Grammatical meaning of morphemes in English and Russian languages

 

 

Grammatical meaning of morphemes in       English and Russian languages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madina Turdieva ELL-3 

 

                                               

Plan: 

1. Introduction………………………………………………………3
2. Morphemes in English language…………………………………5
3. Morphemes in Russian language………………………………....7
4. Lexical and Grammatical Meaning of Morphemes………………9
5. Inflexions and Derivational morphemes in English language……9
6. Inflexions in Russian language …………………………………..11
7. Conclusion………………………………………………………..13
8. Bibliography……………………………………………………...14

 

 

Introduction

     In elementary school, we all studied Russian language. What is a morpheme - that's one of the issues being addressed by linguistics. The term "morpheme" entered into science Russian-Polish linguist Ivan Baudouin de Courtenay.

     Baudouin de Courtenay made a revolution in the science of language: to him [4] in linguistics dominated historical trend - languages ​​studied solely on written records. He's in his work proved that the essence of language - in speech activity, and therefore, it is necessary to study living languages ​​and dialects. The only way to understand the mechanism of functioning of the language and to check the linguistic theories.

      Baudouin de Courtenay for many years studied the different Indo-European languages, wrote his scientific works not only in Russian and Polish, but also in German, French, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian and other languages. Working in expeditions that studied Slavic languages ​​and dialects, he fixed their phonetic features. His discoveries in the field of comparative (typological) analysis of Slavic languages ​​have anticipated the emergence of ideas that later found their way into the works of eminent typological slavicist Jakobson. These studies Baudouin de Courtenay (including the ideas of younger colleagues who died early, a talented NV KRUSZEWSKI - as the Poles working in Kazan), a theory of phonemic and phonetic alternations. The theory outlined in his "Essay phonetic alternations" (1895). It was a logical continuation of the established scientist’s theory of writing. Thus, Baldwin made a founder of the theory of phonology and predecessor N. Trubetzkoy.

     Baudouin de Courtenay was the first to apply mathematical models in linguistics. Proved that the development of language can be affected, not just passively record all the changes taking place in them. On the basis of his work, a new direction - experimental phonetics.

     Prepared by the third and fourth edition of the dictionary VI Dahl, explaining the etymology, correcting the division into the slot (Dahl often arbitrary), and supplementing it with new words, including by making a vulgar Dahl was absent in the selected language. For the additions was heavily criticized in the Soviet era, "Boduenovsky dictionary Dahl" is not reprinted. Reprints Soviet period are based on the original text of the second edition of the dictionary Dahl; Baudouin version is usually considered to be a separate dictionary.

   

     What is a morpheme? Morpheme word derived from the Greek «morphe» - «form." Morpheme - is the smallest unit of a language not independent.

      Morpheme can be binding (the roots) and optional (affixes).

     Root - a significant part of the word. Without roots, with few exceptions, does not exist and the word itself. A word may consist of a root or roots and affixes.

    Affix - an auxiliary part of a word. Affixes alone can not form a new word (at least in the Russian language), they are attached to the root. Together they form the roots of new words or forms of words.

Affixes are divided by their position relative to the root word. For example, they may be placed before the root - the prefixes. In the Russian language prefixes are also called set-top boxes.

    In English language as we know also we studied morphemes. And also English language has roots, affixes.

   Maybe someone doesn’t distinguish morphemes and phonemes. Someone maybe could ask, what is different between phoneme and morpheme. Answer: 

    A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has meaning. For example Cats has two morphemes- cat (singular) and -s (plural). Uneventful has three morphemes. event, -ful, and un-. Each morpheme changes the meaning of the word.  
    A phoneme is the sound that can change the meaning of a word. For example cat and cut are two different words because they have two different phonemes, the sound "a" and the sound "u".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       Morphemes in English language

Morpheme - is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. The word reopened consists of three morphemes.

One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- (meaning ‘again'), and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed (indicating past tense). Morphemes should not be confused with syllables. For example, the word elephant has three syllables but is just one morpheme.

 

 

Free morphemes - can stand by themselves as single words. These are technically separate English word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. When combined with bound morphemes the free morphemes are called ‘stems'. In some words identified stems cannot stand alone and are called ‘bound stems' (receive, deceive, perceive).

Lexical morphemes - set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that carry the ‘content' of the message we convey. This is an ‘open' class of morphemes because we can add new words to the language easily (girl, tiger, sincere, play, e-mail, blog).

Functional morphemes - consist of functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. This is a ‘closed' class of morphemes because we almost never add new functional words to the language (and, he, the, above).

Bound morphemes - cannot stand alone and are typically attached to another form. They can be both prefixes and suffixes (re-, un-, dis-, pre-, -ness, -less, -ly).

Derivational morphemes - make new words of a different grammatical category from a stem (noun care can be changed to adjectives careful, careless; and the latter can be changed to an adverb carelessly).

 

     Inflectional morphemes - indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. There are eight inflectional morphemes in English. They are all suffixes. Two inflectional morphemes can be attached to nouns, -‘s (possessive case), -(e)s (plural). Four inflections can be attached to verbs, -(e)d (past tense), -ing (present participle), -en(past participle), -s (3rd person singular). Two inflections can be attached to adjectives, -er (comparative), -est (superlative).

     In the sentence The child's wildness shocked the teachers, we can identify eleven morphemes.

     There are some different between morphemes in English and Russian languages. And I want to show you it. You already seen my examples in English morphemes, and I will show you different in Russian language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     

                             Morphemes in Russian language

 

    Morpheme - the smallest linguistic unit, which has a value:

In Russian language morphological analysis do like you see above.

      Square - the main part of the word significant. Is a mandatory part of any word - does not exist without a root word (except for the rare secondary formations with the lost Russian roots type "you-well-be (prefix-suffix-end)"). The root morpheme can form a word, accompanied by affixes, or independently.

 

 

    Prefix - the square root. Clarify the meaning of the root pass lexical meaning, and sometimes express grammatical meaning (eg, the kind of verbs). The traditional name in the Russian language - the console.

 

 

     Suffixes - derivational (word composition). Transmit and lexical, and (often) a grammatical meaning. Can translate a word from one part of speech to another (transposes the function).

    

      More difficult in Russian language is this rules. Because in English language there little bit easy with suffixes and prefixes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lexical and Grammatical Meaning of Morphemes

     Lexical morphemes are those that having meaning by themselves (more accurately, they have sense). Grammatical morphemes specify a relationship between other morphemes. But the distinction is not all that well defined. Nouns, verbs, adjectives ({boy}, {buy}, {big}) are typical lexical morphemes. Prepositions, articles, conjunctions ({of}, {the}, {but}) are grammatical morphemes.

Free and Bound Morphemes

      Free morphemes are those that can stand alone as words. They may be lexical morphemes ({serve}, {press}), or grammatical morphemes ({at}, {and}). Bound morphemes can occur only in combination—they are parts of a word. They may be lexical morphemes (such as {clude} as in include, exclude, preclude) or they may be grammatical (such as {PLU} = plural as in boys, girls, and cats).

 

 

 

               Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes in English language

       We can make a further distinction within the set of morphemes that are both bound and grammatical. Bound  grammatical morphemes (those that don’t have a sense by themselves and, additionally, always occur in combinations) are commonly known as affixes.  They can be further divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.

Here is some of the evidence for the distinction between inflectional and derivational affixes (the book has more):

Inflectional Affixes

• All are suffixes
• Have a wide range of application. E.g. most English nouns can be made plural, with {PLU}
• All native to English (since Old English was spoken around 500-1000 AD

 

Derivational Affixes

• May be either suffixes or prefixes
• May have a wide or narrow range
• Many were adopted from Latin, Greek, or other languages. (Though others, especially the suffixes, are native, including {ful}, {like}, {ly}, and {AG})

 

Inflectional Affixes

English has only eight inflectional affixes:

{PLU} = plural Noun -s boys

{POSS} = possessive Noun -’s  boy’s

{COMP} = comparative Adj -er older

{SUP} = superlative Adj -est oldest

{PRES} = present Verb -s walks

{PAST} past Verb -ed walked

{PAST PART} = past participle Verb -en driven

{PRES PART} = present participle Verb -ing driving

Notice that, as noted above, even irregular forms can be represented

morphologically using these morphemes.  E.g. the irregular plural sheep is

 

 

written as {sheep} + {PLU}, even though the typically form of {PLU} is not used here.

Similarly, better = {good} + {COMP}; drove = {drive} + {PAST}.

 

Derivational Affixes

 

There are an indefinite number of derivational morphemes.

For example, the following are some derivational suffixes:

 

{ize} attaches to a noun and turns it into a verb: rubberize

{ize} also attaches to an adjective and turns it into a verb: normalize

{ful} attaches to a noun and turns it into an adjective: playful, helpful

{ly} attaches to an adjective and turns it into an adverb: grandly, proudly

A different {ly} attaches to a noun and changes it into an adjective: manly, friendly

English also has derivational prefixes, such as:

{un}, {dis}, {a}, {anti}, all of which indicate some kind of negation: unhappy, dislike, atypical, anti-aircraft.

 

Inflectional Affixes Again

 

    {PLU}   plural nouns are repented as root + {PLU}, whether or not {-s} is

actually added to the root.

    {POSS}  possessive nouns are root + {pass}, whether or not {-s} is added. It’s a historical accident that both these affixes sound the same.

    {COMP} and {SUP}. Comparative and superlative adjectives.  Happier = {happy}

+ {COMP}; happiest = {happy} + {SUP}.  Arguably, most beautiful = {beautiful} +

{SUP}

The remaining inflectional affixes are attached to verb stems, forming present

and past tenses, and present and past participles:

 Webster’s dictionary defines a participle as “a word having the characteristics of

both verb and adjective; especially an English verbal form that has the function

of an adjective and at the same time shows such verbal features as tense and

voice and capacity to take an object.”

Our examination of inflectional affixes thus leads us into a discussion of the

various morphological forms that verbs can take, though this topic can’t be fully

 

explored until we deal with the topic of Syntax.

 

   

 

 

 

  Inflexions in Russian language

    

       In Russian language a little bit another with inflexions. For example: nouns, numerals and personal pronouns (no excuse go along with it) - and the number of deaths;

in adjectives, participles, some pronouns - case, number, gender;

verbs in the present and future tense - the person and number, and in the past tense - gender and number.

Closing may be zero, that is, that which is not expressed sounds. It is found when comparing the forms of a word. In the nominative ending zero (like any other in oblique cases) means that the noun horse, the eagle is used in the form of the nominative, singular, masculine 2nd declension.

At the core of an independent word can be identified significant part of the word: prefix, root, suffix.

      In linguistics, - adding the final morpheme to the word in order to express grammatical form and function. In the so-called synthetic languages ​​(eg Latin), the use of flexion - the main mode of expression, in analytical languages ​​(such as English), this is relatively rare.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

      All this different between English and Russian morphemes I found, it only little blob in the sea. I wrote here in short and general meaning. In   this research I hope you will find cognitive things, which will help you with morphemes. 

 

 

 

Bibliography

1. N. V. Novicova “Russian language”
2. http://www.livelib.ru
3. Mel'čuk, I. Course of general morphology. Tm. 1 - 5. M. 1998-2006.
4. J. Bernard “Morphology”