Re: Can / Could and Will / Would

equivocal — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:29:15 GMT

1. 'Last week, I may go sailing.'

I find this sentence baffling: it seems to contradict itself. The contradiction seems to reside in the opposition of 'may' and 'last week'. I myself would describe this as a conflict of context (past) and tense (non-past). How would you describe it?

The cotradiction lies not in tense, but in the application of modality. The modal 'may' can roughly be translated to mean "there is a possibility that". Even if you had uttered "Last week, I might have gone sailing"/"Last week I might go sailing", it would still be semantically strange. "Last week" defines your time-frame, which is in past time. So, for all purposes of discussion, barring amnesia or something, you already know the outcome of the possibility of going sailing. So stating that "there is a possibility" which translates into uncertainty, is rather odd.

So, to utter sentence 1. would not be grammatically incorrect; it is perfectly well-formed, but semantically unsound. To make it semantically sound, you would use "would":

1a. Last week, I would have gone sailing but it rained.

Assuming you were to utter:

1b. *Last week, I will go sailing.

This would be ungrammatical, but not ill-formed syntactically but semantically coherent because the modal will express modality, not tense. Consider:

2. Last week, I wanted to go sailing.

Now, here you still have a past time frame, but you have a present-tense verb. This is because the infinitival-to clause "blocks" tense agreement on the main verb. So syntactictically, the main verb is in present-tense but semantically, it still is in past time.

It seems to me that the arguments that have been used to demonstrate that modal verbs are tenseless could also be used to demonstrate that non-modal verbs are tenseless. How then may we demonstrate that, on the contrary, non-modal verbs do carry tense?

I've been talking about syntactic and semantic tense here and there but I think I have failed to explain what I actually mean. I will assume by non-modal verbs to mean main verbs and not auxiliary ones.

Syntactic tense is simply the agreement on a verb. This can be due to overt or implicit factors:

3a. I go to the market.
3b. I went to the market.

The only difference in these sentences are the main verbs. Here, the motivation for the tense change is due to the fact that you want to express an event that took place in past time. This is semantic tense: the event with respect to speech time. Now consider:

4a. I went to the market and bought some vegetables.
4b. I went to the market to buy some vegetables.
4c. I went to the market with the purpose of buying some vegetables.

Here we see the main verb in its various forms, but all referring to the same event, that is: buying vegetables at the market. Therefore the past, present and progressive forms don't actually refer to the past, present and progressive per se, but because the verb "buy" is uncontrolled in 4a, to-controlled in 4b and of-controlled in 4c. This is what I mean by syntactic tense.

To demonstrate that main verbs to carry tense, we can refer to 3a and 3b. There is no other way of expressing different semantic tense other than by using the past form of the verb.

5a. I can go to the market.
5b. I could go to the market.

Despite the different syntactic-tenses on the modal, neither 5a or 5b gives the interpretation that 'go' is in past time. In some languages like Turkish, modals of necessity (must, shall etc) are simply inflections. In Chinese which is uninflected and therefore do not have tense, the "tense" of the entire proposition depends on whether a time marker has been specified.

On the question of 'proof' and 'hypothesis': the position on the one side is that 'all modal verbs are always tenseless'; on the other, that 'modal verbs are sometimes tenseless'.

The analogy with plural forms would be with one hypothesis that stated that 'all plurals were formed by adding S', and another that said that 'plurals are sometimes formed by adding S'.

It would suffice to find one example of a plural form that didn't have an S to disprove the former hypothesis, and prove the latter.

That is correct. However, if someone comes along and asks you how to form English plurals, you would probably say, "add an -s behind". Then go about describing the irregularities. What I want to say is that there are few rules in languages that are absolute. It all depends on what the regular trend is and that trend is adopted as a rule, with the exceptions wrapped around. Learners (EFL and ESL) included then abstract from these rules, then memorise the irregularites.

eq

Re: Morphology

wumanfu — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 08:15:04 GMT

Hi, this is just a cut & paste job from various internet resources:
1 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
2 The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar
3 Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
4 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (7 parts)
5 Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage
6 Merriam-Webster Unabridged
References
1 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
morpho- comb. form of Gr. morph shape, form, as in morphology (XIX).
2 The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar
morphology The study of word formation. Traditionally Morphology (concerned with the internal rules of words) contrasts with SYNTAX (concerned with the rules governing the way words are put together in sentences). Morphology itself covers two main types of word formation: INFLECTION, concerned with changes to an individual lexeme (which remains âthe same wordâ) for grammatical reasons (e.g. showing number or tense) and DERIVATION, which is concerned with the formation of one word from another (e.g. by the addition of an affix). â¢ morphological, morphologically.
3 Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
MORPHOLOGY. In LINGUISTICS, the study of the structure of words, as opposed to SYNTAX, the study of the arrangement of words in the higher units of phrases, clauses, and sentences. The two major branches are inflectional morphology (the study of inflections) and lexical morphology (the study of WORD-FORMATION). See ACCIDENCE, INFLECTION, LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, MORPHEME.
4a The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
morphology. The study of the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them. Thus a morphological analysis will divide girls into girl and -s, which realizes âpluralâ; singer into sing and -er, which marks it as a noun denoting an agent. A category is âmorphologicalâ if it is realized within words. Thus morphological case is case as realized by different elements within nouns or words of other classes, as opposed to case roles realized by independent words or word order; a morphological causative is a causative form of a verb as opposed to a causative construction, and so on.
4b The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
âsplit morphology hypothesisâ. The view, held widely but challenged within Lexical Morphology, that inflectional and derivational morphology are in principle separate.
4c The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
Non-Catenative Morphology. Account of morphology developed by J. J. McCarthy in the early 1980s by analogy with Autosegmental Phonology. Basically a technique for representing systems such as that of Arabic, in which, e.g. the word for âbookâ (Egyptian Arabic [kita:b]) and the word for âhe wroteâ [katab] have the same consonantal root (kâ¦tâ¦b) but two different patterns of vowels. In the representation proposed the root is assigned to one tier, analogous to those of Autosegmental Phonology, and the vowel pattern to another; both units will then be realized discontinuously.
4d The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
Natural Morphology. A broad approach to morphology, developed especially in Germany and Austria from the early 1980s, in which both the structural tendencies of languages in general, and the specific processes of change in individual languages, are explained in part by the operation of hypothetically universal laws of naturalness. Thus it is easier to understand words if their morphological structure is transparent: hence, in particular, if categories are realized by affixes (English bake-d or hen-s) rather than e.g. by vowel change (English took or men). In that sense affixation is more natural: hence, in languages generally, it is the commonest process and, as specific languages change, the tendency, all else being equal, is for its scope to increase. E.g. in the history of English, plurals with affixes, like cows, have tended to replace ones that are less transparent, like kine. By other proposed laws, it is natural e.g. that a plural, which is marked (1) in opposition to a singular, should be realized by the presence rather than the absence of an affix: plural hen-s vs. singular hen, not plural hen vs. singular hen-s. Hence, again, this pattern is found more widely across languages, and, again, specific changes will tend towards it. Laws such as these reduce to a general principle of iconicity. But one law may conflict with another, and conflicts may be resolved in different ways in different types of language. Moreover, any law may conflict with structures inherent in a specific system. Hence all apply, as above, âall else being equalâ.
4e The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
Lexical Morphology. View of morphology current especially in the USA, within a broadly generative framework. The basic unit is the morpheme; words have a constituency structure of which morphemes are the minimal elements; and, in the extreme version, the entire construction of words, including those aspects that are traditionally called inflectional, belongs to an account of the lexicon. The belief that this version is correct is the Strong (or Strict) Lexicalist Hypothesis.
4f The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
inflectional morphology. Branch of morphology concerned with inflections: hence especially with both the semantic and the formal structure of paradigms. An inflectional affix is similarly an affix described as an inflection, a process by which e.g. such an affix is added is an inflectional formation, and so on. Opp. derivational morphology. But the distinction has often been challenged, e.g. in Lexical Morphology.
4g The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics
derivational morphology. Branch of morphology concerned with the derivation of one word in the lexicon from another: e.g. that of hanger from hang, or of countess from count. In these examples, -er and -ess are derivational affixes, and the processes of which they are part are derivational formations. Traditionally distinguished from inflectional morphology ; also from the formation of compounds.
5 Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage
morphology is the study of the structure and form of words. It includes both inflection (how words change their forms according to grammatical function, e.g. come, comes, came, etc.) and derivation (how one word is formed from another, e.g. unhelpful from helpful and helpful in turn from help).
6 Merriam-Webster Unabridged
morphology
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -es
Etymology: German morphologie, from Greek morph- (from morph
emacron form) + German -logie -logy â [more at]
FORM
1 a : a branch of biology that deals with the form and structure of animals and plants : a study of the forms, relations, metamorphoses, and phylogenetic
development of organs apart from their functions â [see
ANATOMY]
; compare
PHYSIOLOGY
b : the features comprised in the form and structure of an organism or any of its parts
2 a : a study and description of word-formation in a language including inflection, derivation, and compounding -- distinguished from syntax b : the system
of word-forming elements and processes in a language
3 a : a study of the structure or form of something
b : the structure or form of something :
MAKEUP
settlements bore a strong resemblance to those of New England -- G.T.Trewartha>
4 : the external structure of rocks in relation to the development of erosional forms or topographic features :
GEOMORPHOLOGY
5 a : the study of the development of the forms of crystals b : the assemblage of forms on a crystal

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Re: Can / Could and Will / Would

Re: Morphology