find. But, in fact, it is quite common for the same phonological form (i.e. morph) to represent more than one morpheme. It is from the context that we can tell which morpheme it represents. This is the second piece of evidence against the assumption that morphemes are composed of phonemes. The complex relationship between morphemes and the allomorphs that represent them gives us a window through which we can glimpse one of the most fascinating aspects of language: the relationship between FORM and FUNCTION. In linguistics we explore the form of various elements of language structure, e.g. words and sentences, because it is important to know how they are constructed. However, form is not everything. We are also interested in knowing what linguistic elements are used for, what function they serve. Just consider for a moment this non-linguistic analogy. Imagine a friend returns from a foreign vacation with two beautiful ornamental glass containers with a globular shape and gives one to you as a present and keeps the other for herself. She does not tell you what your present is used for. She uses hers as a vessel for containing wine at the table—she got the idea of buying these containers when she served wine in a similar container in a fancy restaurant. You do not know this. You look at your present and decide to put it on the ENGLISH WORDS 27 Those morphemes that are allowed to occur on their own in sentences as words are called FREE MORPHEMES while those morphemes that must occur in the company of some other morphemes are called BOUND MORPHEMES. In [3.12] the bound morphemes are italicised. [3.12] pest pest(i)-cide modern post-modern-ist child child-ish pack pre-pack-ed laugh laugh-ing The free morphemes in [3.12] can all be manipulated by syntactic rules; they can stand on their own as words. By contrast, it is impossible to use the forms -cide, post-, -ist, -ish, pre-, -ed or -ing, independently. So far, all the examples of free morphemes that function as roots that we have encountered have been content words (see p. 14). However, not all free morphemes are content words. Some are employed to indicate grammatical functions and logical relationship rather than to convey lexical or cognitive meaning in a sentence. Hence such words are called FUNCTION WORDS. They include words such as the following: [3.13] articles: a/an, the demonstratives: e.g. this, that, these and those pronouns: e.g. I, you, we, they, my, your, his, hers, who etc. prepositions: e.g. in, into, on to, at, on etc. conjunctions: e.g. and, or, but, because, if etc. In ordinary language use such words are extremely common. But on their own they would not convey a lot of information. If you received a telegram like But it my on to the in you might suspect that the sender either had a strange sense of humour or was not mentally sound. 3.5 SOUND SYMBOLISM: PHONAESTHESIA AND ONOMATOPOEIA In the vast majority of words, the relationship between sound and meaning is arbitrary (see p. 2). There is no reason why a particular sound, or group of sounds, should be used to represent a particular word, with a particular meaning. If someone asked you what [b] in bed or [str] in strange meant, you would think they were asking a very odd question. As a rule, sounds qua sounds do not mean anything. However, the general principle that says that the link between sound and meaning in words is arbitrary is occasionally denied. This happens in two sets of circumstances. First, certain individual sounds, or groups of sounds, which do not represent a specific enough meaning to be called morphemes nevertheless appear to be vaguely associated with some kind of meaning. Such sounds are called PHONAESTHESMES. As our first example of a phonaestheme, let us take the RP vowel [ ] (which is historically descended from [U], the vowel that is still used in words like dull and hut in the north of England). This phonaestheme is found in words associated with various kinds of dullness or indistinctness, e.g. dull, thud, thunder, dusk, ENGLISH WORDS 23 several syllables realise a single morpheme, is equally possible. Thus, the trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic word-forms elephant and asparagus both realise just a single morpheme. The nature of the relationship between sounds and morphemes is intriguing. At first sight, it might look reasonable to assume that morphemes are made up of phonemes. We might be tempted to think that cat, the English morpheme with the meaning is made up of the phonemes /kæt/. But we have several kinds of evidence showing that this is not the case. First, if morphemes were made up of phonemes, a given morpheme would be uniquely associated with a given phonological representation. In reality, the same morpheme can be realised by different morphs (i.e. sounds or written forms). Morphs which realise the same morpheme are referred to as ALLOMORPHS of that morpheme. The INDEFINITE ARTICLE is a good example of a morpheme with more than one allomorph. It is realised by the two forms a and an. The sound at the beginning of the following word determines the allomorph that is selected. If the word following the indefinite article begins with a consonant, the allomorph a is selected, but if it begins with a vowel the allomorph an is used instead: [3.6] a. a dictionary a boat a pineapple a leg a big (mat) a dull (song) b. an island an evening an opinion an eye an old (mat) an exciting (finish) Hence the incorrectness of the sentence marked with an asterisk in [3.7]: [3.7] a. I spent an evening with them. *I spent a evening with them. b. I spent the evening with them. Allomorphs of the same morpheme are said to be in COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION. This means that they do not occur in identical contexts and therefore they cannot be used to distinguish meanings. In other words, it is possible to have two otherwise identical utterances that differ in their meanings depending on the allomorph of a morpheme that is selected. So, because a and an both realise the same indefinite article morpheme, it is impossible to have two sentences like those in [3.7a] above which are identical in all ways, except in the choice of a or an, but mean different things. Complementary distribution presupposes the more basic notion of DISTRIBUTION. Distribution is to do with establishing facts about the occurrence of allomorphs of a particular morpheme. It is concerned with establishing the contexts in which the morpheme which we are investigating occurs and the allomorphs by which it is realised in those different context. In other words, by distribution we mean the total set of distinct linguistic contexts in which a given form appears, perhaps in different guises. For instance, the indefinite article has the distribution: a before consonants (e.g. a tree) and an before vowels (e.g. an eagle). As mentioned already, such functionally related forms which all represent the same morpheme in different environments are called allomorphs of that morpheme. Another way of putting it is 24 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND that allomorphs are forms that are phonologically distinguishable which, none the less, are not functionally distinct. In other words, although they are physically distinct morphs with different pronunciations, allomorphs do share the same function in the language. An analogy might help to clarify this point. Let us compare allomorphs to workers who share the same job. Imagine a jobshare situation where Mrs Jones teaches maths to form 2DY on Monday afternoons, Mr Kato on Thursday mornings and Ms Smith on Tuesdays and Fridays. Obviously, these teachers are different individuals. But they all share the role of 'maths teacher' for the class and each teacher only performs that role on particular days. Likewise, all allomorphs share the same function but one allomorph cannot occupy a position that is already occupied by another allomorph of the same morpheme. To summarise, we say that allomorphs of a morpheme are in complementary distribution. This means that they cannot substitute for each other. Hence, we cannot replace one allomorph of a morpheme by another allomorph of that morpheme and change meaning. For our next example of allomorphs we will turn to the plural morpheme. The idea of 'more than one' is expressed by the plural morpheme using a variety of allomorphs including the following: [3.8] Singular Plural a . Rad-ius Radi-i cactus Cact-i b . Dat-um Dat-a Strat-um Strat-a c . analys-is analys-es ax-is ax-es d . skirt skirt-s road road-s branch branch-es Going by the orthography, we can identify the allomorphs -i, -a, -es and -s. The last is by far the commonest: see section (7.3). Try and say the batch of words in [3.8d] aloud. You will observe that the pronunciation of the plural allomorph in these words is variable. It is [-s] in skirts, [z] in roads and [IZ] (or for some speakers [əz]) in branches. What is interesting about these words is that the selection of the allomorph that represents the plural is determined by the last sound in the noun to which the plural morpheme is appended. We will return to this in more depth in section (5.2). We have already seen, that because allomorphs cannot substitute for each other, we never have two sentences with different meanings which solely differ in that one sentence has allomorph X in a slot where another sentence has allomorph Y. Compare the two sentences in [3.9]: [3.9] a. They have two cats [el hæv tu: kæt-s] [el hæv tu: kæt-z] b. They have two dogs [el hæv tu: dg-z] [el hæv tu: dg-s] 28 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND blunt, mud, slush, sludge, slump etc. Obviously, the vowel [ ] per se does not mean 'dull'. If it did, dim which contains the vowel [I] would not be a virtual synonym for dull. Many words which mean to talk indistinctly, contain one or more occurrences of the labial consonant [m], which is made with the lips firmly closed, preventing clear articulation. That way, the very act of pronouncing the word iconically mimics a key aspect of its meaning. You can see this if you watch yourself in a mirror saying words like mumble, murmur, mutter, muted, grumble etc. It is probably not an accident that these words also contain the phonaestheme [ ]. Similarly, the sound [mp] (spelled -ump) as in clump, dump, bump, lump and hump is often found at the end of words which are associated with heaviness and clumsiness although no one would wish to suggest that -ump in itself represents the ideas of heaviness and clumsiness. Interestingly, here again we have the vowel [ ] followed by the labial consonants [mp]. Observe also that whereas [ ] tends to have associations of heaviness or dullness, the high front vowels [i:] and [I] frequently occur as phomaesthemes in words associated with smallness, as in wee, teeny-weeny, lean, meagre, mini, thin and little. (The fact that big has the opposite meaning just goes to show that phonaesthemes only represent a tendency.) Second, and more importantly, in addition to phonaesthemes, there are onomatopoeic words in which a direct association is made between the sounds of a word-form and the meaning that it represents. In cases of ONOMATOPOEIA, the sounds (qua sounds and not as morphemes) symbolise or reflect some aspect of the meaning of the word that they represent. So, if speakers of any language want an onomatopoeic word for the noise a cat makes, they will not choose a noise like bimbobam—except, perhaps, in the land of the Ning Nang Nong. The words for sounds made by various animals e.g. neigh, miaow, moo etc. are the most obvious examples of onomatopoeia. But there are others such as roar, crack, clang, bang, splash, swish, whoosh, buzz, hiss, cheep, bleep, gurgle, plop and plod. In the case of onomatopoeic words, the relationship between sound and meaning is to some extent ICONIC. The sounds mimic an aspect of the meaning of the linguistic sign much in the same way that this iconic sign for a restaurant represents, more or less directly, the meaning 'restaurant'. This symbol is still conventional to some degree. To people who eat with chopsticks, it might not be immediately obvious why this sign represents a restaurant (rather than a cutlery shop), but once it is pointed out the link can be seen quite easily. Onomatopoeic words are ironic in so far as they directly reflect some aspect of the meaning of what they stand for. So conventionally in English cows go 'moo' and horses go 'neigh' and bees go 'buzz'. That is why Spike Milligan's nonsense poem 'On the Ning Nang Nong' is bizarre. To be onomatopoeic, the sound must imitate to some degree an aspect of the noise made by the bird or animal. But what is imitated will vary from language to language. An English cock will say cockadoodledoo, a Russian cock kukuriku and in Uganda it may say kookoliokoo. (These differences are not attributable to dialectal variation among the males of the Gallus domesticus species.) Onomatopoeic words are not purely and simply formed by mimicking precisely the meanings that they convey. To some extent onomatopoeic words are also moulded by linguistic convention. That is why in different places in the world different onomatopoeic words may be used for the same animal or bird noise. 3.6 VERBAL BLUEPRINTS Linguistic theory incorporates the hypothesis that there are universal principles of grammar that regulate the amount of variation in linguistic structure across languages. In the last section we saw the marginal role played by sound symbolism in word-formation. This does not obscure the fact that normally languages form 30 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND words by using sounds in a non-imitative way. There is an overriding tendency for the relationship between sounds and meanings to be arbitrary. Normally there is no reason why a particular morpheme is realised by any particular sounds. The choice of the allomorph or allomorphs that represent a particular morpheme is arbitrary. Obviously, as everyone knows, all languages do not have the same sounds. Since virtually any arbitrary match of sound and meaning can produce a word, it is not surprising that words vary greatly in their structure across languages. But this does not mean that chaos reigns. The ways in which morphs are used to form words is regulated by general principles. So, the amount of crosslinguistic variation in word-formation falls within certain broad parameters. It is as if there is a menu of blueprints for word-formation from which all languages make their selections: [3.14] (i) ISOLATING (or analytic) languages (ii) AGGLUTINATING languages (iii) INFLECTING (or synthetic) languages (iv) POLYSYNTHETIC languages No language makes all its choices from just one part of the menu. To varying degrees all languages make mixed choices. The idea of this menu is to indicate the predominant word-formation tendencies, if they exist. In the subsections below we shall consider in turn examples of the different morphological types. 3.6.1 Tiny words (isolating languages) In an archetypal isolating language the word is virtually indistinguishable from the morpheme, for every word contains just one morpheme. Every morpheme is a free morpheme. There are no bound morphemes. Vietnamese comes close to this ideal: [3.15] Vietnamese a. Tôi á quá bóng và hn á đã tôi I kick past class. ball and he punch past me 'I kicked the ball and he punched me.' b. Chúng tôi mua á go PL. I buy past rice 'We bought the rice.' Typically, the words are short and contain just one morpheme each. Almost every concept is expressed by a separate word. Look again, for example, at the treatment of past tense in verbs (e.g. punched, bought) and the plurality of we (plural plus first person). 26 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND table as a container for cut fresh flowers. She calls hers a flagon, for that is what she is using it as. You call yours a vase. Here are the questions now: are these objects 'flagons' or 'vases'? Which one of you is right? I am not being evasive if I say that both of you are right. For, although the two objects are identical as far as their form, their physical properties, is concerned, they are very different with regard to the functions that they serve in your two households. There are numerous linguistic parallels. What is physically the same linguistic form can be used to represent distinct morphemes. In order for forms to be regarded as allomorphs belonging to the same morpheme, it is not sufficient for them to have the same form - to be pronounced or written in the same way. They must also have the same grammatical or semantic function. The significance of this point was hinted at in the discussion of un- in unlocked and untidy when we showed that the same morph can represent different morphemes. It should become even more obvious when you consider the form -er in the following: [3.11] a. think - thinker write - writer sweep - sweeper b. cook - cooker receive - receiver propel - propeller c. London - Londoner Iceland - Icelander New York - New Yorker The same form, -er, represents three different meanings and hence has to be assigned to three distinct morphemes. In [3.11a] it forms an agentive noun from a verb, with the meaning 'someone who does X' (i.e. whatever the verb means). In [3.11b] the same -er forms an instrumental noun from a verb, with the meaning 'something used to X' (e.g. to do whatever the verb means). Finally, in [3.11c] the same -er form is attached to a noun referring to a place to mean 'an inhabitant of'. Clearly, the same form does serve different functions here. So, it realises different morphemes. This is further evidence that should quickly disabuse us of the assumption that morphemes are made up of morphs. Not only can a single morpheme have several allomorphs (as in the case of the plural morpheme), the same morph (e.g. -er) can represent different morphemes. There is no simple one-to-one matching of morphemes with morphs. 3.4 FREEDOM AND BONDAGE When we classify morphemes in terms of where they are allowed to appear, we find that they fall into two major groupings. Some morphemes are capable of occurring on their own as words, while other morphemes are only allowed to occur in combination with some other morpheme(s) but they cannot be used by themselves as independent words. 20 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND [3.2] childish hopeless sooner mended elephants re-boil un-safe ex-wife You would have to give a different answer. You would need to tell your interrogator, who by now would be getting increasingly bewildered, that the words in [3.2] can be divided into smaller units of meaning as shown in [3.3]. [3.3] child-ish hope-less soon-er mend-ed elephant-s re-boil un-safe ex-wife The part of the word that is not italicised can function as an independent word in the grammar. Indeed, each of the nonitalicised chunks is a word (i.e. vocabulary item) that is listed in such the dictionary. By contrast, the italicised bits, though meaningful (and their meanings can be indicated as shown in [3.4]), cannot function on their own in the grammar. [3.4] What we have done to the words in [3.4] can be done to thousands of other words in English. They can be decomposed into smaller units of meaning (e.g. re- 'again' ) or grammatical function (e.g. -ed 'past' ). The term MORPHEME is used to refer to the smallest unit that has meaning or serves a grammatical function in a language. Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built. It is not possible to find sub-morphemic units that are themselves meaningful or have a grammatical function. Thus, given -less or un-, it would make no sense to try to segment them into smaller meanings to any part of them. Of course, it is possible to isolate the individual sounds /l-ɪ-s/ or /ʌ-n/, but those sounds in themselves do not mean anything. We have now established that words are made up of morphemes. But how do we recognise a morpheme when we see one? Our definition of the morpheme as the smallest unit of meaning (or grammatical function) will be the guiding principle. Any chunk of a word with a particular meaning will be said to represent a morpheme. That is how we proceeded in [3.3] and [3.4] above. Morphemes tend to have a fairly stable meaning which they bring to any word in which they appear. If we take re- and un-, for example, they mean 'again' and 'not' respectively—not just in the words we have listed above, but also in thousands of other words. Usually morphemes are used again and again to form different words. Thus re- meaning 're-do' whatever the verb means' can be attached before most verbs to yield a new word with a predictable meaning (e.g. re-run, re-take, re-build etc.). In like manner, un- meaning 'not X' (where X stands for whatever the adjective means) can be attached to various adjectives (e.g. un-real, un-clean, un-happy etc.) to yield a new word with a predictable negative meaning. 22 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND word knows that these four morphemes must appear in the order in [3.5a]. Any other order is strictly forbidden: [3.5] a. un-govern-abil-ity b. un-govern-un-ity c. ity-un-abil-govern d. abil-un-ity-govern e. un-govern-ity-abil etc. Clearly, knowing a word means not just knowing the morphemes it contains, but also the rigid order in which they are allowed to appear. We will return to this point in section (4.4). To sum up the discussion so far, words are built using morphemes. If we know how morphemes are used to form words, we do not need to be unduly flustered when we come across a strange word. Usually it is possible to work out the meaning of a strange word if it contains familiar morphemes. 3.3 MORPHEMES AND THEIR DISGUISES The identification of morphemes is not altogether straightforward. That is because there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between morphemes and the speech sounds that represent them. In this section we will attempt to unravel the complexities of the relationship between morphemes and the actual forms (sounds of groups of sounds) by which they are manifested in speech. 3.3.1 Allomorphs: morph families Any physical form that represents a morpheme is called a MORPH. The forms -ish, -less, -er, -ed, -s, re-, un- and ex- in [3.4] on p. 31 are all morphs. Morphological analysis begins with the identification of morphs, i.e. forms that carry some meaning or are associated with some grammatical function. In asparagus there is just one morph but in all the words in [3.4] there are two. It is important not to confuse morphs with SYLLABLES. When we talk of morphs we have in mind sounds that can be related to a particular meaning or grammatical function (e.g. plural or past tense). However, when we talk of syllables all we have in mind are chunks into which words can be divided for the purposes of pronunciation. This is not an abstruse distinction. We are not being pedantic. It is a distinction that matters to ordinary people because human languages are organised in such a way that the construction of units that are meaningful is normally in principle separate from the construction of strings that are pronounceable. Thus, for rhythmical effect, nursery rhymes often use nonsense syllables like 'Deedle, deedle' in 'Deedle deedle dumpling my son John' which do not represent anything meaningful. Alternatively, a sound representing a morpheme may not be a syllable in its own right, e.g. by itself, the -s which represents the plural morpheme is not a syllable. The word cats has two morphemes, cat and -s, but it is all just one syllable. The single syllable cats realises two morphemes. The converse situation, where Chapter 3 Close encounters of a morphemic kind 3.1 THE QUEST FOR VERBAL ATOMS We saw in the last chapter that the word is the smallest meaningful unit of language that can function independently in the grammar. A word can be used on its own, without appending it to some other unit. Thus, in the word childish we can isolate child and use it on its own because it is a word in its own right. But we cannot use -ish as a stand-alone unit, for -ish is not a word. While recognising that words are the smallest meaningful units which function independently in the grammar, we also need to recognise that words can be decomposed into smaller units that are also meaningful. Our task in this chapter is to explore the internal structure of words in order to gain some understanding of the basic units which are used to form words. 3.2 CLOSE MORPHOLOGICAL ENCOUNTERS: ZOOMING IN ON MORPHEMES Originally ‘morphology’ meant the study of biological forms. But nineteenth-century students of language borrowed the term and applied it to the study of word-structure. In linguistics MORPHOLOGY is the study of the formation and internal organisation of words. Let us begin our morphological analysis by considering half a dozen words (not altogether randomly chosen): [3.1] hope soon mend boil safe leaf word elephant Obviously all the words in [3.1] have a meaning, but lack internal structure. We cannot identify any smaller units that are themselves meaningful which occur inside them. If a Martian stopped you in a street near the local zoo and enquired what phant in elephant or ho in hope means, you would think she was asking a most bizarre question that did not merit an answer. Or you might condescendingly explain that, of course, in each case the whole word means something, but its parts cannot be said to mean anything on their own. Though somewhat puzzled, the Martian might accept your explanation. But, being the persistent type, let us suppose she enquired further whether the words in [3.2] were also indivisible into smaller meaningful units: 18 WHAT IS A WORD? EXERCISES 1. Comment on the problems you encounter in determining the number of words in the following nursery rhyme. Relate your answer to the different senses in which the term 'word' is used. The grand old Duke of York He had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill, Then he marched them down again. When they were up, they were up, And when they were down, they were down, And when they were only half way up They were neither up nor down. 2. Find and analyse at least three examples of advertisements that exploit the homonymy, polysemy or homophony of words. 3. Which ones of the italicised word-forms in the following sentences belong to the same lexeme? What difficulties, if any, have you come across in determining whether word-forms belong to the same lexeme? a. She saw him saw through that plank of wood. b. Bill will pay the bill. c. I saw Farmer near your farm again this morning. d. Jan looked pale when she walked towards the pail. e. I am sick of your claiming to be sick all the time. f. I was looking at the book when she booked the ticket. 4. Using at least two fresh examples, show how syncretism can be used to support the distinction between word-forms and grammatical words. 5. This is the beginning of W.H. Auden's poem 'Musée des Beaux Arts'. About suffering they were never wrong. The Old Masters... These lines can be paraphrased as 'The Old Masters were never wrong about suffering.' Referring to the definition of the word given in this chapter, explain why it is correct to regard suffering as a word but incorrect to treat suffering also as a word. ENGLISH WORDS 15 It could be a bat with which you play cricket or a small, flying mammal. This is a case of LEXICAL AMBIGUITY. We have in this sentence a word-form that represents more than one lexeme with a meaning that is quite plausible. It is not possible to determine the right interpretation of the sentence without looking at the wider context in which it appers. We have established that the relationship between a word-form and the meaning that it represents is a complex one. This is exploited not only in literature and word-play as we saw above but also in the language of advertising. For instance, a recent British Gas newspaper advertisement for gas heating said: [2.15] You will warm to our credit. It's free. This advertisement exploits the lexical ambiguity that is due to the fact that warm (to) can mean 'become enthusiastic' or 'experience a rise in temperature'. Next time you look at an advertisement, see whether it exploits any of the relationships between lexemes and word-forms that we have examined. 2.2.3 Grammatical words Finally, let us consider the word from a grammatical perspective. Words play a key role in syntax. So, some of their properties are assigned taking into account syntactic factors. Often words are required to have certain properties if they serve certain syntactic purposes. Thus, although in [2.16a] we have the same sense of the same lexeme (play) realised by the same word-form (played), we know that this word does at least two quite different grammatical jobs in the sentence of which it is a part: [2.16] a. She played the flute. b. She has played the flute. If you compare the sentences in [2.16] above, you will see that in [2.16a] the verb play is realised by the word-form played regardless of whether it simply indicates that the action happened in the past as in the first example or that an action was (recently) completed as in the second example. Contrast this with the situation in [2.16b] where these two grammatical meanings are signalled by two different forms. Took indicates that the action happened in the past while taken (after has/had) indicates that the action is complete. In She played the flute and She took the flute the words played and took are described grammatically as the 'past tense forms of the verb play and take'. By contrast, in She has played the flute and She has taken the flute we describe played and taken as the 'past participle' of play and take. Linguists use the term SYNCRETISM to describe situations such as that exemplified by played where the same word-form of a lexeme is used to realise two (or more) distinct grammatical words that are represented separately in the grammatical representations of words belonging to some other comparable lexemes. The phenomenon of syncretism is one good reason for distinguishing between word-forms and grammatical words. It enables us to show that words belonging to the same lexeme and enjoying the same form in speech and writing can still differ. A further example should make the ideas of grammatical words and syncretism even clearer. Consider the verbs in the following sentences: 16 WHAT IS A WORD? [2.17] a. You hit me. (= you hit me some time in the past) | or (= you hit me habitually) b. You cut it. (= you cut it some time in the past) or (= you cut it habitually) As the paraphrases show, the word-form hit belonging to the lexeme hit can represent either the present tense or the past tense form of the verb. In other words, there is syncretism. We have two different grammatical words hit [verb, +present] and hit [verb, +past] but a single word-form. The same analysis also applies to cut. It can represent either the present or past tense of the verb cut. Syncretism is not limited to verbs. It can apply to other word classes (e.g. nouns) as well: [2.18] |(a) The wolf killed a sheep and one deer. |(b) The wolf killed two sheep and three deer. In these two sentences, although the word-form sheep belongs to the same lexeme and is unchanged in form, we know that its grammatical value is not the same. In [2.18a] it realises the word with the grammatical properties of noun and singular, but in [2.18b] it represents a plural form. Likewise, the same word-form deer represents a singular noun in [2.18a] and a plural noun in [2.18b]. What can we say about the word as an entity that functions as a grammatical unit in the syntax of a language? As mentioned already, the (grammatical) word is normally defined as the MINIMAL FREE FORM that is used in the grammar of a language. Let us now put some flesh on this terse and somewhat cryptic statement. By free form we mean an entity that can stand on its own and act as a free agent; it is an element whose position in a sentence is not totally dictated by other items. In order to explain what ‘freedom’ means in this context, we need to take on board two ancillary ideas: POSITIONAL MOBILITY AND STABILITY. Although words are not the smallest grammatical units used to construct sentences (see the discussion of morphemes in the next chapter), at the level of sentence organisation the rules of sentence formation treat words as unanalysable units. Often it is possible to change the order in which words appear in a sentence and still produce a well-formed sentence. Words enjoy considerable positional mobility. However, the elements inside a word do not enjoy such mobility. While syntactic rules can transport words to new places in a sentence, they cannot shift in the same way elements that are found inside words. Moving words around in the following produces grammatical sentences with basically the same meaning, but with somewhat different emphasis: [2.19] a. This old industrialist revisited Lancaster, fortunately. b. Fortunately, this old industrialist revisited Lancaster. c. Lancaster, this old industrialist revisited, fortunately. d. Fortunately, Lancaster was revisited by this old industrialist.  12 WHAT IS A WORD? hyphenated word-form street-lamp occurs three times. So if we were counting different word-forms, we would count street-lamp three times. However, if we were counting distinct words, in the sense of distinct VOCABULARY ITEMS we would only count it once. The distinction between word-forms and vocabulary items is important. Very often, when we talk about words what we have in mind is not word-forms, but something more abstract—what we will refer to here as LEXEMES (i.e. vocabulary items). Anyone compiling a dictionary lists words in this sense. So, although the word-forms in each of the columns in [2.8] below are different, we do not find each one of them given a separate entry in an English dictionary. The first word in each column is listed under a heading of its own. The rest may be mentioned under that heading, if they do not follow a regular pattern of the language, e.g. write, written (past participle), wrote (past tense). But if they do follow the general pattern (e.g. washed, washing, washed; smile, smiling, smiled) they will be left out of the dictionary altogether. Instead, the grammar will be expected to provide a general statement to the effect that verbs take an -ing suffix, which marks progressive aspect, and an -ed suffix that marks both the past tense and the past participle, and so on. [2.8] WASH TAKE BRING WRITE wash take bring write washes takes brings writes washing taking bringing writing washed took brought wrote washed taken brought written In [2.8] each lexeme (i.e. vocabulary item) that would be entered in a dictionary is shown in capital letters and all the different word-forms belonging to it are shown in lower-case letters. The examples in [2.8] are all verbs. But, of course, lexemes can be nouns, adjectives or adverbs as well. In [2.9] you will find examples from these other word classes. [2.9] Noun Adjective Adverb a . MATCH KIND SOON match kind soon matches kinder sooner b . GOOSE BAD WELL goose bad well geese worse better In [2.9] we have three pairs of lexemes: the nouns, match and goose; the adjectives kind and bad; and adverbs soon and well. In each case the word-forms belonging to each lexeme in [2.9a] follow a general pattern for words of their type and need not be listed in the grammar. But all the ones in [2.9b] are irregular and must be listed in the dictionary. The lexeme is an abstract entity that is found in the dictionary and that has a certain meaning. Word-forms are the concrete objects that we put down on paper (orthographic words) or utter (phonological words) when we use language. The relationship between a lexeme and the word-forms belonging to it is one ENGLISH WORDS 17 Evidently, the position of words in a sentence is not rigidly fixed. They can, and often do, get moved around if the communicative needs of the speaker or writer require it. However, the interior of a word is a no-go area for syntactic rules. They are strictly barred from manipulating elements found inside a word. As far as syntax is concerned, words are indivisible units that cannot be split and whose internal units are inaccessible (cf. Bauer 1988, Matthews 1991, Lyons 1968, Di Sciullo and Williams 1987). The word as a grammatical unit shows stability (or INTERNAL COHESION). The order of elements inside a word is rigidly fixed. If the elements of a sentence are shifted, certain meaningful units (in this case re-visit-ed and fortun-ate-ly) all move en bloc, and their order always remains unchanged. The internal structure of the word cannot be tampered with. We are not allowed to perform operations that would yield words like ed-visit-re, *ate-fortune-ly* etc. We will return to this point on p. 33 below. The definition of the word includes the term 'minimal' for a good reason. This is intended to separate words from phrases like this old industrialist. Like words, phrases can occur in isolation and they can be moved from one position to another (as we have seen in [2.19]). But the expression this old industrialist is not a minimal form since it contains smaller forms capable of occurring independently namely, this, old and industrialist. Furthermore, the sequence this old industrialist does not have the kind of internal cohesion found in words. It can be interrupted by other words e.g. this wealthy old industrialist; this very wealthy, old, benevolent industrialist. The assumption that the grammatical word is 'a minimum free form' works well as a rule of thumb. But it encounters difficulties when confronted by a COMPOUND WORD like wheelbarrow which contains the words wheel and barrow which can stand alone. In such cases it is clear that the word is not the smallest meaningful unit that can be used on its own. It is for this reason that the definition of the word as the unit on which purely syntactic operations can be performed is preferable. In the case of compounds this definition works. The interior of a compound is a syntactic no-go area. Syntactic rules are not allowed to apply separately to words that make up a compound. Thus, for example although the nouns wheel and barrow can be modified by the adjective big ([big wheel], [big wheel]), and although we can talk of [big wheelbarrow], in which case big modifies the entire compound, there is no possibility of saying wheel [big barrow], with the adjective only modifying the second element of the compound word. 2.3 SUMMARY In this chapter we have established that normally, the term 'word' is used ambiguously. To avoid the ambiguity, we need to distinguish between three different types of word: (i) a word-form (i.e. a particular physical manifestation of one or more lexemes in speech or writing); (ii) a vocabulary item (i.e. lexeme); and (iii) a unit of grammatical structure that has certain morphological and syntactic properties. We will revisit the distinction between lexemes, grammatical words and word-forms mainly in Chapters 7 and 11. In Chapter 7 our main concern will be the realisation of words in speech and in writing. In Chapter 11 we will show that this distinction is not an artefact of the linguist's analysis. Rather, it is a distinction that is well supported by studies in the way in which we store words in the mind and retrieve them for use in communication in real life. In the coming chapter, in cases where the relevant sense of the term 'word' is clear from the context I will not spell out whether it is the word as a vocabulary item, grammatical word, phonological or orthographic form that is being dealt with. But where it is not clear, I will indicate the sense in which I am using this term. We are now in a position to consider in detail the internal structure of words. That is the task of the next chapter. 14 WHAT IS A WORD? c. fair; fair (Adjective) 'beautiful, attractive' fair (Noun) 'holiday' By contrast, word-forms may have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings. Such forms are called HOMOPHONES. See this example from a joke book: [2.12] Why does the pony cough? Because he's a little hoarse. (Young and Young 1981:57) The joke is a pun on /hɔːs/, the pronunciation of the two lexemes represented in writing by horse and hoarse. Other examples of homophones include tail ~ tale, sail ~ sale, weather ~ whether, see ~ sea, read ~ reed, reel ~ real, seen ~ scene, need ~ knead. Conversely, it is also possible to have several closely related meanings that are realised by the same word-form. The name for this is POLYSEMY. Often you find several senses listed under a single heading in a dictionary. For instance, under the entry for the noun force, the OED lists over ten senses. I have reproduced the first six below: [2.13] 1. Physical strength. Rarely in pl. (= Fr. forces—1818.) 2. Strength, impetus, violence, or intensity of effect ME. 3. Power or might; esp. military power ME. b. In early use, the strength (of a defensive work etc.). Subseq., the fighting strength of a ship. 1577. 4. A body of armed men, an army. In pl. the troops or soldiers composing the fighting strength of a kingdom or a commander ME. b. A body of police; often absol. the force=policemen collectively. 1851. 5. Physical strength or power exerted on an object; esp. violence or physical coercion. ME. 6. Mental, or moral strength. Now only, power of effective action, or of overcoming resistance. ME. The line that separates polysemy from homonymy is somewhat blurred because it is not altogether clear how far meanings need to diverge before we should treat words representing them as belonging to distinct lexemes. In [2.13], it is not entirely clear that the sixth sense of the noun force is not sufficiently removed from the other meanings to merit an entry of its own. The other meanings all show a reasonably strong family resemblance. But mental or moral strength shows a somewhat weaker relationship. In the OED, there is a separate entry for the lexeme force, the verb. It is a dictionary that matters to ordinary people because it has a different meaning and belongs to a different word-class, being a verb and not a noun. Belonging to different word-classes is an important consideration in determining whether separate dictionary entries are needed. In real-life communication, the lack of a one-to-one match between lexemes and word-forms does not necessarily cause ambiguity. In context, the relevant meaning is normally easy to determine. But there are cases where it is not. For instance, the homonymy of bat in [2.14] can cause semantic confusion: [2.14] I saw a bat under the tree. ENGLISH WORDS 13 [2.10] of REALISATION or REPRESENTATION or MANIFESTATION. If we take the lexeme write which is entered in the dictionary, for example, we can see that it may be realised by any one of the word-forms write, writes, writing, wrote and written which belong to it. These are the actual forms that are used in speech or appear on paper. When you see the orthographic words written and wrote on the page, you know that although they are spelt differently they are manifestations of the same vocabulary item WRITE. The distinction between word-forms and lexemes which I have just made is not abstruse. It is a distinction that we are intuitively aware of from an early age. It is the distinction on which word-play in puns and in intentional ambiguity in everyday life depends. At a certain period in our childhood we were fascinated by words. We loved jokes—even awful ones like [2.10] The humour, of course, lies in recognising that the word-form shrimp can belong to two separate lexemes whose very different and unrelated meanings are none the less pertinent here. It can mean either 'an edible, long, slender crustacean' or 'a tiny person' (in colloquial English). Also, the word serve has two possible interpretations. It can mean 'to wait upon a person at table' or 'to dish up food'. Thus, word-play exploits the lexical ambiguity arising from the fact that the same word-form represents two distinct lexemes with very distinct meanings. In real life communication, where potential ambiguity occurs we generally manage to come to just one interpretation without too much difficulty by selecting the most appropriate and RELEVANT interpretation in the situation. Suppose a 20-stone super heavyweight boxer went to Joe's Vegetarian Restaurant and asked the waiter for a nice shrimp curry and the waiter said in reply, 'We don't serve shrimps', it would be obvious that it was shrimps in the sense of crustaceans that was intended. If, on the other hand, a little man, barely 5 feet tall and weighing a mere 7 stone, went to a fish restaurant and saw almost everyone at the tables around him tucking into a plateful of succulent shrimps, and thought that he would quite fancy some himself, he would be rightly offended if the waiter said 'We do not serve shrimps.' It is obvious in this situation that shrimps are on the menu and are dished up for consumption. What is not done is serve up food to people deemed to be puny. Puns are not restricted to jokes. Many advertisements like that for Standens rely on puns for their effect. Given the context, it is obvious that sound is meant to be read in more than one sense here. Serious literature also uses this device. For instance, the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon gives the title Base details to the poem in which he parodies cowardly generals who stay away at the battle, at a safe distance from the action, and gladly speed young soldiers to their death at the front. The word-form base in the title represents two distinct lexemes here whose meanings are both relevant: (i) Base details are details of what is happening at the base (Noun) (meaning 'military encampment'), and (ii) Base details are particulars of something that is base (Adjective) (meaning 'reprehensibly cowardly, mean etc.'). The term HOMONYM is used to denote word-forms belonging to distinct laxemes that are written and pronounced in the same way. There are separate dictionary entries for such words. Shrimp and base are examples of homonyms. But perhaps they are not so obvious. Better examples of homonyms are shown in [2.11]. [2.11] a. bat (Noun) 'a small flying mammal' bat (Noun) 'a wooden implement for hitting a ball in cricket' b. bar (Noun) 'the profession of barrister' ENGLISH WORDS 13 [2.10] of REALISATION or REPRESENTATION or MANIFESTATION. If we take the lexeme write which is entered in the dictionary, for example, we can see that it may be realised by any one of the word-forms write, writes, writing, wrote and written which belong to it. These are the actual forms that are used in speech or appear on paper. When you see the orthographic words written and wrote on the page, you know that although they are spelt differently they are manifestations of the same vocabulary item WRITE. The distinction between word-forms and lexemes which I have just made is not abstruse. It is a distinction that we are intuitively aware of from an early age. It is the distinction on which word-play in puns and in intentional ambiguity in everyday life depends. At a certain period in our childhood we were fascinated by words. We loved jokes—even awful ones like [2.10] The humour, of course, lies in recognising that the word-form shrimp can belong to two separate lexemes whose very different and unrelated meanings are none the less pertinent here. It can mean either 'an edible, long, slender crustacean' or 'a tiny person' (in colloquial English). Also, the word serve has two possible interpretations. It can mean 'to wait upon a person at table' or 'to dish up food'. Thus, word-play exploits the lexical ambiguity arising from the fact that the same word-form represents two distinct lexemes with very distinct meanings. In real life communication, where potential ambiguity occurs we generally manage to come to just one interpretation without too much difficulty by selecting the most appropriate and RELEVANT interpretation in the situation. Suppose a 20-stone super heavyweight boxer went to Joe's Vegetarian Restaurant and asked the waiter for a nice shrimp curry and the waiter said in reply, 'We don't serve shrimps', it would be obvious that it was shrimps in the sense of crustaceans that was intended. If, on the other hand, a little man, barely 5 feet tall and weighing a mere 7 stone, went to a fish restaurant and saw almost everyone at the tables around him tucking into a plateful of succulent shrimps, and thought that he would quite fancy some himself, he would be rightly offended if the waiter said 'We do not serve shrimps.' It is obvious in this situation that shrimps are on the menu and are dished up for consumption. What is not done is serve up food to people deemed to be puny. Puns are not restricted to jokes. Many advertisements like that for Standens rely on puns for their effect. Given the context, it is obvious that sound is meant to be read in more than one sense here. Serious literature also uses this device. For instance, the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon gives the title Base details to the poem in which he parodies cowardly generals who stay away at the battle, at a safe distance from the action, and gladly speed young soldiers to their death at the front. The word-form base in the title represents two distinct lexemes here whose meanings are both relevant: (i) Base details are details of what is happening at the base (Noun) (meaning 'military encampment'), and (ii) Base details are particulars of something that is base (Adjective) (meaning 'reprehensibly cowardly, mean etc.'). The term HOMONYM is used to denote word-forms belonging to distinct laxemes that are written and pronounced in the same way. There are separate dictionary entries for such words. Shrimp and base are examples of homonyms. But perhaps they are not so obvious. Better examples of homonyms are shown in [2.11]. [2.11] a. bat (Noun) 'a small flying mammal' bat (Noun) 'a wooden implement for hitting a ball in cricket' b. bar (Noun) 'the profession of barrister' bar (Noun) 'a vertical line across a stave used to mark metrical accent in music' bar (Verb) 'to obstruct'' 12 WHAT IS A WORD? hyphenated word-form street-lamp occurs three times. So if we were counting different word-forms, we would count street-lamp three times. However, if we were counting distinct words, in the sense of distinct VOCABULARY ITEMS we would only count it once. The distinction between word-forms and vocabulary items is important. Very often, when we talk about words what we have in mind is not word-forms, but something more abstract—what we will refer to here as LEXEMES (i.e. vocabulary items). Anyone compiling a dictionary lists words in this sense. So, although the word-forms in each of the columns in [2.8] below are different, we do not find each one of them given a separate entry in an English dictionary. The first word in each column is listed under a heading of its own. The rest may be mentioned under that heading, if they do not follow a regular pattern of the language, e.g. write, written (past participle), wrote (past tense). But if they do follow the general pattern (e.g. washed, washing, washed; smile, smiling, smiled) they will be left out of the dictionary altogether. Instead, the grammar will be expected to provide a general statement to the effect that verbs take an -ing suffix, which marks progressive aspect, and an -ed suffix that marks both the past tense and the past participle, and so on. [2.8] WASH TAKE BRING WRITE wash take bring write washes takes brings writes washing taking bringing writing washed took brought wrote washed taken brought written In [2.8] each lexeme (i.e. vocabulary item) that would be entered in a dictionary is shown in capital letters and all the different word-forms belonging to it are shown in lower-case letters. The examples in [2.8] are all verbs. But, of course, lexemes can be nouns, adjectives or adverbs as well. In [2.9] you will find examples from these other word classes. [2.9] Noun Adjective Adverb a . MATCH KIND SOON match kind soon matches kinder sooner b . GOOSE BAD WELL goose bad well geese worse better In [2.9] we have three pairs of lexemes: the nouns, match and goose; the adjectives kind and bad; and adverbs soon and well. In each case the word-forms belonging to each lexeme in [2.9a] follow a general pattern for words of their type and need not be listed in the grammar. But all the ones in [2.9b] are irregular and must be listed in the dictionary. The lexeme is an abstract entity that is found in the dictionary and that has a certain meaning. Word-forms are the concrete objects that we put down on paper (orthographic words) or utter (phonological words) when we use language. The relationship between a lexeme and the word-forms belonging to it is one