Ex. telephone, telegraph, phonoscope, microscope

The morphemes tele-, graph-, scope-, micro-, phone- are characterised by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar stylistic reference: tele- means ‘far’, graph- means ‘writing’, scope — ’seeing’, micro- implies smallness, phone- means ’sound.’ Comparing words with tele- as their first constituent, such as telegraph, telephone, telegram one may conclude that tele- is a prefix and graph-, phone-, gram- are root-morphemes. On the other hand, words like phonograph, seismograph, autograph may create the impression that the second morpheme graph is a suffix and the first — a root-morpheme.

? they are composed of a suffix and a prefix

Solution: these morphemes are all bound root-morphemes of a special kind and such words belong to words made up of bound roots (do not possess the part-of-speech meaning typical of affixational morphemes).

2. morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.

Ex. The root-morpheme man- found in numerous words like postman [ 'poustmэn], fisherman [ fi∫эmэn], gentleman ['d3entlmэn] in comparison with the same root used in the words man-made ['mænmeid] and man-servant ['mæn,sэ:vэnt] is pronounced, differently, the [æ] of the root-morpheme becomes [э] and sometimes disappears altogether.

Some linguists: man=er (denoting an agent rather than a male adult).

We can hardly regard [man] as having completely lost the status of a root-morpheme. Besides it is impossible to say she is an Englishman (or a gentleman) and the lexical opposition of man and woman is still felt in most of these compounds (cf. though Madam Chairman in cases when a woman chairs a sitting and even all women are tradesmen). It follows from all this that the morpheme -man as the last component may be qualified as semi-free.

holic – semi-suffix (alcoholic, chocoholic, speedoholic)

gate=scandal (Irangate, Camillagate)

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix - er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme - er and the roots teach-, sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

4). The main aim, principles and methods of derivational analysis.

The analysis of the morphemic composition of words defines the ultimate meaningful constituents (UCs), their typical sequence and arrangement, but it does not reveal the hierarchy of morphemes making up the word, neither does it reveal the way a word is constructed, nor how a new word of similar structure should be understood.

Ex. words unmanly and discouragement morphemically are referred to the same type as both are segmented into three UCs representing one root, one prefixational and one suffixational morpheme. However the arrangement and the nature of ICs and hence the relationship of morphemes in these words is different — in unmanly the prefixational morpheme makes one of the ICs, the other IC is represented by a sequence of the root and the suffixational morpheme and thus the meaning of the word is derived from the relations between the ICs un- and manly- (‘not manly’), whereas discouragement rests on the relations of the IC discourage- made up by the combination of the. prefixational and the root-morphemes and the suffixational morpheme -ment for its second IC (’smth that discourages’). Hence we may infer that these three-morpheme words should be referred to different derivational types: unmanly to a prefixational and discouragement to a suffixational derivative.

The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word is known as its derivative structure. Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it differs from it in principle.

According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes:

1. simplexes or simple, non-derived words ( words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs, the morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically non-motivatedand independent of other words).

Ex. hand, come, blue, anxious, theory, public

2. derivatives( words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence derivatives are secondary, motivated units, made up as a rule of two ICs, i.e. binary units).

Ex. words like friendliness, unwifely, school-masterish, etc. are made up of the ICs friendly + -ness, un- + wifely, schoolmaster+-ish. The ICs are brought together according to specific rules of order and arrangement preconditioned by the system of the language. It follows that all derivatives are marked by the fixed order of their ICs.

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