organized body of material means that represent linguistic messages. It is opposed to the content plane, which refers to the “world of thought” embodied in language, that is, the organized realm of everything that can be a subject of linguistic communciation. In each plane, glossematics distinguishes between form and substance, dividing language into four spheres, or strata: form of expression, substance of exprеssion, form of content, and substance of content. The form of both planes differs in every language and does not depend on the substance in which the form is manifested. The substance of each plane is defined through the concepts of form (the network of relationships between the elements of a given plane) and material (a certain mass of sounds, other elements, and ideas that is amorphous, and unsegmented but segmentable); the substance is treated as material that has been segmented by form.
The term “expression plane” is usually applied to the realm of sound phenomena, since the oral form of natural language is the chief object of study in linguistic analysis other than glossematics. Glossematic theory, on the other hand, stresses the equality of the phonetic, graphic (in written language), and other substances of expression in which the form of expression may be manifested. The thesis of the isomorphism of linguistic levels is basic to glossematics. At the same time, glossematics regards the levels as not entirely parallel to each other, since in both linguistic planes, along with signifiers and the signified, there exist elements that cannot be correlated in a monosemantic way with entities of the opposite plane. This is precisely what justifies the division of natural language into an expression plane and a content plane; for other semiotic systems, whose inventory does not include nonsign units, such a division is unnecessary.
The 2 planes are inseparably connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of exprеssion. On the other hand the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy and synonymy.
In case of polysemy& homonymy two or more units of plane of contentcorrespond to one unit of plane of expression. In case of synonymy two or more plane of expression correlate to one plane of content.Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. Syntagmatic relations are linear relations between units in a segmental sequence. Morphemes with in the words are connected syntagmatically.
Sintagma it’s a combination of 2 words. There are 4 main types of notional syntagmas:- predicative (subject & predicate)
- objective (verb & it’s object)
- attributive (noun & it’s attribute)
- adverbial (modified notional words as a verb, adjective or adverb with it’s adverbial modifiers.
The lowest level of lingual segments is phonemic: it is formed by phonemes as the material elements of the higher -level segments. The phoneme has no meaning, its function is purely differential: it differentiates morphemes and words as material bodies. Since the phoneme has no meaning, it is not a sign.
Phonemes are combined into syllables. The syllable, a rhythmic segmental group of phonemes, is not a sign, either; it has a purely formal significance. Due to this fact, it could hardly stand to reason to recognise in language a separate syllabic level; rather, the syllables should be considered in the light of the intra-level combinability properties of phonemes.
Phonemes are represented by letters in writing. Since the letter has a representative status, it is a sign, though different in principle from the level-forming signs of language.
Units of all the higher levels of language are meaningful; they may be called "signemes" as opposed to phonemes (and letters as phoneme-representatives).
The level located above the phonemic one is the morphemic level. The morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word. It is built up by phonemes, so that the shortest morphemes include only one phoneme.
The morpheme expresses abstract, "significative" meanings which are used as constituents for the formation of more concrete, "nominative" meanings of words.
The third level in the segmental lingual hierarchy is the level of words, or lexemic level.
The word, as different from the morpheme, is a directly naming (nominative) unit of language: it names things and their relations. Since words are built up by morphemes, the shortest words consist of one explicit morpheme only.
The next higher level is the level of phrases (word-groups), or phrasemic level.
To level-forming phrase types belong combinations of two or more notional words. These combinations, like separate words, have a nominative function, but they represent the referent of nomination as a complicated phenomenon, be it a concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation. Cf., respectively: a picturesque village; to start with a jerk; extremely difficult; the unexpected arrival of the chief.
This kind of nomination can be called "polynomination", as different from "mononomination" effected by separate words.
Notional phrases may be of a stable type and of a free type. The stable phrases (phraseological units) form the phraseological part of the lexicon, and are studied by the phraseological division of lexicology. Free phrases are built up in the process of speech on the existing productive models, and are studied in the lower division of
syntax. The grammatical description of phrases is sometimes called "smaller syntax", in distinction to "larger syntax" studying the sentence and its textual connections.
Above the phrasemic level lies the level of sentences, or "proposemic" level.
The peculiar character of the sentence ("proposeme"
as a signemic unit of language consists in the fact that, naming a certain situation, or situational event, it expresses predication, i.e. shows the relation of the denoted event to reality. Namely. it shows whether this event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a truth or asked about, etc. In this sense, as different from the word and the phrase, the sentence is a predicative unit.
The sentence is produced by the speaker in the process of speech as a concrete, situationally bound utterance. At the same time it enters the system of language by its syntactic pattern which, as all the other lingual unit-types, has both syntagmatic and paradigmatic characteristics.
But the sentence is not the highest unit of language in the hierarchy of levels. Above the proposemic level there is still another one, namely, the level of sentence-groups, "supra-sentential constructions". For the sake of unified terminology, this level can be called "supraproposemic".
The supra-sentential construction is a combination of separate sentences forming a textual unity. Such combinations are subject to regular lingual patterning making them into syntactic elements. The syntactic process by which sentences are connected into textual unities is analysed under the heading of "cumulation". Cumulation, the same as formation of composite sentences, can be both syndetic and asyndetic.We have surveyed six levels of language, each identified by its own functional type of segmental units. If now we carefully observe the functional status of the level-forming segments, we can distinguish between them more self-sufficient and less self-sufficient types, the latter being defined only in relation to the functions of other level units. Indeed, the phonemic, lexemic and proposemic levels are most strictly and exhaustively identified from the functional point of view: the function of the phoneme is differential, the function of the word is nominative, the function of the sentence is predicative. As different from these, morphemes are identified only as significative components of words, phrases present poly-nominative combinations of words, and supra-sentential constructions mark the transition from the sentence to the text.Furthermore, bearing in mind that the phonemic level forms the subfoundation of language, i.e. the non-meaningful matter of meaningful expressive means, the two notions of grammatical description shall be pointed out as central even within the framework of the structural hierarchy of language: these are, first, the notion of the word and, second, the notion of the sentence. The first is analysed by morphology, which is the grammatical teaching of the word; the second is analysed by syntax, which is the grammatical teaching of the sentence.
"morpheme"
I. The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes. Allomorphs.
There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation
analysis. Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.
It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units. The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix -eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.
The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).
The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.
Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.
Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and -less, -y, -ness, -er, re-are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots. Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.
Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the
morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as -ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms. It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.
The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.
Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description. Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment. Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes -able and -ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in -able mean “ capable of beings”.
Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.
Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.
II. Structural types of words.
The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes - the basic units at this level of analysis - and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.
According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups: derived words and compound words - according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable,
etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.
These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.
But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.
