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Joined: 06 Oct 2010
Posts: 6
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 Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 5:15 am
Post subject: Morphology - Tree diagram |
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I came across a word " unremarkablity". Should I separate the word into re+mark while mark serves as the root?????
Thanks. |
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Joined: 17 Oct 2007
Posts: 882
Location: New Brunswick, NJ |
Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 9:04 am
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| Hmm, good question -- I would say no. Though re- is a productive affix in English, and the re- in "remark" does stem historically from this affix, I wouldn't say that in modern English we think of "remark" as two separate part, certainly not with a meaning like "to mark again" (that would be re-mark, in which case you would definitely separate it into two morphemes). Thus I'd feel fairly confident in saying that "remark" is a single morpheme synchronically. |
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lxChomsky 
Joined: 12 Jul 2009
Posts: 2677
Location: UK |
Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 9:17 am
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Yeah I can see how that's tricky.
Even some linguistis disagree, I was chatting to a lecturer the other day about cranberry morphemes and they said that if the two morphemes don't split into equally meaningful morphemes then they can't be considered as two morphemes.
This makes sense because the whole point of a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language....
However a different lecturer disagreed saying, although the (for example) "cran" in "cranberry" isn't a recognised meaningful word of English by itself, "berry" certainly is and therefore the word should consist of two morhemes, although one of them is not possible by itself, so it has more in common with a bound morpheme in that it can only exist in combination with "berry". The comparison with a bound morpheme still being one does also make sense (since it specificies in some larger unit the type of berry being referred to, but not in a way like other bound morphemes indicate grammatical meanings like inflectional / derivational affixes).
So I'm not 100% sure either what how to define cranberry morphemes (*note: this is the term linguists use to denote all words that don't separate into meaningful morphemes, not just to the word cranberry ... see the wiki article for more info: Cranberry Morpheme)
Anyway, in this case, definitely one morpheme for "remark". |
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Joined: 06 Oct 2010
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 10:17 am
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[quote="JohnDillinger43"]Hmm, good question -- I would say no. Though re- is a productive affix in English, and the re- in "remark" does stem historically from this affix, I wouldn't say that in modern English we think of "remark" as two separate part, certainly not with a meaning like "to mark again" (that would be re-mark, in which case you would definitely separate it into two morphemes). Thus I'd feel fairly confident in saying that "remark" is a single morpheme synchronically.[/quote]
Cool! That's what I have in mind too  thanks for your reply |
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Joined: 06 Oct 2010
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 10:19 am
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[quote="Alxmrphi"]Yeah I can see how that's tricky.
Even some linguistis disagree, I was chatting to a lecturer the other day about cranberry morphemes and they said that if the two morphemes don't split into equally meaningful morphemes then they can't be considered as two morphemes.
This makes sense because the whole point of a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language....
However a different lecturer disagreed saying, although the (for example) "cran" in "cranberry" isn't a recognised meaningful word of English by itself, "berry" certainly is and therefore the word [i]should[/i] consist of two morhemes, although one of them is not possible by itself, so it has more in common with a bound morpheme in that it can only exist in combination with "berry". The comparison with a bound morpheme still being one does also make sense (since it specificies in some larger unit the type of berry being referred to, but not in a way like other bound morphemes indicate grammatical meanings like inflectional / derivational affixes).
So I'm not 100% sure either what how to define cranberry morphemes (*note: this is the term linguists use to denote all words that don't separate into meaningful morphemes, not just to the word [i]cranberry[/i] ... see the wiki article for more info: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry_morpheme]Cranberry Morpheme[/url])
Anyway, in this case, definitely one morpheme for "remark".[/quote]
I like this point "although the (for example) "cran" in "cranberry" isn't a recognised meaningful word of English by itself, "berry" certainly is and therefore the word should consist of two morheme". Thanks for sharing |
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