1. Morphology – ninth lecture
Idioms and opacity
When studying a foreign language, English especially, most of the unknown words have to be
learned by heart, that is memorised. The corpus of words existing in English is rather large and
students of English often have difficulty in memorising all the different words they encounter.
A useful tool to use for the acquiring of vocabulary is morphology. It might sound as a
marketing procedure, but it is really very useful knowledge to have. First of all, there are some
general rules in morphology that help us differentiate between words as far as their class is
concerned. If we, for instance, know we have a noun because it ends with a noun-forming suffix, it
is easier to work out its meaning by breaking the word down into its constituent parts. Furthermore,
if we should know the meaning of the constituents, and if we know the rules according to which the
parts have been put together, we might be able to work out the meaning of our unknown word.
inapplicable = in - negative forming prefix
apply - to use sth or make sth work in a particular situation
able - adjective forming suffix meaning that sth can be done
applicable - sth may be used or made relevant to sth else
inapplicable - sth may not be used or made relevant to sth else
Of course, there are still many words the meaning of which cannot be worked out because
the words consist of one morpheme only and we do not know the meaning of that morpheme, or we
simply do not know the meaning of any morpheme the word consists of. In such cases, we have to
look the word up in a dictionary and try to memorise it. Another problem we might encounter is that
the dictionary does not have our word in store. Regardless of the infinite number of words listed in
dictionaries praised by marketing managers and promoted as being the ULTIMATE list of words,
there are still words occurring in speech and writing but not in dictionaries. Therefore, we have to
learn that there are institutionalized words, that is words listed in dictionaries, uninstitutionalized
words, that is words not documented in dictionaries and potential words, words waiting to be
formed.
An important aspect about words is that they are compositional which means that they
depend on morphological processes and their meanings can be worked out according to those
processes which is why many words are not listed in dictionaries.
believe - to feel certain that sth is true or that sb is telling you the truth
Any advanced dictionary will probably offer the following derivatives:
believable, unbelievable, believer
But there are other possible derivatives:
believability, non-believer
These variations might be arguable because sb might say they are not ‘proper’ words. Yet
they could serve a certain purpose at a particular moment and as such be used. Therefore, we cannot
say that a word is not a proper word if it is not listed in a dictionary. Institutionalized, listed words,
appearing in dictionaries, have been identified as being common and frequent and as such have
been entered into a dictionary. That is why vocabulary, or the corpus of words in a particular
language is not a static thing but rather a never-ending process with new words being formed every
day.
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2. Moreover, many terms referring to certain scientific areas or specialized areas of knowledge
are not listed in standard dictionaries but may be found in specialized ones because only specialists
are supposed to know about them and use them. An everyday speaker does not need to know what a
myocardium or an allomorph are because they are not referring to sth an everyday speaker might
need to know about. This however, does not mean that the words do not exist.
Finally, many words, at one point, are not used any more. They seem to have served their
purpose and people forget about them. Standard dictionaries, in their revised editions, might drop a
certain word from their list and enter a new one instead. This happens to words the objects of which
do not exist any more, or are no longer used and as such they have become old-fashioned and
outdated.
It would probably be helpful to know who created a certain word. It seems that if we
assigned a person to a certain invention, it might be easier to remember the invention itself. For
instance, we know that Bell invented the telephone or that Tesla is responsible for many things
regarding electricity or that Edison used the first lightbulb. However, with words we cannot say
who used a certain word for the first time. Words are usually manufactured anonymously. What is
more, the manufacture of words is a process that cannot be controlled that easily. Especially in
writing, words occur very fast because the author needs a certain expression to emphasize their
idea. In speech also, people in order to make a certain impression, simply make up a word that suits
their purpose at that particular moment. Most often compound words are created.
what-you-might-call-it
what-was-his-name
Words that are used only once because they seemed useful for a certain context are referred
to as nonce words. These words never enter a dictionary and are probably not used in any other
instance. Sometimes, however, a nonce word may be used more and more and become a regular
word. A good example is the word yuppie, which at one point must have been regarded as a nonce
word. This is in fact an acronym standing for young urban professional (or, according to some
authors, young upwardly mobile professional). The –ie suffix was added to make it sound endearing
whereby the final consonant has to be doubled (as would be the case with Johnnie, or piggy).
Yuppie originated in the 1980s and was used to describe very successful but young professionals
who made a lot of money. The term was used in America first but then it crossed the ocean and
today it is used even in Serbia denoting the same group of people. However, since English is known
to be a productive language and yuppie has become a noun in the English vocabulary, the word is
now undergoing morphological processes as any other accepted word in English. Thus you can add
suffixes and prefixes and coin new words entailing the root yuppie: yuppify, yuppification,
deyuppification, that is turn into sth for yuppies, the process of turning into that thing for yuppies or
simply reversing the process of turning the sth into sth for yuppies. Again, morphology helps us to
both coin the words and to work out their meanings.
There is one part of the English vocabulary (in other languages as well) which cannot be
made easier by means of morphology. Even if we knew the meanings of all the words in the English
lexicon, our knowledge of morphology would be completely useless in the case of idioms. Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary says that an idiom is “a group of words whose meaning is different
from the meanings of the individual words”. Learners of English must look up the meanings of
different idioms and memorize them. Since English is a rather idiomatic language, the level of
difficulty for an average learner of English is even higher. The situation is even more aggravated
due to the fact that it would not help to know the etymology of idioms because nobody could
remember all the different stories behind each idiomatic expression. Unfortunately, in most cases,
translation into one’s mother tongue won’t help either. Sometimes, different languages have the
same idiom, but most often, idiomatic expressions are completely different in various languages.
He rested on his wartime laurels and neglected his education. Translation is helpful.
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3. He was so satisfied with his wartime success and experience that he thought it to be
unnecessary to try any harder.
With his green hair, Jenny stuck out like a sore thumb at the party. Translation is not helpful.
Jenny’s green hair was such a curiosity that everybody had to notice it.
There is one more area in the English vocabulary adding to the level of difficulty when it
comes to learning English words. This area is referred to as clitics. A clitic is a bound morpheme
which is not an affix but which occurs as part of a word. Furthermore, the process of clitisation,
that is adding clitics to a word, follows the process of word formation which basically means that
first we have to make the word in order to be able to add the clitic and all this must coincide with
the proper syntactic rules according to which the context around the cliticized word was created.
There are two classes of clitics:
1. Class 1 clitics – occurring as appendages (sth added) to words. These clitics cannot appear
as independent words but must always be added to a larger structure, that is word. The only
example of this class of clitics is the Genitive‘s’.
2. Class 2 clitics – occurring also as independent words in some cases but are also used as
dependent appendages to words. Examples of this type of clitics are the reduced forms of
auxiliaries:‘ll,‘d, ‘ve, ‘s.
What both groups of clitics have in common is that a certain phonological deficiency can be noticed
which is obvious in the fact that clitics do not have a vowel in their form. In order for a certain
phonological structure to function as an independent word in English it must contain at least one
vowel. Clitics lack vowels which is why they need a host, a word to be added to, in order to acquire
a meaning.
The genitive ‘s’, referred to as Class 1 clitic, is used in English to indicate that a noun
phrase, being the host of the clitic, possesses the item expressed with the Noun Phrase following the
clitic. In terms of syntax, the host and the clitic specify the Noun Phrase following the clitic,
meaning that they explain the Noun Phrase. In most cases the genitive ‘s’ expresses possession.
a) the man’s car - the car belongs to the man
But in some cases the semantic value of the genitive ‘s’ varies.
b) the boy’s mother - this does not mean that the mother belongs to the boy as some kind of
property; the genitive ‘s’ implies a certain relationship between the two
the teacher’s story - in this case the genitive ‘s’ implies origin
Or, the genitive ‘s’ may also refer to a certain time
c) a two-day’s journey - the meaning of this phrase is that the journey lasts two days
We may conclude that the meaning of Class 1 clitics varies both semantically and
syntactically as far as their relationship to their host is concerned. In order to work out the semantic
meaning we need to place the host and the clitic into a certain syntactic context.
Unfortunately, clitics form yet another type of relationship with their host referred to as
phonological attachment and this relationship does not always coincide with the semantic and
syntactic relationship between the clitic and the host. This means that a clitic is pronounced together
with its host but that it might relate to another word semantically and syntactically. Normally,
affixes form intact groups with their roots. In the case of clitic groups it is different.
the man standing next to our family’s car
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4. In this phrase, the semantic possessor and the phonological host are not the same. The owner
of the car, the semantic possessor, is the man, but the phonological host of the clitic is our family.
One thing that is certain is that the phonological host can only be the word the clitic is attached to.
Class 2 clitics, unlike class 1, comprise more than one form only. Another difference is that
class 2 clitics may appear both as independent words or as reduced forms attached to a host. This
group includes all forms of auxiliaries that may be contracted, or reduced and attached to a host. In
these cases the meanings of both the full word and the clitic are the same. The difference is purely
stylistical.
I am a teacher. I’m a teacher.
He is a student. He’s a student.
He has got a car. He’s got a car.
They would like some tea. They’d like some tea.
What is important about both class 1 and class 2 clitics is that the process of cilitization is
preceded by a particular word-formation process. Furthermore, only after the word has been put into
a certain syntactic context, can the process of clitization be applied and the meaning of the clitic
group be determined.
Exercises:
I Try to work out the meaning of the following idioms. Try giving a paraphrase and a proper
translation for each of them.
to be struck dumb
to knock the hell out of someone
to be in a good frame of mind
to sweep someone off their feet
to be in the red
to go with/ follow the crowd
to be a man of few words
to feel like a fish out of water
praises fill not the belly
to lose one’s temper
to be barking up a wrong tree
to wander about like a lost soul
to take advantage of sb/ sth
to be caught between a rock and a hard place
to throw out the baby with the bath water
to bury the hatchet
to turn over a new leaf
II Try to derive as many new words as possible from the following words:
English
Hollywood
drop-dead (adverb)
upload
monitor
i-pod
text
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