Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
Summary
Arbitrary relation of forms and lexical meanings; vs natural relations in grammar. Iconicity. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions.
Central and peripheral categories. Ordering of markers. In Verb in Italian: Person and Number formally and semantically linked; Tense formally and semantically more central. Iconicity a tendency, not a law. Ordering of Plural and Case in Turkish; of lexical and inflectional formatives. Implications for allomorphy: tendency for central features to affect marking of more peripheral. Illustrations from Verb in Latin.
Marked and unmarked. Marking of Number in Nouns: in English and Turkish; in cumulative systems; Plural and Singular semantically marked and unmarked. Periphrasis in Latin; correspondence with semantics of Voice and Aspect. Some Verbal endings in Modern Greek: 3rd Person unmarked in relation to 1st and 2nd; formal correspondents (hierarchy of sonority in vowels). Marking of Person and Number in Italian. Iconicity a factor in historical explanation?
One of the oldest findings about language is that the forms of lexical elements generally do not bear a natural relation to their meanings. As Hermogenes put it in a dialogue by Plato, the names of things are justified by nothing more than rule and custom. In particular, words with similar meanings have arbitrarily different forms. Not only is English horse different from French cheval or German Pferd; it also bears no resemblance to semantically related forms like mare, or foal, or cow, and so on.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Morphology , pp. 223 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991