Grammar and wоrd-building

The relations between word-building, grammar, and lexicology have not yet been made quite clear. By and large three views have been expressed: (1) word-building is part of lexicology, (2) word-building is partly at least a matter of grammar, (3) word-building is a special sphere intermediate between lexicology and grammar and occasionally encroaching upon either.

According as one or another of these views is endorsed, word-building is either ignored in a book on grammar, as something lying beyond its sphere, or it is treated of in grammar book to some extent, at least.

The difficulty of the question is illustrated by the very fact of such different views being taken by scholars.

16 Introduction

We will not here take up the question in its entirety, as it is obviously a question of general linguistics rather than of English linguistics, and we will merely state some points which we will follow in our treatment of the matter.

A complete enumeration of all suffixes and prefixes existing in a language and used to build words cannot be the task of a grammar. The meaning of such word-building suffixes as, e. g., -ness or -er for nouns, -ful or -less for adjectives, etc., cannot and should not be considered in grammar, any more than grammar can give a complete list of nouns, adjectives, etc. The grammatical aspect of word-building is, that words belonging to a certain part of speech are (or can be) derived by means of certain morphemes, chiefly suffixes (but in a few cases also prefixes), vowel alternation, and so forth.

From this viewpoint it is essential to note that a few word-building morphemes are unambiguous, that is, a word containing them is sure to belong to a certain part of speech, whereas others are ambiguous, that is, the morpheme is not in itself sufficient to make sure that a word belongs to a definite part of speech.

We need not give here any complete list of affixes of either type. A few typical examples will be all that is needed.

Affixes unambiguously showing to what part of speech a word belongs are very few. Among them is the suffix -ity for nouns. In such cases as scarcity, necessity, peculiarity, monstrosity, etc., there is no doubt that the word is a noun. In the sphere of adjectives there is the suffix -less and the suffix -ous. For instance, useless, harmless, fatherless, meaningless can be identified as adjectives by the mere fact of their having this suffix, and so can the words copious, hazardous, luminous, callous, ubiquitous, and so forth.

In the sphere of verbs we may note the suffix -ise (also spelt -ize) as an unambiguous sign of a word being a verb: cf. crystallise, immunise, organise, mobilise, vaporise, and the like.

Most word-forming morphemes are ambiguous, that is, they do not with certainty point to any definite part of speech but leave some choice which has to be decided by other criteria. The wideness of the choice varies with different morphemes. Thus, for instance, the suffix -ful leaves us only one alternative: the word can either be an adjective, which is the more usual case (useful, careful, truthful, masterful, needful, sinful, etc.), or a noun, which is much rarer (handful, spoonful, mouthful, pocketful, roomful, etc.). It will be readily seen that the second type is limited to formations in which the first element denotes some physical object having a certain volume.

In a similar way, the suffix -ment leaves open the choice between noun and verb, of which the first is much more frequent: compare

Grammar and Word-building 17

the nouns instrument, tenement, merriment, government, sentiment, pigment, basement, and the verbs implement, regiment, augment. It will be seen that most of these have homonyms among the nouns. It might perhaps be argued that -ment itself is a noun-forming, not a verb-forming suffix, and that verbs like implement have been formed from the corresponding nouns without any suffix at all. This may be true, but it is irrelevant: the fact remains that in contemporary English we have both nouns and verbs containing the suffix -ment followed by no other word-forming suffix.

Other suffixes may leave us a choice between three or more possibilities, for instance the suffix -ly leaves open the choice between adjectives, adverbs, nouns, modal words, and particles. We shall give a few examples of each category. Adjectives in -ly: orderly, friendly, comely, sickly, masterly; adverbs: kindly, safely, generally, merrily, joyfully; nouns: daily (a newspaper published every day; a woman coming in as daily help), orderly (a soldier assigned to an officer for carrying messages); modal words: possibly, probably, certainly, presumably, admittedly; particles: exclusively, merely, solely. If modal words are not accepted as a separate part of speech, or if words like merely are included among adverbs, the number of possibilities will be reduced by one or two items. But even so we shall have to admit that the suffix -ly is of comparatively little value for determining the part of speech to which a word belongs.

Prefixes are only rarely found to distinguish one part of speech from another.¹ Here are some well-known examples: endear v. vs. dear adj., enlarge v. vs. large adj., enmesh v. vs. mesh n., behead v. vs. head n.,² belittle v. vs. little adj.

A few more examples of this kind may be found, but there is not a single prefix to show definitely to what part of speech a word belongs. For instance, the negative prefix in- may be found in nouns (independence, intransigence), in adjectives (independent, intransigent, inconclusive), in verbs (incapacitate) and in adverbs (independently, inconclusively, inconsistently), so that as an indication of a part of speech it is valueless.

The prefix under- is also to be found in nouns, adjectives, and verbs, for instance, understudy, undersecretary (nouns), underfed,

¹ We are not here concerned with the historical origins of this state of things, and therefore we do not dwell on the fact that, for instance, the verb behead comes from Old English beheafdian, which was derived from the Old English noun heafod by means of a suffix as well as of a prefix, nor do we make similar remarks about the verb endear, etc. However such a state of things may have originated, the fact remains that in Modern English the two parts of speech are distinguished by the prefix alone.

² It might be argued that there is a verb head as well. But the meanings of the two verbs are so very far apart that this argument does not seem convincing.

18 Introduction

underdeveloped, underdone (adjectives), undervalue, underestimate, undermine (verbs).

Other means of word-building are vowel alternations and consonant alternations. However, these are so limited in their application that the presence of this or that vowel or consonant in a word can never be a sure sign of its belonging to a definite part of speech. For example, the alternation [u:] — [i:], in spelling, oo — ee, is found in a few noun-verb groups (doom — deem, food — feed), but it does not follow that the vowel [i:] (spelt ee) is a sign of a verb: there are numerous words belonging to other parts of speech having this vowel in their root: spleen, beech, deed are nouns; keen, green, deep are adjectives, etc. We need not give any more examples. The same is also true of consonant alternations, for example, the alternation [k] — [tS] in such pairs as speak — speech, break — breach, etc. Important as they are from a lexical viewpoint, their grammatical significance is next to nil.

Thus the grammatical aspect of word-building, at least in English, is rather unimportant; the main phenomena of word-building belong to the sphere of lexicology.

In concluding our observations on word-building we may note some so-called nonce-words formed without any suffixes. Thus, in the following example a nonce-word, namely a verb, is formed from an adverb without any suffixes and it is characterised as a verb merely by its surroundings in the sentence. This is a dialogue between a mother and her daughter who was rather late in coming back home from school. "Then where have you been? It's late." "Nowhere." "What?" "Nowhere." "Don't nowhere me. I know how long it takes to walk home from school." (WOODHILL) The third nowhere is shown to be the infinitive of a verb by its position between don't and me. Its meaning is clear from the context. Don't nowhere me obviously means much the same as, Don't say "nowhere" to me, or, Don't try to deceive me by saying "nowhere". In the following example even an unfinished sentence consisting of two words is treated in this way: "Now, Dora — " he began. "Don't you 'Now, Dora' me!" she said in a loud voice, frantically striking the sides of the chair with her hands. "I just can't stand this any longer! I just can't!" (E. CALDWELL) Such formations are not very frequent, and they are conversational rather than literary.

Our study of Modern English morphology will consist of four main items, viz. (1) essentials of morphology: general study of morphemes and types of word-form derivation, (2) the system of parts of speech, (3) study of each separate part of speech, the grammatical categories connected with it, and its syntactical functions.

Part One

Morphology

Chapter I

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