TheFunctionofOpaqueMorphemesinMorphologicalandPhonologicalProcessesinEnglish-最新文档

1、The Fun cti on of Opaque Morphemes in Morphological and Pho no logicalProcesses inEn glish:Morphemesare traditi on allydefi ned as the mi ni malarbitrarycomb in atio n of meaning and phon etic forms. Sincethe traditi onal defi niti on of morphemes fails to explai n some opaque morphemes like mit, ce

2、ive, which have no meaning, this paper proposes to defi ne morphemes by their function in the morphological processes and their behaviors in the phonological processes under the theory of LP.s: Opaque Morpheme, Lexical Phonology, Morphological Process, Phono logical Process?才?1 In troducti onMorphem

3、es are traditionally defined as the minimal arbitrary combination of meaning and phonetic forms, so it is common to divide a word into a few separate morphemes to deduce the meaning of the whole word. Take the word lioness for example, it contains two morphemes: lion and -ess. -ess is a suffix refer

4、ring to female animal or plant. Thus, we can deduce that the mea ning of the whole word lio ness is female lion. While words like permit and con ceive are hard to get their meanings by means of their smaller parts, because synchroni cally, mit and ceive can not be sema ntically an alyzed as those tr

5、an spare nt morphemes like lion ess. Traditi onal attitudes towards those words are dubious: to treat them either as monomorphic ones or as polymorphic words with bound roots. However, neither can find enough support from these traditional definitions.This thesis attempts to describe the n ature of

6、such morphemes as mit, ceive in the framework of Lexical Phonology (LP). It provides a theoretical basis on which the interface and interaction ofphonology and morphologycan be described and interpreted. Through the contrast between words with the same phonological structure but different behaviors

7、in their morphological and phonological processes, such as the differences between permit and vomit, mit and ceive will be found reas on able to be treated as morphemes, opaque morphemesto be exact.2 Opaque morphemes in En glishThere are someu nits that occur in many words, but their meanings are di

8、fficult to defi ne, for in sta nee, mit in admit, commit, permit, emit and omit. Other com mon un its of this sort in clude cur in occur, in cur and recur, ceive in con ceive, deceive, perceive and receive. All the three un its (mit, ceive and cur) are of only phono logical forms without any defi ni

9、te meaning in modem En glish.Strictly speak ing, they are not morphemes at all, because they dissatisfy the widely accepted traditi onal defi niti onsof morphemes. Un its mit and ceive are justa stretch of sounds, and no constant semantic value can be assigned to these elements.2.1 Differen ces betw

10、ee n permit and vomitSince the traditi onal defi niti ons require the comb in ati on of meanings and soun ds, permit, submit, receive, conceive and words that like, used to be con sidered to con sist of a sin gle morpheme respectively. If this assumption is true, words such as permit and vomit shoul

11、d be totally the same in terms of word formatio n. As a matter of fact, the two words are differe nt. Two forms, which look ide ntical to each other on the surface, may differ from each other in their phonological behaviors, because they may have different underlying forms. Thisdist in cti on usuall

12、y can be traced back to the historical developme nt. permit and vomit are a pair of words of this type. Now, lets go into the differencesbetween permit andvomit:(1)Diachronically, permit is from Latin.In Latin,prefix per- means through. The orig inal form of mit is mittere meaning to send, which pro

13、ves that the word permit consists of two morphemes (Webster s New WorldDictionaryand Thesaurus). So the morphological structureof permit can be represe nted as per mit.Vomit is also borrowed from Lat in into En glish, butonly as a whole word. Its original form is vomere, that is to say, even in Lati

14、n, vomit contains only one morpheme (Webster s NewWorld Dictionary and Thesaurus) . It can not be represented as *vo mit. So in the word vomit, there is absolutely no evidence to demonstrate that vo- shows up as a prefix and mit functions as a root.(2)Some affix morphemescan be added to permit to ma

15、ke it function as an adjective or a noun. For example, when the derivative suffix -ive comb ines with permit, an adjective comes into being: permissive (permit + -ive).But *vomissive cannot be derived in this way. There is no such a word as vomissive. Whenthe suffixes -ive and -ion are added to the

16、word vomit, the resulta nt forms are vomitive (from Medieval Lati n vomitivus) and vomiti on (obsolete Latin). More data are illustrated in the followi ng table:(1) + -ive + -ionadmitadmissive admissionpermit permissive permissionsubmit submissive submissionvomitvomitivevomitionFrom the data in (1),

17、 it is easy to find that mit inpermit, submit and admit is different from mit in vomit.The former has the varia nt mis whe never it is followed by such affixes as -ive, -ion. The latter never shows up any varia nts. Si nee both the morphological structures and phono logicalbehaviors of permit and vo

18、mit are far from thesame, the presumption that both words are monomorphic is not reasonable.2.2 The treatme nt of the opaque morphemes in LPLP assumes that words are created by the successive application of the WFRs,which usually takes place at three levels.A n importa nt feature of the LP model is

19、that anun derived base is passed through the level 1 phono logical rule before any WFRs are used.Lieber (1981) argues that both stems and affixes such as per,ceive,sub,mit,dog are lexically stored in the lexic on for word-buildi ng processes (McMah on ,2000: 38). The lexical rule derives lexical ite

20、ms from other lexical items,such as the rule deriv ing En glish adjectives from verbs by the additi on of the suffix ?Cive: protective,active and so on. The discussion about the opaque morphemestakes place at level1 of the lexical phono logy model. At least some rules or information about the underi

21、ved base must be applied on the in itial cycle. In gen eral,some phono logical rules may precede the applicatio n of WFRs,like the phono logicalinformationrequired by the nominal suffix -a1. Sometimes,what is applied on the initial cycle is the morphological structure. The additi on of -ive to mit i

22、s subject to specific morphological environment. Suffix -ive dose not apply to any mit string, but only to those that comprise root mit, such as permit-permissive,submit-submissive.The requirement that the mit must be root blocks the con structi on of the devia nt item such as *vomissive, because mi

23、t in vomit is just a stretch of soun ds,but nota root. Consequently, mit in permit must be serving as the base (the bound root) even if it has no consistent semantic value in its own right whe n in depe ndent of the particular word in which it occurs. Since mit dose not take any defi nite meaning sy

24、nchroni cally, it is not a perfect morpheme in terms of traditi onal defi niti ons. Usually, morphemes of this type are treated as opaque morphemes, ceive, cur, ept and mit are all opaque morphemes. ADicti onary of Phon etics and Phono logy compiled by R. L.Trask defi nes the opaque morpheme as a mo

25、rpheme,which excepti on ally preve nts the spread ing of some regular phono logical processes. This point is proved in the /t/ to /s/ alter nati on after the suffixati on of -ive to permit.2.2.1 The /t/ to /s/ alternationThe morphological processes are able to trigger thephono logical alter nati on

26、s,thatis,the additi on of affixesmay cause alternations in shape shown by the base morphemes .In En glish,the most typical example is the /t/ to /s/ alternation as in electric-electricity and public-publicity. Those alternations between phonemes often take places in a particular position of a partic

27、ular morpheme in vary ing con texts. Now, let s look at the /t/ to /s/ alter nati on in opaque morphemes.(2) a. permit permissi on permissivesubmit submissi on submissiveadmitadmissi on admissibleemit emission emissaryb. limit limitation limitary limitableassert assertion assertiveprohibit prohibiti

28、on prohibitivevomit vomition vomitive vomitaryWe have noticed from the above data that the finalsegment in permit is pronounced as /t/ when the word stands alone as an independent one,but as /s/ when it takes the adjectival suffix -ive,a nd the n as /j / whe n it comb ineswith the nominal suffix-i o

29、n. In (2a),mit always takes the varia nt mis whe never comb ines with such suffixes as-ion，-ive and ?Cory. In (2b),even if the suffixes -ive,-ary and -ion attach to those words, the /t/ to /s/ alternation can n ever happe n,which proves that the /t/ to /s/ alter nati on is morpholexically con diti o

30、ned (i.e. the allomorphic alter nati on is non-automatic,but triggered on ly by specific morphemes, morphological class or specific words). Thus, the factors conditioningthe /t/ to /s/ alter nati on cannot be phono logical,but must be at the level of the morpheme,which means that the /t/ to /s/ alte

31、r nati on is limited to a particular morphological con texts.mit in permit is a Lat in ate root,thus in (2a),we find permit-permissi on-permissive, emit-emissive-emissary.All the words with the Latinate root mit undergo the same phono logical varia nt mis before the suffixes -ion，-ary and -ive. By c

32、on trast,the phono logical seque nee mit in limit or vomit is not the same one as in permit or emit.mit in limit and vomit is just a stretch of phono logical sounds,and dose not take the form mis in any environments. So, from the data in (2b),we find limit-limitation-limitary-limitable,vomit-vomiti

33、on-vomitary, without the trace of the /t/ to/s/ alter nati on any where. This phono logical alter nati on cannot take place in the items not ending up with theLat in ate root. Although words like assert and prohibit end up with t and take the same suffixes -ive an d-i on,no /t/ to /s/ alter nati on

34、happe ns,because there are no Lat in ate roots in those words .It is obvious that the /s/ to /s/ alternation applies only to a morpheme and not to other phono logical seque nee. mit in permit,submit,remit,admit is therefore a true morpheme,though it has no meaning.Whe never it fun cti ons as a morph

35、eme,it is acce nted. Otherwise,it is not stressed.To con clude,the specific root morphemes that the phono logical alter nati on(/t/ to /s/) n eeds are bound Lat inroots. Now, we can describe this phono logicalalter nati onas non sibila nt alveolar voiceless stop /t/ turns into a sibila nt voiceless

36、fricative /s/ in the particular morphologicalenvironmentwhen the base of the word towhich the suffix -ive attaches is a bound Latin root. It is a kind of voice weake ning.3 Con clusi onThe traditional definitionsof morphemeslay too muchemphasis on the meanings and phono logical forms of the morphemes, but ignore their function in the morphemes as mit, ceive by treating those words in which they are a component as monomor