Relat-ion-ship legal-ize

Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished: complete, conditional and defective.

Types of segmentability:

4. complete segmentability – you can easily split a word, the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word lending themselves easily to isolation.

Ex. adult-hood

star-dom

relat-ion-ship

ex-pos-able

mis-apply

5. conditional – semantically is not possible

Ex. re-ceive

de-ceive

ceive looks like a root, but it is not a root, segmentation is doubtful

ceive is pseudo morphene

re-tain, con-tain, de-tain ( the sound-clusters [ri-], [di-], [кэn-] seem, on the one hand, to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes re-, de- as found in words like rewrite, re-organise, deorganise, decode neither the sound-clusters [ri-] or [di-] nor the [-tein] or [-si:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. The type of meaning that can be ascribed to them is only a differential and a certain distributional meaning: the [ri-] distinguishes retain from detain and the [-tein] distinguishes retain from receive, whereas their order and arrangement point to the status of the re-, de-, con-, per- as different from that of the -tain and - ceive within the structure of the words.)

barbar-ian

re-quire

3. defective segmentation – components never occur in other words or very seldom, one the component morphemes is a unique morpheme in the sense that it does not, as a rule, recur in a different linguistic environment.

Ex. en-hance

hance is a unique morpheme

ham-let - деревушка

dis-may

straw-berry

cran-berry

rasp-berry

A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning. There is no doubt that in the nouns streamlet (ручеек), ringlet (колечко), leaflet, etc. the morpheme -let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes stream-, ring-, leaf-, etc. each having a clear denotational meaning. Things are entirely different with the word hamlet. The morpheme -let retains the same meaning of diminutive-ness, but the sound-cluster [hæm] that is left after the isolation of the morpheme -let does not recur in any other English word with anything like the meaning it has in the word hamlet. It is likewise evident that the denotational and the differential meaning of [hæm] which distinguishes hamlet from streamlet, ringlet, etc. is upheld by the denotational meaning of -let.

The same is exemplified by the word pocket which may seem at first sight non-segmentable. However, comparison with such words as hogget (ягненок), lionet (ягненок), cellaret (погребок), etc. leads one to the isolation of the morpheme -et having a diminutive meaning, the more so that the morphemes lock-, hog-, lion-, cellar-, etc. recur in other words (cf. hog, hoggery; lion, lioness; cellar, cellarage). At the same time the isolation of the morpheme -et leaves in the word pocket the sound-cluster [роk] that does not occur in any other word of Modern English but obviously has a status of a morpheme with a denotational meaning as it is the lexical nucleus of the word. The morpheme [роk] clearly carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes pocket from the words mentioned above and thus must be qualified as a unique morpheme.

Morphemes may be classified:

a) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes:

1. root-morphemes(the root-morphemes are understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable. The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Besides it may also possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes ¹ except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach- in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- in theory, theorist, theoretical)

2. non-root or affixational morphemes(include inflectional morphemes or inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building various types of stems — the part of a word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes.

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning).

b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types:

1. free morphemes(coincide with the stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend — of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend).

2.bound morphemes(occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the prefixes un-, dis-, de-, etc. (e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise; unnatural, to displease, to decipher).

All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical, etc., barbar- in barbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive in conceive, perceive, etc.

3. semi-free (semi- bound) morphemes(can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme.

Ex. the morpheme well and half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour,” on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.

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