Page 300 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes Another, more radical form of formal variation in paradigms is the phenomenon of suppletion,
where there is no phonological similarity between the different forms of a lexeme. In the English
word pair good-better we observe the suppletive root bet for good, followed by the comparative suffix
-er. Thus, we might say that the lexeme GOOD comprises two different stems, good and bet. In the
pair bad-worse the suppletive simplex form worse even expresses both the meaning of the stem bad
and the comparative meaning. Some linguists also use the notion ‘suppletion’ in the domain of word-
formation. In the following examples of inhabitative names in Italian you can observe a formally
regular case of derivation, a case of allomorphy, and a case of suppletion respectively:

(11) Milano-Milan-ese, Forli-Forliv-ese, Chieti-Teat-ino

Although alternations in the phonological shape of a morpheme may not be the effect of the phonology
of a language, the choice of a particular allomorph or suppletive root can still be phonologically
conditioned (Carstairs 1988; Kiparsky 1994). For instance, the Dutch agentive suffix -aar is selected
after stems ending in the vowel [ ] + l, r, n (that is, in a phonologically defined environment), and the
allomorph -er elsewhere. The Italian verb andare “go” has two suppletive roots: and- when the root is
e
not stressed, and vad- when the root is stressed in the verbal paradigm; see (12). This example illustrates
that the choice between suppletive roots may be phonologically governed as well.

(12) SINGULAR PLURAL

1 . PERS v<do andi á mo

2. PERS v<i and á te
3. PERS v< v á nno

22.2 Morphological Operations

Morphology does not only deal with the analysis of existing words into their constituent pieces. The
language user is able to make new words or forms of words, and it is this form of creativity that is the
focus of morphology. The key notion involved is that of’morphological operation’. This term denotes
a particular kind of linguistic activity, and invokes a dynamic perspective on morphology. Two types
of morphological operations have been discussed so far: compounding and affixation. They are the
prototypical cases of concatenative morphology, in which morphological constituents are
concatenated in a linear fashion. Compounding and affixation are the most widespread types of
morphology since they create words with a high degree of transparency, that is, words of which the
formal morphological structure correlates systematically with their semantic interpretation.
The formal operations available in morphology have several functions. Affixation is used both in
word-formation and in inflection, and this applies to a number of other morphological operations
discussed in this section as well.
For each morphological operation, we have to define the set of base words to which it applies. Often,
the operation is restricted to base words of a particular syntactic category. This is the input category
of the operation. The outputs of an operation also belong to a specific syntactic category. The input
category of the English suffix -able is V, and the output category is A. Hence, verbs are the base words
of the suffix -able. Thus, in the case of derivation, the morphological operation may result in words of
another syntactic category or subcategory than that of the input words. In that case, we speak of a
category-changing or class-changing operation.
If compounding and affixation were the only kinds of morphological operation, morphology could
be said to consist of just one operation— concatenation. In such a view, the elements to be concatenated
are lexemes and affixes. Affixes are provided with a subcategorization feature that specifies with
which kind of morphological elements it has to combine. For instance, the suffix -able will be specified
as [V— ] , which means that it takes verbs to form adjectives.
A

294 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY