of morphemes. (4) Occurs at margins of words. of morphemes. (4) Occurs before any inflectional suffixes added. 3. Content versus Grammatical Morphemes
On a semantic and syntactic basis, morphemes can fall into content and grammatical morphemes (Traugott and Pratt 1980:90; Bolinger and Sears, pp66~70; Hatch and Brown, p267). Content morphemes are lexical morphemes which are used as we see above to derive new words, so also known as derivational morphemes. These morphemes, whether free or bound, have a lexical content, hence the name. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand, function primarily as grammatical markers. They encompass both inflectional affixes and free morphemes such as in, and, do, have, they, -while, -where, but and that, which are traditionally called functional words.
3.4 Identifying Morphemes(词素的区分)
Since morphemes are the minimal distinct units, they should be identifiable by their forms, meaning and distribution. Generally speaking, lexical morphemes are easy to define: Mono-morphemic: land, sky
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Double-morphemic: chill + y, mis + take
Triple-morphemic: anti + govern + ment, sports + man + ship
Four-morphemic: un + friend + li + ness, morph + olog( i) + cal + ly
Over-four-morphemic: inter + nation + al + iz(e) + ation
If the morphemes are always consistent in form and meaning, there should be no difficulty in identification(区分). However, there is often mismatch(不一致) between form and meaning. Some morphemes are identical(相同的) in form but different in meaning, for instance, -er in teacher, clearer and eraser. -er in teacher means 'one who', but -er in clearer indicates 'the comparative degree', and -er in eraser denotes 'an object'. Therefore, -er in each case is a different morpheme.
Some morphemes are not meaningful in isolation(单独) but acquire meaning by virtue of(通过) their connection in words (Fromkin and Rodman, p116). The classic examples are cranberry(越橘), huckleberry (黑果；乌饭树浆果)and boysenberry(博弈增莓), each seeming to be a kind of berry. But when cran-, huckle- and boysen- are isolated, they are meaningless and they are incapable of forming new words with
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other morphemes rather than with berry. There are other morphemes which occur in many words, but their meaning is difficult to define, for instance, -ceive in conceive (想象；设想), perceive(感觉，察觉；认为) and receive. Some forms are meaningful, but not morphemes, such as fl- meaning 'moving light' in flash , flame and flicker(闪烁，忽隐忽现), and gl-meaning 'static light' in glow(发光，燃烧)，glisten (闪耀；反光)and glitter(闪光；光彩夺目). These are only sound symbols often employed by poets in their literary creation but do not qualify as morphemes.
The identification of inflectional morphemes is more problematic. In most cases, an inflectional morpheme can be segmented (切分)from the stem of a word and naturally can be added to the stem like the plural morpheme {s} in gloves, tables and classes. But what is the plural morpheme in men, sheep and feet ? The same is true of the past tense morpheme {ed} , which is explicit and segmentable in walked, loaded and danced. How can we isolate the past tense morpheme from knew, taught and cut ? To solve the problem, we have to resort to other ways.
3.5 Morpheme and Word-formation
We know that words can be analyzed into morphemes,
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which are the minimal meaningful units in the composition of words. In word-formation, however, morphemes are conventionally labeled root, stem, base and affix. 1. Affix
Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. All affixes are bound morphemes because none of them can stand as words in their own right. According to the functions of affixes, we can divide them into inflectional affixes like -s, -ed and -ing, and derivational affixes like pre-, ex-, de-, -less, -dom and -ic. Derivational and inflectional affixes are identical with derivational and inflectional morphemes. In view of their distribution in the formation of words, affixes can fall into prefix and suffix. Prefixes are all derivational, i.e. they are used to form new words whereas suffixes embrace(包括) both derivational suffixes and inflectional suffixes. Accordingly, the above-mentioned affixes can be further grouped into prefixes: pre-, ex- and de-y and suffixes: -less, -dom, -zc, -5, -ed and -ing.
2. Root, Stem, Base
Before we begin our actual discussion of word-building
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processes, there are some basic concepts that need clarifying(澄清). The processes of derivation and compounding involve different word-forming elements: affixes and root or stem or base. Indeed, some people use root or stem undiscriminatingly (不加区别地) on all occasions. But these three terms are not the same, and they denote to a greater or lesser degree different concepts despite the semantic overlapping between them.
A root is the basic form of a word which cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity (Crystal 1985). As mentioned earlier, the root, whether free or bound, generally carries the main component of meaning in a word. In the word internationalists, removing inter- , -at, -ist, -s leaves the root nation. If we further divide nation as * na/tion or * at /ion, though -tion and -ion coincide with the noun suffix, the other part is meaningless and the original lexical identity is totally lost. Therefore, nation defies(使不能；使落空) further analysis. In terms of derivational and inflectional morphology, a 'root is that part of a word form that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed' (Bauer 1983). Take internationalists again. After the removal of the inflectional affix -s and the derivational affixes -ist, -al and inter-, nation is what is left and thus is the root.
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英语专业词汇学课本及标准答案
