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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: The Language Library
- Sprache: Englisch
English Words is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of English words from a theoretically informed linguistic perspective.
- accessibly written to give students a command of basic theory, skills in analyzing English words, and the foundation needed for more advanced study in linguistic theory or lexicology
- covers basic introductory material and investigates the structure of English vocabulary
- introduces students to the technical study of words from relevant areas of linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics and psycholinguistics
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Seitenzahl: 537
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Table of Contents
Cover
THE LANGUAGE LIBRARY
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
IPA Transcription Key
1 What Is a Word?
1.1 Explaining
Word
in Words
1.2 Language Is a Secret Decoder Ring
1.3 Wordhood: The Whole Kit and Caboodle
1.4 Two Kinds of Words
1.5 The Anatomy of a Listeme
1.6 What
Don’t
You Have to Learn When You’re Learning a Word?
1.7 A Scientific Approach to Language
Appendix: Basic Grammatical Terms
Study Problems
Further Reading
2 Sound and Fury: English Phonology
2.1 English Spelling and English Pronunciation
2.1 English Spelling and English Pronunciation
2.3 The Building Blocks of Words I: Consonants in the IPA
2.4 Building Blocks II: Vowels and the IPA
2.5 Families of Sounds and Grimm’s Law: A Case in Point
Study Problems
Further Reading
3 Phonological Words: Calling All Scrabble Players!
3.1 Guessing at Words: The Scrabble Problem
3.2 Building Blocks III: The Syllable
3.3 Phonotactic Restrictions on English Syllables
3.4 From a Stream of Sound into Words: Speech Perception
3.5 Syllables, Rhythm, and Stress
3.6 Using Stress to Parse the Speech Stream into Words
3.7 Misparsing the Speech Stream, Mondegreens, and Allophones
3.8 Allophony
3.9 What We Know about Phonological Words
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
4 Where Do Words Come From?
4.1 Getting New Listemes
4.2 When Do We Have a New Word?
4.3 New Words by “Mistake”: Back-Formations and Folk Etymologies
4.4 New Words by Economizing: Clippings
4.5
Extreme
Economizing: Acronyms and Abbreviations
4.6 Building New Words by Putting Listemes Together: Affixation and Compounding
4.7 Compounding Clips and Mixing It up: Blends
4.8 New Listemes via Meaning Change
4.9 But Are These Words Really
New
?
4.10 What Makes a New Word Stick?
Study Problems
Further Reading
5 Pre- and Suf-fix-es: Engl-ish Morph-o-log-y
5.1 Listemes
5.2 Making up Words
5.3 Affixal Syntax: Who’s My Neighbor? Part I
5.4 Affixal Phonology: Who’s My Neighbor? Part II
5.5 Allomorphy
5.6 Closed-Class and Open-Class Morphemes: Reprise
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
6 Morphological Idiosyncrasies
6.1 Different Listemes, Same Meaning: Irregular Suffixes
6.2 Root Irregulars
6.3 Linguistic Paleontology: Fossils of Older Forms
6.4 Why Some but Not Others?
6.5 How Do Kids Figure It Out?
6.6 Representing Complex Suffixal Restrictions
6.7 Keeping Irregulars: Semantic Clues to Morphological Classes
6.8 Really Irregular: Suppletive Forms
6.9 Losing Irregulars: Producing Words on the Fly
6.10 Productivity, Blocking, and Bushisms
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
7 Lexical Semantics: The Structure of Meaning, the Meaning of Structure
7.1 Function Meaning vs. Content Meaning
7.2 Entailment
7.3 Function Words and their Meanings
7.4 Content Words and their Meanings
7.5 Relationships and Argument Structure: Meaning and Grammar
7.6 Argument Structure
7.7 Derivational Morphology and Argument Structure
7.8 Subtleties of Argument Structure
7.9 Function vs. Content Meanings: The Showdown
7.10 How Do We
Learn
All That?
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
8 Children Learning Words
8.1 How Do Children Learn the Meanings of Words?
8.2 Learning Words for Middle-Sized Observables
8.3 When the Basics Fail
8.4 Morphological and Syntactic Clues
8.5 Learning Words for Non-Observables
8.6 Syntactic Frames, Semantic Roles, and Event Structure
8.7 Agent–Patient Protoroles
8.8 Functional Listemes Interacting with Content Listemes
8.9 Simple Co-Occurrence? Or Actual Composition?
8.10 Yes, but Where Do the Words Come from in the First Place?
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
9 Accidents of History: English in Flux
9.1 Linguistic Change, and Lots of It
9.2 Layers of Vocabulary and Accidents of History
9.3 A Brief History of England, as Relevant to the English Vocabulary
9.4 55
BC
to 600
AD
: How the English Came to England
9.5 600–900
AD
: The English and the Vikings
9.6 1066–1200: Norman Rule
9.7 1200–1450: Anglicization of the Normans
9.8 1450–1600: The English Renaissance
9.9 1600–1750: Restoration, Expansion
9.10 1750–Modern Day
9.11 The Rise of Prescriptivism: How to Really Speak Good
9.12 English Orthography: The Latin Alphabet, the Quill Pen, the Printing Press, and the Great Vowel Shift
9.13 Summary
Study Problems
Further Reading
Notes
Glossary
Works Consulted
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
2 Sound and Fury: English Phonology
Table 2.1 Fricative consonants of English
Table 2.2 Stop consonants of English
Table 2.3 Nasal stops of English
Table 2.4 Affricate consonants of English
Table 2.5 Liquids and glides of English
Table 2.6 Front vowels of American English
Table 2.7 Back vowels of American English
Table 2.8 Central vowels of American English
Table 2.9 Mid and low vowels before “r”
9 Accidents of History: English in Flux
Table 9.1 Symbol–sound relationship in OE
Table 9.2 History of England, 443–1755
List of Illustrations
1 What Is a Word?
Figure 1.1 Communicating using language
2 Sound and Fury: English Phonology
Figure 2.1 Larynx and vocal cords, top view
Figure 2.2 The vocal tract
Figure 2.3 (a) Tongue position for the front vowels of American English; (b) Tongue position for the back vowels of American English
Figure 2.4 A general representation of the spread of some of the western Indo-European language families through Europe as they differentiated from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Many language families are omitted.
3 Phonological Words: Calling All Scrabble Players!
Figure 3.1 Calvin and Hobbes. © 1990 Watterson. Dist. By Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved
Figure 3.2 Word-like ratings for strings of English sounds
Figure 3.3 The Substring Rule
Figure 3.4 Two-consonant coda clusters of American English
Figure 3.5 Foot types in the 1,000 most common English words
6 Morphological Idiosyncrasies
Figure 6.1 Frequency of stems that can take irregular -
t
in the past tense
7 Lexical Semantics: The Structure of Meaning, the Meaning of Structure
Figure 7.1 Entailment as the subset relationship
Figure 7.2 The web of concepts
Figure 7.3 The
is
relations from Figure 7.2
Figure 7.4 Some
eating
relationships
Figure 7.5 Verbing nouns in
Bizarro
. © Dan Piraro. King Features Syndicate.
8 Children Learning Words
Figure 8.1 Range of variation in normal toddler vocabulary acquisition, by age
9 Accidents of History: English in Flux
Figure 9.1 The effect of the Great Vowel Shift on vowel height in Middle English
Figure 9.2 A close-up of the Ellesmere Chaucer. “Heere bigynneth the freres table / Whilom ther was dwellynge in my contree / an erchedecen a man of heigh degree / that boldely dide execucion / in punyshynge of fornication.” Notice the minims in “bigynneth,” “in,” “man,” “punyshynge,” and “fornicacion.” Special Collections, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
L
ibraries. The Ellesmere Chaucer
I
mage is from: The Ellesmere Chaucer: Reproduced in Facsimile. Manchester, England. The University Press, 1911. 2 Volumes.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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e1
THE LANGUAGE LIBRARY
Series editor: David Crystal
The Language Library was created in 1952 by Eric Partridge, the great etymologist and lexicographer, who from 1966 to 1976 was assisted by his co-editor Simeon Potter. Together they commissioned volumes on the traditional themes of language study, with particular emphasis on the history of the English language and on the individual linguistic styles of major English authors. In 1977 David Crystal took over as editor, and The Language Library now includes titles in many areas of linguistic enquiry.
The most recently published titles in the series include:
Ronald Carter and Walter Nash Seeing Through Language
Florian Coulmas The Writing Systems of the World
David Crystal A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Fifth Edition
J. A. Cuddon A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Fourth Edition
Viv Edwards Multilingualism in the English-speaking World
Geoffrey Hughes A History of English Words
Walter Nash Jargon
Roger Shuy Language Crimes
Gunnel Tottie An Introduction to American English
Ronald Wardhaugh Investigating Language
Ronald Wardhaugh Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings about Language
Heidi Harley English Words: A Linguistic Introduction
English Words
A Linguistic Introduction
Heidi Harley
© 2006 by Heidi Harley
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
The right of Heidi Harley to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
3 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harley, Heidi.
English words : a linguistic introduction / Heidi Harley.
p. cm. (The language library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-631-23031-1 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-0-631-23032-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language—Word formation.
2. English language—Morphology. 3. English language—Phonology. 4. English language—Semantics. I. Title. II. Series.
PE1175.H43 2006
425—dc22
2005028556
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12 1/2 pt Palatino
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in Singapore
by C.O.S. Printers Pte Ltd
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishing.com
This book is dedicated to my father, Peter Harley, who takes words seriously.
Preface
This textbook is intended as a thorough introduction to the study of English words from a linguistic perspective. It introduces students to the technical study of words in several areas: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition and historical linguistics, in that order. Some introductory material is covered in each section, to give students the theoretical tools they will need to proceed, and then those tools are employed to analyze the English vocabulary.
This book will be of interest to students who have a general interest in words – people whom Richard Lederer smilingly calls “verbivores.” They enjoy reading tidbits of word facts in language mavens’ columns, word games and etymologies, but have never taken a linguistics or structure of language course.
The text is designed to give students a command of the basic theory in each area, skill in analyzing and understanding English words, and the grounding needed for more advanced study in linguistics or lexicology. Ultimately, however, the aim is to provide students who will never take another linguistics-related course with a grasp of some of the basic methods and questions of the field, viewed through the window of words.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help of a great many people. It wouldn’t exist had Andrew Carnie not suggested that I submit a proposal for it, building on my lecture notes for the cross-listed Linguistics/English 322 course, “The Structure and Meaning of Words.” My students and colleagues at the University of Arizona provided invaluable feedback and expertise in many moments of uncertainty. I would especially like to thank Michael Hammond, Adam Ussishkin, Diane Ohala and Andrew Carnie for reading and commenting on portions of the manuscript. Several teaching assistants I have had over the years also provided feedback, including Bob Kennedy, Jason Haugen, Sarah Longstaff, Gwanhi Yun and Xu Xu. Thanks especially to Xu Xu for preparing the IPA transcription key. The three anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for Blackwell provided exhaustive comments that improved it considerably and also saved me from many mistakes; I am very grateful to them. The linguistics editors at Blackwell, first Tami Kaplan and then Sarah Coleman and Ada Brunstein, have exhibited a combination of patience, persistence and tact that both reassured and motivated a fairly skittish author. I also have very much appreciated Sarah’s and Margaret Aherne’s guidance and hard work throughout the publication process.
Last but far from least, both my parents, Carolyn and Peter Harley, read through the entire first draft manuscript and provided detailed comments that have helped me no end. My husband, Art Torrance, read through the manuscript not once, but twice, thinking through each analysis and transcription, paying sharp attention to every comma and apostrophe, and saving future students from a great deal of unnecessary confusion. He also has supported me throughout the process with encouragement, snacks and late-night cups of hot chocolate. I cannot express my gratitude to him and them enough.
Needless to say, the many flaws that doubtless remain are entirely my responsibility!
Heidi HarleyApril, 2005
IPA Transcription Key
Transcription of British English
As discussed briefly on page 41, there are many dialects of English with correspondingly many transcription systems. One of the most widely used and taught Englishes is the broadcasting standard of the United Kingdom, called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or RP for short.
In the text we use a transcription suited to American English, but for the benefit of readers who are interested in using the RP transcription system, the vowel symbols are presented in summary below (the consonants are essentially the same as those presented in the text). Also provided below are RP transcriptions corresponding to all the American English transcriptions in the text, organized by page number.
Most of the differences between the two transcriptions have to do with the different pronunciations of the two dialects, but a few differences are simply notational. For instance, rather than use the upside-down symbol /ɹ/ for the retroflex liquid, the more usual symbol /r/ is used. Similarly, rather than representing the affricates in ‘church’ and ‘judge’ with a ligature arc over the two symbols which make up their pronunciation, the RP custom is to print the two symbols closer to one another – that is, rather than // and //, the RP transcription uses /tʃ/ and /dʒ/.
RP vowel
Transcription
sea, feet, me, field
iː
him, big, village, women
ɪ
get, fetch, head, Thames
e
sat, hand, ban, plait
æ
sun, son, blood, does
ʌ
calm, are, father, car
ɑː
dog, lock, swan, cough
ɒ
all, saw, cord, more
ɔː
put, wolf, good, look
ʊ
soon, do, soup, shoe
uː
bird, her, turn, learn
ɜː
the, butter, sofa, about
ə
ape, waist, they, say
eɪ
time, cry, die, high
aɪ
boy, toy, noise, voice
ɔɪ
so, road, toe, know
əʊ
out, how, house, found
ɑʊ
deer, here, fierce, near
ɪə
care, air, bare, bear
eə
poor, sure, tour, lure
ʊə
RP transcriptions corresponding to American transcriptions in text, indexed by page number:
1 wɒt ɪz ə wɜːd
21 saʊnd ən ˈfjʊərɪ ˈɪŋglɪʃ fəˈnɒləʤɪ
33 ˈnʌtʃel, ˈtʃeləʊ
43 ˈteɪk, lɪt
44 ˈpəʊlɪʃ, ˈpɒlɪʃ
44 Exercise 2.7
ðə ˈbændɪʤ wəz wɑʊnd əˈrɑʊnd ðə wʊːnd
45 Exercise 2.7, continued
ðeɪ wə tuː kləʊs tə ðə dɔː tə kləʊz ɪt
ðə bʌk dʌz ˈfʌnɪ θɪŋz wən ðə dəʊz ɑː ˈprεzt
tə help wɪð ˈplɑːntɪŋ ðə ˈfɑːmə tɔːt ɪz sɑʊ tə səʊ
ðə wɪnd wəz tuː strɒŋ tə waɪnd ðə seɪl
ˈɑːftər ə ˈnʌmbə əv ɪnˈʤekʃz maɪ ʤɔː ɡɒt ˈnʌmə
əˈpɒn ˈsiːɪŋ ðə teər ɪn maɪ kləʊðz aɪ ∫ed ə tɪə
aɪ hæd tə səbˈʤekt ðə ˈsʌbʤɪkt tuː ə ˈsɪəriːz əv tests
51 – Study Problem 1
a. ˈpre∫əs, əˈbɪlɪtɪ, ˈwaɪəlɪs, ɪnˈtelɪʤəns, pəˈlaɪt, ˈkɑʊəd, saɪˈkɒləʤɪ, ɪnˈkredəbˈ, ˈnekləs
b. nʌm, kəmˈpjuːtə, ∫æmˈpeɪn, ˈnɒlɪʤ, æŋˈzaɪətɪ, ʤuːˈdɪ∫əs, ˈpɪkpɒkɪt, ˈsɪzəz, jʌŋ
c. ˈrɪstwɒt∫, waɪnd, fənˈɒləʤɪ, traʊt, ˈt∫ɪlɪŋ, bɪˈjɒnd, dɪˈleɪ, ˈdeɪlɪ, ˈθɑʊzd, fʌʤ
d. naɪf, ˌrepɪˈtɪ∫əs, ˈplaɪəz, raid, ˈæŋkə, ˈdɪfθɒŋ, krʌm, ˈpɑːθweɪ, ˌkɒmplɪˈmentrɪ, ˈeksəsaɪz
52 – Study Problem 3
lɪt bɪliːz fɪfθ ɡreɪd tiːt∫ə kɔːld ɪz fɑðə wʌn iːvnɪŋ. “aɪm sɒrɪ tə
tel juː ðɪs,” ∫iː sed, “bət bɪliː t∫iːtɪd ɒn ɪz kwɪz tədeɪ. hiː kɒpiːd
frɒm ðə ɡɜːl sɪtɪŋ nekst tə hɪm.”
“aɪ dəʊnt bəliːv ɪt,” ɪz fɑðə sed. “hɑʊ də jə neʊ ðə ɡɜːl dɪdt
kɒpɪ ðiː ænsəz ɒf əv bɪliːz test?”
“wel,” sed ðə tiːt∫ə, “bəʊθ sets əv ɑnsəz wɜː ðə seɪm ɔːl ðə weɪ
dɑʊn ðə peɪʤ, eksept fə ðə last wʌn. fɔː ðæt wʌn ∫ɪ reʊt aɪ
dəʊnt nəʊ, ən bɪliː rəʊt miː niːðə”
54 fəʊnəˈlɒʤɪk wɜːdz ˈkɔːlɪŋ ɔːl ˈskræbˈ ˈpleɪəz
60 hiː, strɪŋ, teksts
62 trʌk, drɒp
63, 64 ˈmeni
65 stɪk, traɪ
66 kɑʊ, laɪ
68 læmp, spæmd, dæmz, ruːʒd, bʌzd, ʤʌʤd
70 bɜːpt, bɜːps
71 duː, biː, səʊ
72 siː, aɪsiːðəˈdɒgiː, siːð, aɪs
73 ˈfɪŋɡə, ˈæŋɡə, ˈtɪŋɡlɪ, ˈɪŋɡlɪ∫,
74 aɪ wɪn ɡeɪmz, θɪn ˈɡruːəl, paɪn ɡrəʊsbiːk
77 ˈmʌðə, əˈpɪə
78 ʤɒn ɪz ˈærəɡənt, rəɡənt
79 bɪl ɪz ˈbaɪɪŋ ə ɡɪˈtɑː, tɑː
82 beɪelzəbʌbhæzədevɪlpʊtəsaɪdfəmiː, bɪl ɪz ˈbaɪɪŋ ə ɡɪˈtaː, kɪs ðə skaɪ, kɪs ðɪs ɡaɪ
87 liːf, kəˈlekt, ɪnˈheɪɫ, pəˈliːs, ˈfɪɫtə, səʊɫd, læp, ˈmɪɫkɪŋ, ˈletə
88 fiːw, ˈteɪbu
Exercise 4 is specifically about the pronunciation of American English, so no RP transcriptions are given.
90 weə duː wɜːdz kʌm frɒm
95 ɒləʤɪ
96 ɪˈlɪzəbəθ, eɪdz, sɑːz, diːəʊei
108 biːnə
111 priː ænd ˈsʌfɪksɪz ɪŋɡlɪ∫ mɔːˈfɒləʤɪ
112 kæt, kɪk ðə ˈbʌkɪt, əd
118 ən ˈæpl, ə letə tə ʤɒn, sɪks əv wʌn
119 iːləktr, tɒks, əmfæt
133 wæɡ, wæɡɪd, snɪft, ˈbɒksɪz, wæɡd, pæt, weɪdəd, weɪd
134 snɪft, kuːd, pleɪd, weɪvd
136 ɪn ɡriːn, ɪnɡlɪ∫, ɪn prɪnt, ˈɪmprɪnt
143 ˈlɪt
144 ˌmɔːfəˈlɒʤɪk ˌɪdiːəʊˈsɪŋkrəsiːz
148 ɪz
151 eɪ∫, keɪ∫, ɪŋ
152 əˈsɪst, əˈsɪstənt, əˈsɪstənts
154 et, iːt, dʌkt, ˈdjuːs
157 eɪʤd, eɪʤɪd
159 hɑʊs, ˈhɑʊzɪz, ˈfɑːðə, waɪvz, naɪvz, wʊlvz, kɑːvz
163 əˈfɪ∫, əˌfɪ∫əˈliːz, ˈtɒnsɪl, ˌtɒnsɪˈlaɪtɪs
164 ˈkɒmplɪmənt, ˌkɒmplɪˈmentrɪ, kəˈneɪdiən, ˈkænədə
169 ɪfaɪ, ˈsɒlɪd, səˈlɪdɪfaɪ
172 ˈkjuːdɒs
174 ɑː, wɜː, ɪz, biː, ɡʊd, ˈbetə, wel, bæd, wɜːs
179 ˈænəlaɪz, əˈnæləsɪs, ˈeɪn
180 ˈmæʤɪk, ˈekspɪdaɪt, ˈɑːtɪfɪs, ˈmælɪs, məˈʤɪ∫, ˈekspɪˈdɪ∫əs, ˈræ∫, ˌɑːtɪˈfɪ∫, məˈlɪ∫əs
185 ˈleksɪk sɪˈmæntɪks ðə ˈstrʌkt∫ər əv ˈmiːnɪŋ ðə ˈmiːnɪŋ əv ˈstrʌkt∫ə
193 ˈevrɪ, ðə
196 ðæt, ˈweðə
199 brɑʊn
218 ˈt∫ɪldrən ˈlɜːnɪŋ wɜːdz
222 ˈræbɪt, ɡævəɡaɪ
224 ˈræbɪt, mɑʊs
225 mɑʊs, ɡreɪ, ˈræbɪt, ˈrəʊdt, ɪə
226 ˈænɪməl, ɪə, fɜː, ˈpiːtə
227 ˈræbɪt, ˈpiːtə
228 ˈpiːtə, ˈræbɪt
229 təˈmɒrəʊ
232 fɪə
239 ˈæksɪdənts əv ˈhɪstriː ɪŋɡlɪ∫ ɪn flʌks
270 fiːt, feɪt, faɪt
271 iː aɪ uː
272 kiːn
273 kaɪt, reɪt, kɪt, ræt, ˈreɪtɪŋ, ˈrætɪŋ
276 ˈkænd, ˌ∫ændəˈlɪə, kæp, ˌ∫æpəˈreʊn, ˈkɑːs, ˈ∫ætəleɪn, t∫eə, ∫eɪz lɒŋ, ˈt∫erɪ, səˈriːz, t∫eɪn, ˈ∫iːnjɒn, kæt∫, t∫eɪs
1What Is a Word?
/ˈwʌt ɪz ə ˈwərd/
In this chapter, we look at the intuitive notion of what a word is and see that there are several perspectives on wordhood. A word has different properties depending on whether you’re looking at it phonologically, morphologically, syntactically or semantically. Essentially, we end up with two different notions of word: a listeme – a sound–meaning correspondence – and a phonological word, a sound unit on which the spacing conventions of written English are based. Finally, we distinguish between necessary and conventional aspects of wordhood.
1.1 Explaining Word in Words
Stop. Before reading any further, get out a sheet of paper and a pencil (or fire up a word processor, or just introspect), and try to compose a definition of the word word.
Exercise 1.1 Compose a definition of word.
Throughout this text, there will occasionally be exercises inserted in the middle of discussion. You should stop and try to answer them before reading on. Answers to the exercises are often given in the text immediately below; you’ll be able to compare the response you came up with to the discussion in the text, and think about any differences between the answer in the text and your own answer.
Here’s one possible first try:
Definition 1
word: a sequence of letters that we write consecutively, with no spaces.
How does that definition compare with your own? Yours is probably better. One thing that is obviously wrong with this one is that it depends crucially on the conventions of writing. Languages have words before they’re written down. Let’s try again, trying to eliminate the reference to writing:
Definition 2
word: a sequence of sounds that we pronounce consecutively, with no pauses.
Hang on a minute – when we’re talking, there’s not usually any pauses between words. (Try listening for a moment to someone talking. Is there a pause before and after every word? Where are the pauses?) We do know, though, that it is at least possible to put pauses between words when talking. Imagine you are speaking to someone for whom English is a second language, and who is hard of hearing besides. To give them the best chance of understanding you, you . . . would . . . probably . . . talk . . . rather . . . like . . . this, inserting big spaces between words. (People talk like this when dictating, as well.) You certainly wouldn’t insert spaces inside them. No one would say “y . . . ou . . . wou . . . ld . . . pro . . . b . . . abl . . . y . . .” etc. Maybe we can use the possibility of spaces in our definition:
Definition 3
word: a sequence of sounds which can be pronounced on its own, with pauses on either side.
Hang on again! A word is not just any old sequence of sounds that can be pronounced on its own. According to that definition, spimble or intafulation or pag are words, and so are raise your arm or how are you (you can pronounce them with space on either side, can’t you?). The former, however, are sequences of sounds that don’t have any meaning associated with them, and the latter are sequences of sounds that have too much meaning associated with them. Intuitively, the former are not words, and the latter are groups of words.
To help make the text clearer, when we’re discussing the linguistic properties of some word, the word will appear in italics. This indicates that the word is just being mentioned – that is, being discussed – rather than being actually used. This mention/use distinction is hard to keep track of when it’s not indicated by some distinguishing feature, such as italics.
It seems fairly clear that we have to include meaning in our definition. The sounds that make up, for instance, the word word have a certain meaning in combination that they don’t have by themselves, or when they appear in other words (like water or murder). So the w sound in word doesn’t mean anything by itself, nor does the -ord sequence, but together, they have a meaning, even if it’s a meaning that’s hard to pin down. So for our final try, let’s look at the relevant definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is listed as definition number 12a in their entry for the word word:
Definition 4 (final)
word: A combination of vocal sounds, or one such sound, used in a language to express an idea (e.g. to denote a thing, attribute, or relation), and constituting an ultimate minimal element of speech having a meaning as such; a vocable.
This is probably fairly close to the definition you came up with, albeit perhaps with a few extra elements. The crucial part that we didn’t have in our earlier versions is the bit about the “ultimate minimal unit of speech having a meaning as such.”
So consider our example word, word. The w doesn’t have a meaning by itself, nor does any other individual sound. The first three sounds, which we spell wor in the word word, do have a meaning of their own (spelled were, the past plural of the verb to be), but that meaning is not a part of the meaning of word – that is, the meaning of word does not include the meaning of were. Other subsets of the sound sequence (or, rd, ord) are similarly unrelated in meaning or meaningless. Word, then, is a minimal unit of speech having a meaning.
This definition works to eliminate our counterexamples above from consideration as possible “words.” Spimble, intafulation and pag are units of speech that don’t express any idea, and raise your arm and how are you are units of speech that have a meaning, but they aren’t minimal – their meaning is made up of the meanings of the smaller elements within them, each of which contributes its own meaning to the meaning of the whole expression in a consistent way. So although the meaning of were is not part of the meaning of word, the meaning of raise IS a part of the meaning of raise your arm.
Nonetheless, we’ll see that this definition of word does not correspond with the everyday sense of the word word in English.
Exercise 1.2 Can you figure out why this definition doesn’t match the usual meaning of “word” before reading Section 1.3? Try to think of English words or expressions which are counterexamples.
Before we do that, however, let’s look at basic design of language, in order to understand the central role that words play every day in the dance of communication.
1.2 Language Is a Secret Decoder Ring
Language lets us see into other people’s minds, and lets other people see into ours. If we speak the same language, then just by talking I can cause you to have an idea that I have had, or at least a close approximation of it. If we speak different languages, no amount of talking will let me share my idea with you. It’s as if learning a language is like getting a secret decoder ring that lets you encrypt thoughts and feelings and transmit them to someone with the same decoder ring. What’s especially great about this encryption device that we all carry around in our heads is that it’s more or less automatic. You don’t (usually) have to consciously identify and match up the symbols (the spoken words) to the ideas; it happens automatically, both on the sending end and the receiving end.
Consider the stick figures modeling the communication process in Figure 1.1. The skirted figure has an idea to communicate (panel 1). She encodes it into a linguistic form (panel 2) – ultimately, a string of instructions transmitted by her nerves to her vocal cords, lips, and tongue – and creates some sound waves (panel 3). The stick figure she’s talking to hears the sound waves (panel 3), translates them back into an abstract linguistic form (panel 4), and ultimately, back into the idea (panel 5).
Even though it doesn’t take very long to accomplish the encryption in step 2 and the decryption in step 4 of this process, it’s an incredibly complicated business. (This book is mostly about just one sub-part of what’s involved during this process, the part that has to do with words.)
Figure 1.1Communicating using language
The encryption system has two basic parts. The first part is a set of symbols which stand for concepts, like the English word dog is a symbol standing for the concept DOG. (Note that in French, the word chien stands for the concept DOG, in Spanish, perro stands for the concept DOG, and in Hiaki, a language spoken in southern Arizona and northern Mexico, the word chu’u is the symbol that stands for DOG.) These symbols are, of course, words. In spoken language, words are made up of sounds produced by the vocal cords, lips and tongue, but they don’t have to be: sign languages use certain handshapes and motions as the building blocks of words. Any symbol can behave like a word if it’s associated with an appropriate meaning.
You can get pretty far, communication-wise, with just words, even without the second part of the encryption system. Chimpanzees trained in sign language can do pretty well at communicating ideas about their likes and dislikes, needs and wants, and about things in the immediate environment, using unstructured clusters of words. The second part of the encryption system, though, is what makes it infinitely versatile. There’s a procedure for sticking symbols together to make up complex units that correspond to complex ideas: the meanings of the complex units derive from both the meanings of the symbols (part one) AND the rule used to combine them (part two). Crucially, these combining rules are recursive: they can construct complex units that contain other complex units of the same type (this is the cat that chased the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built). Because they are recursive, these rules can create infinitely long and complex sentences. The rules are called syntax. By combining meaningful symbols in a structured, hierarchical way, syntax allows us to communicate about our plans, our beliefs, our hopes and fears, and our procedure for replacing a timing belt in a 1999 Toyota pickup truck.
So the skirted figure in step 2 of Figure 1.1 is doing two things: (1) selecting the right words for the concepts that make up the sub-parts of our idea; and (2) selecting the right combination of rules to stick the words together so that they add up to the idea she’s trying to get across. The syntactic rule system is what lets us encode and understand the differences between a dog is barking and a dog that is barking and a barking dog and there is a barking dog and there is a dog that is barking and the dog that is barking is barking and a barking dog is barking and a barking dog that is barking is barking . . . and so on.
Compare the following two strings of words:
(1) The dog that is barking
(2) The dog is barking.
The only difference between them, word-wise, is that the first group of words has one more word in it than the second. Nonetheless, they mean fundamentally different things to an English speaker: the second one is a complete sentence describing an event that is happening right now, while the first one is a phrase that refers to a particular being in the world – a noun phrase – but it is not a complete sentence.
Now compare these two strings of words:
(3) *Is dog the barking that
(4) *Is dog the barking.
Here and throughout this book we will use the asterisk symbol * in front of examples to indicate that they are ill-formed, or ungrammatical in the linguist’s sense. (In this use, the symbol is called a “star.”) Examples marked with a * sound funny. It’s not that they are stylistically disfavored, like ain’t or Where did the cockroach run to? They are simply not produced by the linguistic system of a speaker of English.
These two strings are made up of exactly the same words as the first two, and differ in exactly the same way, word-wise – (3) has one more word in it than (4). However, the extra word – “that” – has much less effect in these two strings of words than in the first two: both of them are just gibberish, with or without the “that.” You can recognize that the individual words mean something, but it’s hard to tell whether the whole string of words means anything at all, let alone whether (3) means something different from (4). This is the effect of the second part of the encryption system. It is the way the words are put together – their syntax – that makes the sequences in (1) and (2) so different from the sequences in (3) and (4).
We’ll learn more about both parts of the system as we go along, and how the parts interact, but for now, let’s get back to our central question for this chapter. What’s the problem with defining a “word” as “the minimal unit of speech with its own meaning”?
1.3 Wordhood: The Whole Kit and Caboodle
1.3.1 Minimal units with meaning that are smaller than “words”
Here’s the problem: there are many cases where an “ultimate minimal element of speech having a meaning” is smaller than the units we put spaces around when we’re writing or talking slowly, i.e. the ultimate minimal unit of meaning can be smaller than the things we normally refer to as “words.” Let’s take a fairly straightforward case first. Read the sentences below aloud to yourself:
(5)
a.
I’m mad at you.
b.
Don’t take candy from strangers.
c.
Why couldn’t you carry it more carefully?
d.
You aren’t going out dressed like that, are you?
e.
You’re not going out dressed like that, are you?
Exercise 1.3 What is it about these sentences that poses a problem for defining “word” as an “ultimate minimal unit of speech having a meaning”?
In each of (5)a–e, it should be clear that there is an element that is surrounded by space on both sides (and that can be pronounced as a word on its own), but that single element contains two concepts – two units of meaning. That is, as pronounced (and written), they count as single words, but they are combinations of two elements as far as meaning is concerned. The items in question in (5)a–e, plus several other common examples, are listed in (6):
(6) I’m, don’t, couldn’t, aren’t, you’re, he’s, they’ve, we’re . . .
Of course, you might argue, these aren’t true counterexamples to the definition, because they are contractions, squeezed-together versions of two real words, both of which constitute minimal units of speech with meaning in their own right. I’m corresponds to I am, don’t is do not, you’re is you are, aren’t is are not, etc. On some level, then, these are truly separate words, and this is reflected in that they can be pronounced as separate words. At some point during linguistic processing and before actual pronunciation (in panel 2 in Figure 1.1), the two words get pushed together and are pronounced as a single unit. In order to make the OED definition match up to our everyday sense of “word,” then, it needs to be altered. What if we say that a “word” isn’t always a sequence of sounds that is pronounced separately (an “ultimate minimal element of speech”), but rather, it’s a phonological unit that could be pronounced as a separate sequence of sounds, as we did in our third definition revision above? Then in the sentences above, n’t, ’re, and ’m would count as words, because they could have been pronounced not, are and am instead.
If we make that move, we take care of another troublesome class of words: compounds, words made up of two words in combination. Some good examples are homeowner, blackbird, man-eater, greenhouse, overhead, pickpocket, etc.
This revision isn’t enough, however. Contractions and compounds are not the only ways that two meanings, attached to two sets of sounds, can be packaged up into a single word. Consider the word dog, which is a word that satisfies the definition: none of the possible minimal units contained within the word (d, do, o, og, g) have any meaning of their own (or no meaning that contributes to the meaning of the whole), so dog is a minimal unit of speech with its own meaning – it doesn’t get any of its meaning from some smaller unit within it. Now, what about the word dogs? Its overall meaning appears to be made up of two elements: the word dog that we just saw, plus a suffix -s. As a speaker of English, you will know that the -s suffix, applied to nouns, indicates plurality – it means, roughly, “more than one X,” where X is the noun it’s attached to. In the dictionary, that could even be its definition, like this:
-s: More than one X (where X is the noun -s is attached to)
So here we have a sound unit, -s, which has its own meaning, PLURAL, and yet it’s certainly not anything that we would call a “word” on its own – it can’t be pronounced by itself in answer to a question, for example:
(7)
Jack
:
How many of them did you see?
Jill
:
* S. (
intended meaning
, “More than one.”)
Of course, any suffix with a regular meaning falls into this category. In (8) we see some groups of words with prefixes and suffixes, whose meanings are regular combinations of the meanings of their various parts:
(8)
a.
iconic, acrobatic, idealistic, photographic, idyllic, robotic
b.
writing, hammering, presenting, kissing, analyzing, shivering, thinking
c.
bendable, breakable, manageable, loveable, fixable
d.
unbeaten, unhappy, un-American, unwanted, undefined, unremarkable
e.
writer, gardener, clipper, timer, greeter, cleaner, washer, dryer
Exercise 1.4 Based on these lists of words, see if you can come up with a definition for each of the affixes -ic, -ing, -able, un- and -er shown in (8)a–e, on the model of the definition given above for -s.
So, there are minimal sound sequences that have meaning that cannot stand on their own. Such sound sequences are not words as we use the term in everyday language – we don’t write them with spaces on either side, like this: dog s, icon ic, bend able – nor, if we are spacing “words” apart and speaking slowly, do we include pauses between the pieces.
phonology, n. From the Greek roots phono-, “voice, sound” and -logy “saying, speaking.” 1. The study of spoken sounds. 2. The system of sounds in a language. phonological, adj. relating to phonology.
A phonological word is sequence of sounds which is identified as a unit on the basis of how it is pronounced – a collection picked out by the phonology of a language. Can’t, bendable and dogs are phonological words.
1.3.2 Phonological words that don’t carry any meaning whatever
In addition to the problem posed by affixes, above, there’s another problem for the definition we’re considering, although examples are somewhat harder to come by. Consider the following phrases:
(9)
a.
Jill took it all,
kit and caboodle
b.
Jack walked
to and fro
c.
If I
had my druthers
, the party would be on Saturday.
d.
The responses
ran the gamut
from brilliant to insane.
While it’s clear to most speakers of English what the phrases kit and caboodle, to and fro, have (one’s) druthers, and run the gamut mean (respectively, “everything,” “back and forth,” “get one’s way,” and “vary as widely as possible”), hardly any speakers know what the words caboodle, fro, druthers, or gamut mean in these expressions (no one would ever say “Do you like John’s druthers?” or “She made it clear she wanted the caboodle.”). Perhaps a guess can be made about the meaning of fro, since the phrase is so much like back and forth in structure and meaning: it seems like it must mean the same thing as forth. Yet, to and forth is nonsensical, and forth in other uses cannot be replaced by fro. Who ever heard of a knight going fro on a quest? Yet, fro, caboodle, etc. clearly are phonological words, shown by the fact that they can be pronounced, and are written, with spaces on either side. Essentially, what these examples show is that there can be phonological words which don’t have a meaning associated with them at all, but only acquire meaning in conjunction with other phonological words. According to the OED definition, however, kit and caboodle is one “word,” as it is a minimal unit of speech having a meaning. Do you agree?
It’s not simply that there are some phonological words that have no meaning. There’s an enormous class of expressions made up of several phonological words that do have meanings but whose meanings have nothing to do with the meaning of the whole expression. Consider the examples in (10):
(10)
a.
Bill
kicked the bucket
last night.
b.
The promotion is a real
feather in her cap
.
c.
Fred was suffering from an attack of
the green-eyed monster
.
d.
He wouldn’t stop complaining, but he was
flogging a dead horse
.
There’s no actual, or even metaphorical, bucket involved in (a), no feather, monster or horse in (b), (c) and (d). These phrases are idioms, expressions whose meaning must be learned by rote, just as one would learn the meaning of pith or reimburse. As they occur within these expressions, these phonological words have no meaning associated with them at all: the only meaning around is associated with the larger phrase of which they form a part. Since these phrases are minimal units of meaning, but are composed of many smaller, easily identifiable phonological words – minimal units of speech – they too show that “word” cannot be defined as something that correlates a minimal unit of speech with a minimal unit of meaning.
1.4 Two Kinds of Words
There’s an easy way out of this dilemma. On one view, the meaning of “word” has mainly to do with semantics – the part of the definition that refers to the “minimal meaningful unit,” that is, an element of the list of sound–meaning correspondences that is one of the two fundamental elements of language. The other, more everyday interpretation of the meaning of “word” has mainly to do with phonology: the fact that we call whatever we can pronounce in isolation a “word.” The latter we have simply labeled: phonological word. We’ll learn some of the properties that English requires of its phonological words in Chapter 2. The former, the true minimal meaningful unit, which includes affixes, like -s and un-, and idioms like kick the bucket, we will call listemes.
Listemes are often equivalent to what linguists call morphemes. We’ll learn more about morphemes soon, and discuss why in this volume we distinguish listemes from morphemes. Another technical word that has a related meaning is lexeme. It could be useful to look these terms up in several different linguistic encyclopedias, dictionaries, or glossaries and compare their definitions and uses.
Why “listemes”? Since these sound–meaning combinations are arbitrary, the connection must be listed in the speaker’s (your) head somewhere. We know that listemes are arbitrary because languages use different words for the same concept (as we saw in the names perro, dog, chien, and chu’u for the concept DOG, above). Indeed, any group of people – say, a children’s secret club – could just get together and decide: “We won’t call this a dog anymore, it’s now a spimble.” Similarly, while it would be considerably more difficult to stick to, a secret club could equally decide that they wouldn’t make plurals with -s anymore; rather, they’d use -int. (“Mom! Where’s my box of colored pencilint?”) Ferdinand de Saussure called this property the arbitrariness of the sign (Saussure, [1916] 1959). Another way of putting it is that there is no “right” name for any concept, except what speakers of a language happen to agree on. This list of sound–meaning connections is what learners of second languages spend hours memorizing, and it’s what dictionary makers try to replicate. (Look in any college or unabridged dictionary. It includes not only phonological words per se, but also many affixes and idioms: there’ll be an entry for -ed, one for un-, one for -ing, etc.). This book is about phonological words and listemes, and their love–hate relationship.
1.5 The Anatomy of a Listeme
Stop again. Before reading any further, make a list of the minimum amount of information you think it is necessary to know in order to know the (most common meaning of the) word nice and use it like an English speaker. (No looking in the dictionary, now. What do you know about it? Imagine you had to explain this word to someone learning English so that they could use it in speech.)
Exercise 1.5Make a list of the minimum amount of information it is necessary to know in order to “know” the word nice.
Here are some things that all English speakers know about nice:
1
Pronunciation
. You know how to pronounce it. A set of instructions for pronouncing the word
nice
might go like this: First, press the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth behind the tongue, blocking off all air exiting through the mouth Create a sound by allowing air to escape through your nose while simultaneously tightening your vocal folds so that the air passing over them causes them to vibrate. Then, continuing to vibrate your vocal cords, open your mouth with your tongue almost flat, allowing air to escape. Raise your tongue up and forward somewhat, vibrating your vocal cords all along. Finally, bring your tongue nearly all the way to the top of your mouth behind the teeth, creating a narrow opening. Stop vibrating your vocal cords and allow air to pass through the opening, making a hissing noise as it does so. (Isn’t it lucky we don’t have to have this kind of instruction to learn to talk? In any case, it’s clear that all of this is information you know about
nice
.)
2
Meaning
. You know what it means: something like “pleasant, agreeable.”
3
Category
. You know that it is an
adjective
. That is to say, even if you’ve never heard the word
adjective
, you know that
nice
can modify nouns (
a nice picture
).
Adjective
is just a term that means roughly “a word that can modify a noun.” Speakers of some dialects of English also use it as an adverb, to modify verbs (
he sings nice
), so if you speak such a dialect, you can list “adverb” next to “adjective” as something that you know about
nice
.
4
Other forms
. You know that it consists of a single, stressed syllable, and hence that it has a
comparative
form
nicer
, and a
superlative
nicest
. (This is not true of all adjectives: compare
nicer
to the comparative form of
aware
:
more aware
, not *
awarer
). If you speak a dialect like Standard American English that doesn’t allow
nice
as an adverb, you can also list the adverbial form
nicely
as something you know about
nice
.
How much of the above was in your list? You might have spent the most time on 2, and you might have omitted to mention any of 1, 3, and 4 entirely. Nonetheless, anyone who speaks English and has the word nice in their vocabulary certainly knows all of the above. All of this information must be in your head somewhere.
In traditional linguistic study, the information in 1, about pronunciation, is part of phonology. In 2, the information about meaning is part of semantics. In 3, the information about category is part of syntax. And finally in 4, the information about affixes and the internal structure of the word is morphology. When a child (or anyone) learns a new listeme, they learn (or figure out) at least some information from all of the above categories. They have to; that’s what it means to learn a word.
1.6 What Don’t You Have to Learn When You’re Learning a Word?
Many of you might know a great deal more about the word nice. For instance, I’m fairly sure that everyone reading this textbook knows how to spell the word nice. Stop and consider a moment, however. Is it necessary to know how to spell a word to “know” it? Consider a 5-year-old, who can’t read or write. After hearing his mother read Jack and the Beanstalk, he says, “That was a nice story.” He certainly can’t spell the word “nice,” but would you say he doesn’t know the word “nice”? It seems clear that he does know it, enough to pronounce it correctly and use it accurately.
Some of you might know something about the history of nice. It was borrowed by English speakers from Old French in about 1300 AD, and originally meant “stupid or foolish,” which is what it meant at the time in Old French. Over the years, it went through many permutations of meaning: from “foolish” to “loose-mannered, wanton,” and from there to “lazy, indolent, slothful.” From “lazy” it permuted to “not able to endure much, delicate,” and thence to “over-refined.” Then it was a short step to meaning “fastidious, difficult to please,” which became, “precise, finely discriminating,” which became “refined,” and, applied to food, “dainty, appetizing,” which finally led to our modern sense, “agreeable, pleasant” (with several side-shoots of meaning that I haven’t mentioned).
In Old French, nice had developed over the years from the Latin word nescius. Nescius in Latin was originally a contraction of the phrase ne scire, “not to know” (hence, “stupid, foolish”). The Latin verb scire, meaning “to know,” is also the root of the English word science, as well as prescient, conscientious, omniscient, and conscious, although these were borrowed by English at a much later date than nice was.
Some of you might know that nice, while quite a nice word, is used so frequently that some sophisticated writers of English consciously try to avoid it: a sentence that is stylistically strong and descriptively gripping doesn’t usually have the word nice in it. If you’re a speaker of a dialect of English which allows nice as an adverb, as in She sings nice, you may also know that Standard English – the English you are expected to use in written work at school or in professional settings – does not permit nice to be used as an adverb.
The above information, while interesting and true, is not part of what anyone automatically learns when they’re first learning the word nice. We’ll be learning about both types of knowledge in this book: the complex information about words that all English speakers carry around in their heads, and the historical and social information about words that is the result of accidents of history and language change. The former information tells us about the nature of our minds, giving us a window onto the computation that goes into the utterance of the simplest English sentence; the latter information can give us an insight into the history and culture of the people who have spoken and written English over the past 10 centuries. We’ll be talking about both kinds of information, but we’ll be taking care not to get them mixed up. The first kind of information belongs to the study of psychology of language, and the latter to the study of the history of language. Keep the distinction in mind as we go on. If you’re wondering which category a certain kind of information falls into, ask yourself: is this something that children who speak English know?
The study of the psychology of language and study of the history of language are connected by the study of the sociology of language, the study of how and why people end up speaking the way they do. Psycholinguistics, historical linguistics and socio-linguistics are all subdisciplines of linguistics, areas in which a linguist can choose to specialize.
1.7 A Scientific Approach to Language
In this book, we will be studying English words in the same way an entomologist would study a species of insect, the same way a geologist would study layers of rock, the same way a meteorologist would study weather patterns. We will look at English, describe what we see, and then try to develop an analysis that explains any patterns or regularities that we find.
We won’t be concerned, in our study, with “correct” or “proper” ways of speaking and writing English, except insofar as they are relevant to our discussion of how people actually do speak or write. Teaching English speakers to adhere to certain rules of grammar, or punctuation, or style, is undertaken by people interested in a prescriptive approach to English, who are interested in ensuring conformity among speakers of English for some purpose. We here taking a descriptive approach: trying to discuss what English speakers actually do, not what they “should” do.
If you are a second language learner of English, this book will be useful in your study of English: it is full of information about what native English speakers actually do when they’re speaking English. If you are a native speaker of English, you will find that this book tells you about how you speak English, and something about why modern English is the way it is – but it won’t teach you anything about how you ought to speak English. We’ll leave that up to the language mavens and your own good judgment.
With those preliminaries completed, onward to our first topic: the sounds of English.
Appendix: Basic Grammatical Terms
Although this book is intended for people with no background in linguistics, I have assumed that most of you will know terms such as “noun,” “verb,” “subject,” “suffix” and “prefix” already, or at least have a general idea of how they are used. Often these terms are used more generally or loosely in everyday speech than we will be using them here, so here are some rough-and-ready definitions and a few problem sets to help cement your familiarity with a few basic terms. These definitions also show up in the glossary at the end of the book, but you should be sure you understand them fully now, before reading further:
Affix A covering term for both suffixes and prefixes.
Parts of speech Parts of speech are also often called syntactic categories, or word classes. Just as we can say things like “The part of speech of dog is ‘noun’ ,” we could say “The syntactic category of dog is ‘noun’.” All words have a part of speech – sometimes more than one. Here we’ll look at just a few of the most basic; for more discussion, see Chapter 6.
Nouns are often defined as “people, places or things,” and verbs as “actions, states or states of being,” but this is definitely not adequate for our purposes. For instance, attraction is a noun, but it would be pretty crazy to call it a person, place or thing! Similarly, an incantation is an action, but it would be pretty crazy to call it a verb. Parts of speech are not defined by their meaning, but by their distribution – where they show up in a sentence, and what kinds of other words or affixes can go with them.
Noun A listeme that:
can be used as the subject of a sentence;
can occur immediately following determiners (a.k.a. “articles”) such as
the
,
one
,
some
,
any
,
this
,
a
,
many
, etc., or possessive pronouns such as
his
,
her
,
our
etc., with no other word in the phrase (see
Chapter 6
for more discussion of these);
can usually be marked with the plural suffix -
s
;
can be modified with adjectives such as
pretty
,
happy
,
lucky
,
fortuitous
.
Verb A listeme that
can be marked for past tense (usually by putting -
ed
on it);
can be suffixed with -
ing
;
can be modified with words like
again
,
sometimes
,
often
;
can occur immediately following auxiliaries, like
can
,
may
,
might
,
would
,
will
; also after negation (
not
,
can’t
,
won’t
), or the infinitive marker
to
.
Adjective A listeme that
can appear between a determiner and its noun, as in
the
lucky
cat
, modifying the noun;
often ends in -
y
, -
ish
, -
ous
; often can be prefixed with
un
-;
can be modified by words like
very
or
extremely
, as in
the very lucky cat
.
Adverb A listeme that
can modify a verb;
often ends in -
ly
;
can be modified by words like
very
or
extremely
, as in
extremely quickly
.
Prefix A smaller-than-phonological-word-sized listeme that attaches to the beginning of another listeme: un- in unhappy is a prefix, re- in refill is a prefix, dis- in disentangle is a prefix.
Suffix A smaller-than-phonological-word-sized listeme that attaches to the end of another listeme: -s in dogs is a suffix; -ed in patted is a suffix; -ion in attraction is a suffix.
Study Problems
Identify all the suffixes and prefixes in the following sentences. If you think something might be an affix but you’re not sure, explain why you think it might be and also what it is that makes you unsure:
It is often written that
antidisestablishmentarianism
is the longest word in the English language, but it isn’t.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others. (Ambrose Bierce)
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. (Dorothy Parker)
