TYPES OF WORD-SEGMENTABIUTY

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

Complete segmentability is characteristic of a great number of words, the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word and can be easily isolated. The morphemes making up words of complete segmentability are called morphemes proper or full morphemes. The transparent morphemic structure of the segmentable words endless, useless is conditioned by the fact that their constituent morphemes recur with the same meaning in a number of other words: an end, to end; use, to use and nameless, powerless.

Conditional segmentability characterizes words whose segmentation into the constituent morphemes is doubtful for semantic reasons. In the words retain, detain or receive, deceive the sound- clusters — [n-], [di-] seem to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words. On the other hand, they have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes re-, de- which are found in the words rewrite, reorganise, decode, deorganize. Neither the sound-clusters [ri-], [di-] nor the [-tein], [-si:v] possess any lexical or part-of-speech meaning of their own. The types of meaning that can be ascribed to them is differential and distributional: the [n-] distinguishes retain from detain and the [-tern] distinguishes retain from receive, whereas their order and arrangement point to the status of the re-, de- as different from that of the -tain and –ceive within the structure of the words. The morphemes making up words of conditional segmentability do not rise to the status of full morphemes for semantic reasons and that is why are called pseudo-morphemes or quasi-morphemes.

Defective segmentability is the property of words whose component morphemes seldom or never recur in other words. One of the component morphemes of these words is a unique morpheme in the sense that it does not recur in a different linguistic environment.

A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning. In the word hamlet (деревушка) the morpheme -let has the meaning of diminutiveness. This morpheme occurs in the words ringlet, leaflet, streamlet. The sound-cluster [h m-] that is left after the isolation of the morpheme -let does not recur in any other English word. The morpheme ham- carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes hamlet from streamlet, ringlet. This morpheme is qualified as unique.

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