Search results for 'tag:Nouns tag:Morphemes' matching tags 'Nouns' and 'Morphemes'

Re: the smallest unit of meaning in a language...

CalifJim — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:21:31 GMT

But in the following definition even s is considered a meaningful unit. What do you say about it?

I say the same as GG did. The s is considered meaningful at the end of a noun. Its meaning is "more than one". Another very short morpheme is n. At the end of some irregular verbs it makes the past participle: show, shown; take, taken. As GG said, sometimes a particular sound like s (or n) is a morpheme; sometimes it isn't; it's only a morpheme when it has a meaning.

CJ

Re: verbal noun accompany the?

Inchoateknowledge — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 06:50:39 GMT

Hi

Verbal nouns have a verb as a base morpheme. If the attached derivational affixes (morphemes like -ness, pre, etc.) change their syntactic cathegory and the new lexeme is a noun, then you have a verbal noun.
advance + -ment
If the rules of grammar require a definite article to precede them, apply them, not otherwise.

head

Inchoateknowledge — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:10:10 GMT

1. Oddly enough, he went home early.
2. Despite there not being many people at the party, we insisted on staying.

I try to find all the heads in the two sentences.
(Heads will roll.)

1. Let me think, it is phrases that have heads, is it not?
How many phrases are there in the first sentence?
2?
Or productum 6? (there are 6 words in the sentence)
'Oddly enough' is phrase. The head is 'odd', not oddly, because the head is to be a morpheme.
'he went home early' is a phrase.What is the head here? Went. Why? Because went, the morpheme of which is went (the same), determines the syntactic function of the phrase.
'enough, he went' Is it a phrase? I think so. what about this one? I do not think it has syntactical function. So it is futile to speak about the head of it.

Comments?

2. Despite there not being many people at the party, we insisted on staying.

Despite is a conjunctive adverbial, is it? It links two main clauses? Yes, I think.
First clause: 'Despite there not being many people at the party' What is the head?
be? Yes, because being determines the syntactic function of the phrase: noun, and it is a gerund phrase.
The head is 'be' because the lexeme 'being' has the morpheme 'be'. 'Was' is a morpheme too, is it not?
Does it mean 'was' is a head too in the phrase? No, I do not think so, because the tense should be the same.

Comments?

verbal noun

Inchoateknowledge — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:40:54 GMT

Am I correct in saying gerund is a verbal noun?
Going home I met Joe.
Which is the gerund here?
'Going home'? Yes, I think. What is 'going'? A non-finite verb in the gerund phrase the direct object of which is 'a house', nicht war?

Am I correct in saying participle is an adjectival phrase?
'Walking horse'
Walking is a participle, a verbal adjective. 'Walking horse' is a gerund phrase as well.

Swimming in the churning river with broken legs at night is dangerous.
Let us analyze this sentence.
I give it a try and should I be wrong please rectify my mistakes.
Swimming in the river with broken legs at night is a gerund phrase, and is the subject of the sentence.
Swimming in the churning river is a gerund phrase too.
'churning river' is a verbal participle, a noun phrase.
In the churning river is a prepositional phrase.
The churning river is the direct object of the preposition, and a noun phrase.
'with broken legs' is an adverbial
'broken legs' is a verbal participle.
'is' is the finite operator, the verb.
'dangerous' is an adverbial.

let us go for a walk.
To walk is healthy.

walk and to walk are verbs in noun role, and infinitives.

The house at the end of the street.
'at the end of the street' is it an adverbial phrase or an adjectival phrase?
What is the head of the phrase? end?

in linguistics, the head is the morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member.

'a legless chicken' is a phrase.
Let us speak about its head.
According to what the definition of head says, the head of the phrase is, in my opinion, is leg? not 'legless' because it is a compound (lexeme) and not a morpheme.
I do not really get this.
'leg' does not determine the syntactic cathegory of the phrase -- the phrase is adjectival and also noun one. 'leg' is only a noun and not an adjective, so the head of the phrase does not determine anything.
No. 'legless chicken' is not an adjectival phrase. Maybe I have got it now.

Thank you for your patience.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:11:48 GMT

That is not the point of the example. You seem to be reading far too much into my words.

To tell you the truth, I have great difficulty figuring out what your point is. Mainly because you keep taunting other people but refuse to take a position yourself.

In my experience with this word, and many more like it, Japanese people tend to believe that the English word animal is an extremely good equivalent, which it is not for most people. In fact, it is typically a very poor equivalent. Perhaps the fact that it is better than any other simple word is sufficient for you. That is fine with me. I do not consider this ideal, from my perspective. You are free to feel however you do.

Let me take this paragraph apart:

1. Japanese people tend to believe 'animal' is an extremely good equivalent for åç©. (OK, I'll agree with this).
2. For most people, 'animal' is not a good equivalent of åç©. (Er, presumably 'most people' are not Japanese).
3. Fact: 'animal' is typically a very poor equivalent for åç©. (I can see that it's not the only equivalent. As for whether it's a 'very poor equivalent', I find this a rather strong claim that needs a little more to back it up than Anon1's say-so).
4. Fact: 'animal' is a better equivalent for åç© than any other simple word. (Er, this seems to contradict what you said in point 3...unless you feel that a circumlocution would be better.)

In the rest of the paragraph there is (1) one sentence in which you suggest that you do not regard the situation as ideal, and (2) three whole sentences telling me how I "perhaps" think and that you regard yourself as quite aloof to what I think, anyway.

As usual, you do not suggest what your point is in citing this kind of example. If you are referring to the propensity for the Japanese to adhere to "fixed" or "set" translations when translating into (or from) English, I totally agree with you. However, you are far from the first person to notice this, and in any case, I can't see what it has to do with your point about nouns made earlier on.

Or, are you under the impression that Japanese words are monosyllabic?...Do you know the characters for doubutsu, or did you find them on the Internet?

Why do you persist in talking to other people as though you regard them as ignoramuses? Do you realise that you come across as a complete and utter snob?

Incidentally, the Chinese meaning for these characters is a much closer equivalent to the English.

In what way is the Chinese meaning for these characters a closer equivalent to English? The characters are the same and meanings are the same. The "word" is also the same (dongwu å¨ç©).

As far as I can see, the difference does not lie, as you say, in the "meaning" of the characters. It lies in the place of åç© in the larger picture of each language's vocabulary. 'Dong' and 'wu' ('move' and 'thing' in a rough translation) are everyday morphemes/words in Chinese; putting them together creates a relatively transparent, easily apprehended, 'living' combination, whereas in Japanese exactly the same characters in exactly the same combination belong to the non-everyday, less homely stratum of the Japanese vocabulary formed of borrowed vocabulary elements and is a more 'ossified' combination as a result.

I am perfectly happy to accept all of this. It is common knowledge. I am also quite happy to accept that this results in a greater awareness in Chinese of the 'individual life of morphemes', as it were. Words are not set in stone; people are aware of their constituent meanings and there is more freedom to combine them in new or novel ways.

This does not alter the fact that 'dongwu' functions as a single lexical and grammatical unit in Chinese. It is a noun that can act as a subject or an object of a sentence, or modify other nouns. It is quite possible for the characters åç© to accidentally come together in a sentence without actually forming the unit 'dongwu' (animal). For instance, a rather unnatural example (sorry, I can't think of anything better at the moment) might be: å°æåï¼å¥æªåç©åï¼å¥½å 'Xiao pengyou, bie nuodong wupin, hao ma?' ('Little friend, don't move the goods, OK?'), where æªå 'nuodong' means 'move, shift' and ç©å 'wupin' means 'goods'. As far as I can see, there is no reference to animals in this sentence, and no Chinese would for a moment think that there was.

What I have been asking Anon1 to do -- in fact, very persistently asking Anon1 to do -- is tell us how he/she would deal with this kind of phenomenon. If he/she does not want to recognise "words", how does he/she plan to deal with combinations like 'dongwu', 'nuodong', and 'wupin', not to mention many more difficult and abstruse examples? I am waiting for him/her to come up with a new linguistic analysis of Chinese that answers these questions without resorting to "words" (or something effectively similar).

If Anon1 is unable to come up with anything better than a vague and contemptuous dismissal, then I suggest we should forget it. Anon1 keeps telling us we are all wrong; I, for one, would be happier than anyone if he/she could prove it.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Anonymous — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:01:26 GMT

Forbes wrote:

A word about classifiers.

I looked up "classifier" in my dictionary (a very good one) and it does not define it! I turned to dictionary.com and found the following definition:

A word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts, such as counting, that indicates the semantic class to which an item belongs. For example, hon is used in Japanese in counting long slender objects such as sticks or pencils.

I do not think that classifiers in that sense exist in English. Whilst one can say "a head of lettuce" that way of speaking is something of an optional extra and one can say "some lettuce" or even just "lettuce". When you use "a head of" you are not putting "lettuce" into any semantic class, but rather referring to the particular form the lettuce is taking at the moment you are talking about it.

I agree that this definition is simple, but I also consider it to be simplistic.

According to dictionary.com, the meaning of semantic is:

Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language

I do not understand how you consider that Chinese classifiers divide nouns into semantic categories. The Bantu languages do this, but not the Asian languages. Classifiers divide nouns not based on semantic categories, but on arbitrary attributes, the most common one being physical attributes. âLong slender objectsâ is not a semantic distinction, is it? In Chinese, the classier zhang is used for objects that are thin, small, and basically rectangular. Paper fits into this category, and so is counted using zhang. So are things such as blankets and sheets. What is the semantic relationship in your mind between sheets and paper? I consider their relationship to be a sharing of physical attributes, not a relationship of the semantics of the nouns.

Speaking of sheets, there is a noun in English, sheet, that refers to a type of object that is thin, flat, and rectangular. When we count objects of a similar shape, regardless of semantics, the word sheet is often used to assist in counting. For example, when we count paper, we count the number of sheets. When we count plywood, we count the number of sheets. When we count plastic, if it is in the shape of small, thin rectangles, we count the number of sheets. There is no semantic relationship implied, yet this is similar to the Chinese concept of counting objects based on similarity of shape.

When we count objects using the word cattle, we count using their heads. When we count cabbage or lettuce, we often employ the same concept, the similarity of shape with a head to count how many head of lettuce/cabbage. This is in my mind similar to the Chinese system of counting using words that indicate shape, rather than the semantic distinctions that you alluded to.

I do no know any Chinese, but I do know a little Thai. The following are examples of how classifiers work in that language:

English is not like that. I think if you say that English has classifiers you are trying to explain English in terms of Chinese!

Cute. Because you can demonstrate that Chinese uses more classifiers than English, then you think that you have demonstrated that English has no classifiers.

In a very important sense, I quite agree with you. However, I think that your definition is made for utility reasons. If we ignore all of the semantic implications of tense and focus only on structure, then your definition is far more useful than mine. If we wish to probe the semantic implications of tense, then your definition is worthless, as it ignores the situation entirely.

Similarly it is often said that Thai nouns have no plural, but it is equally reasonable to say that they have no singular. It is more useful to say that the noun is invariable and that "barn" can mean "house" or "houses".

Again, you seem to be focusing entirely on superficial structure, without regard to the deep meaning. Thai nouns have a singular form. They never evolved to plural forms. Your definition skirts the issue of what this phenomenon is and why it occurred, and instead focuses on a useful way to describe only the superficial structure. I agree that you definition is useful. I do not think that it is more useful, unless we stipulate that we care only to describe superficial structure, which it does seem that you are doing.

Anyway, I think I had better not get into a discussion about these matters.

Thank you for your participation; it has been a very interesting debate.

OK. Thanks for the talk.

Re: The reform of linguistics

Forbes — Sun, 21 May 2006 12:37:09 GMT

A word about classifiers.

I looked up "classifier" in my dictionary (a very good one) and it does not define it! I turned to dictionary.com and found the following definition:

A word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts, such as counting, that indicates the semantic class to which an item belongs. For example, hon is used in Japanese in counting long slender objects such as sticks or pencils.

I do not think that classifiers in that sense exist in English. Whilst one can say "a head of lettuce" that way of speaking is something of an optional extra and one can say "some lettuce" or even just "lettuce". When you use "a head of" you are not putting "lettuce" into any semantic class, but rather referring to the particular form the lettuce is taking at the moment you are talking about it.

I do no know any Chinese, but I do know a little Thai. The following are examples of how classifiers work in that language:

(I) have	children	two	persons
mee	look	sorng	khon
	noun	number	classifier

there are	houses	two	buildings
mee	barn	sorng	lang
	noun	number	classifier

English is not like that. I think if you say that English has classifiers you are trying to explain English in terms of Chinese!

You also say that the Chinese verb has a present tense. Again going by the example of Thai, I think it is more useful to say that the verb is invariable for tense, as well for for person, number, mood, etc. Alternatively, one could say that it has only one tense if by tense you mean "form". (We can get into difficulty here as many linguists use "tense" in that narrow sense and insist that English only has two tenses.)

Anyway, I think I had better not get into a discussion about these matters.

Thank you for your participation; it has been a very interesting debate.

Re: asking about these words?

rvw — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 02:59:11 GMT

Soulwhisper wrote:

first of all....hi am a new member here from saudi arabia...and am taking morphology...and i have few questions need answers . first what can we consider the word..writings..in the sentence HIS WRITINGS WAS PUBLISHED IN ...is it right to say its containing lexical derivational morpheme and grammatical too. also can we say its result of conversion...and PUBLISHED can we call it a base.....thats all and thanks...: )

Some (most?) of us at this forum are not professional linguists, and so cannot answer your question.

On a more basic level, the phrase should be His writings were published in .... (plural noun requiring a plural verb), or His writing was published in .... (singular noun requiring a singular verb).

The word writing is from the gerund of write. One of its meanings is a written composition: a book, pamphlet, poem, article, or other literary production: publication. ---Webster's Third New International Dictionary.

Many verbs can have nouns (gerunds) made from them by the addition of ing. For example, run and running, hammer and hammering. Writing and running have their own entries in the dictionary; hammering does not. Perhaps writing and running have acquired sufficient independence and additional meanings to be considered separate from write and run. Is this what is meant by a lexical derivational morpheme?

I am even less clear about published. I can tell you that were published is an example of the passive voice, formed by a form of the verb to be and the past participle of the main verb.

a vocabulary question

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:07:26 GMT

hello friends.i have to do a task homework..would you please help me? thank you

consider what problems of analysis ,or recognition,or of relating them to other forms of same word a learner might have with them.for example:

word: redemption

morphemes:redeem+noun suffix -tion

problems:recognizing that redem(p) is a variant of them

wordslentiful , dismayed , disappoint , include, ridden, strode

friens thank you

Re: "Basic" morphology questions

fredsweden — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 16:34:12 GMT

Thanks... I guess that's the way it should be. The problem with dis-illusion is that "disillusion" is a verb and not a noun. 'Illusion' is of course a noun, but there's no way a verb can be created by adding dis- to a noun... This is what has me confused - especially because it feels very wrong to claim that "disillusion" is a morpheme on its own.