ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH 2nd Edition
COMITÉ CIENTÍFICO DE LA EDITORIAL TIRANT HUMANIDADES Manuel Asensi Pérez
Catedrático de Teoría de la Literatura y de la Literatura Comparada Universitat de València
Ramón Cotarelo
Catedrático de Ciencia Política y de la Administración de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
M.ª Teresa Echenique Elizondo Catedrática de Lengua Española Universitat de València
Juan Manuel Fernández Soria
Catedrático de Teoría e Historia de la Educación Universitat de València
Pablo Oñate Rubalcaba
Catedrático de Ciencia Política y de la Administración Universitat de València
Joan Romero
Catedrático de Geografía Humana Universitat de València
Juan José Tamayo
Director de la Cátedra de Teología y Ciencias de las Religiones Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Procedimiento de selección de originales, ver página web: www.tirant.net/index.php/editorial/procedimiento-de-seleccion-de-originales
ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH 2nd Edition
MIGUEL FUSTER-MÁRQUEZ SERGIO MARUENDA-BATALLER IULMA/Universitat de València
tirant humanidades Valencia, 2023
Copyright ® 2023 Todos los derechos reservados. Ni la totalidad ni parte de este libro puede reproducirse o transmitirse por ningún procedimiento electrónico o mecánico, incluyendo fotocopia, grabación magnética, o cualquier almacenamiento de información y sistema de recuperación sin permiso escrito de los autores y del editor. En caso de erratas y actualizaciones, la Editorial Tirant Humanidades publicará la pertinente corrección en la página web www.tirant.com.
© Miguel Fuster-Márquez Sergio Maruenda-Bataller
© TIRANT HUMANIDADES EDITA: TIRANT HUMANIDADES C/ Artes Gráficas, 14 - 46010 - Valencia TELFS.: 96/361 00 48 - 50 FAX: 96/369 41 51 Email: tlb@tirant.com www.tirant.com Librería virtual: www.tirant.es ISBN: 978-84-19471-79-6 MAQUETA: Innovatext Si tiene alguna queja o sugerencia, envíenos un mail a: atencioncliente@tirant.com. En caso de no ser atendida su sugerencia, por favor, lea en www.tirant.net/index.php/empresa/politicas-deempresa nuestro Procedimiento de quejas. Responsabilidad Social Corporativa: http://www.tirant.net/Docs/RSCTirant.pdf
Table of contents
PREFACE....................................................................................................................
13
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY 1.1. ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY.......................................................................... 1.2. ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY.................................................................... 1.3. ON (ONLINE) DICTIONARIES AND REFERENCE TOOLS...........
17 18 22
Chapter 2 WHAT’S (IN) A WORD? DEFINITIONS FROM MORPHOLOGY, PHONOLOGY, SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6.
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................... WORDS IN WRITING (ORTHOGRAPHY).......................................... WORDS IN PHONOLOGY....................................................................... WORDS IN SEMANTICS.......................................................................... WORDS IN SYNTAX ................................................................................ A PROTOTYPE THEORY OF WORDHOOD.......................................
27 27 29 30 32 33
Chapter 3 TYPES OF WORDS: DEFINING WORDS ACROSS LINGUISTIC AREAS 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 3.8.
WORD KNOWLEDGE AND WORD COUNT..................................... LEXEMES, WORD FORMS AND GRAMMATICAL WORDS.......... WORDS IN DICTIONARIES.................................................................... WORD FAMILIES....................................................................................... LEXICAL ITEMS......................................................................................... WORD CLASS INFORMATION.............................................................. FUNCTION WORDS VS LEXICAL WORDS........................................ CLOSED CLASSES AND OPEN CLASSES.............................................
35 36 40 41 42 43 44 46
8
Table of contents
Chapter 4 MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHEMES 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4.
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................... THE CONCEPT OF MORPHEME.......................................................... TYPES OF MORPHEMES......................................................................... AFFIXATION IN ENGLISH..................................................................... 4.4.1. Defining properties......................................................................... 4.4.2. Inflectional and derivational affixes.............................................. 4.4.3. Ways of representing word structure............................................ 4.5. ANALYSABILITY AND COMPOSITIONALITY.................................
49 50 53 56 56 59 65 67
Chapter 5 ENGLISH (ALLO)MORPHS 5.1. MORPHEMES, MORPHS, AND ALLOMORPHS................................ 5.2. PHONOLOGICALLY-CONDITIONED ALLOMORPHY................... 5.3. MORPHOLOGICALLY-CONDITIONED ALLOMORPHY AND SUPPLETION.............................................................................................. 5.4. LEXICALLY-CONDITIONED ALLOMORPHY...................................
73 75 78 79
Chapter 6 WORD FORMATION IN ENGLISH 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5. 6.6. 6.7. 6.8. 6.9.
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................... MAJOR WORD FORMATION PROCESSES (A PRECIS).................. DERIVATION.............................................................................................. SOME FEATURES OF DERIVATION..................................................... COMPOUNDING....................................................................................... THE GRAMMAR AND SEMANTICS OF COMPOUNDS................ NEOCLASSICAL COMPOUNDING...................................................... CONVERSION............................................................................................ OTHER WORD-BUILDING TYPES....................................................... 6.9.1. Iconicity............................................................................................ 6.9.2. Back formation................................................................................. 6.9.3. Shortenings....................................................................................... 6.9.3.1. Clipping or truncation..................................................... 6.9.3.2. Initialism............................................................................ 6.9.3.3. Blending.............................................................................
83 84 85 90 95 104 106 108 112 113 115 117 118 119 119
9
Table of contents
Chapter 7 ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGY 7.1. THE IMPORTANCE OF PHRASEOLOGY............................................ 7.2. MULTIWORD UNITS (MWUs): FEATURES AND TYPES............... 7.2.1. Defining properties of MWUs........................................................ 7.2.2. Types of MWUs............................................................................... 7.2.2.1. Compounds....................................................................... 7.2.2.2. Multiword verbs................................................................ 7.2.2.3. Idioms................................................................................ 7.2.2.4. Proverbs, sayings, and similes......................................... 7.2.2.5. Binomials........................................................................... 7.2.2.6. Fixed conversational items or speech formulae........... 7.2.2.7. Collocations...................................................................... 7.2.3. Communicative function................................................................ 7.2.4. Collocations, meaning and flexibility...........................................
121 125 125 126 127 128 129 130 132 132 133 135 136
Chapter 8 LEXICAL MEANING 8.1. WORD MEANINGS AND DICTIONARIES............................................ 8.2. LEXICAL MEANING: LINGUISTIC APPROACHES......................... 8.3. THE CHECKLIST THEORY AND COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS OF MEANING............................................................................................. 8.4. PROTOTYPE THEORY AND FUZZY EDGES..................................... 8.5. MONOSEMY AND POLYSEMY.............................................................. 8.6. POLYSEMY, HOMONYMY, AND AMBIGUITY.................................. 8.7. SENSE RELATIONS AND LEXICAL UNITS......................................... 8.7.1. Synonymy and blocking.................................................................. 8.7.2. Hyponymy and meronymy............................................................. 8.7.3. Incompatibility.................................................................................
141 143 147 149 152 155 158 160 163 164
Chapter 9 LEXICAL CHANGE 9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4. 9.5.
LEXICAL CHANGE: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.................... THE CASE OF NONCE WORDS............................................................. LEXICALISATION AND IDIOMATISATION...................................... AMALGAMATED COMPOUNDS AND UNIVERBATION.............. SEMANTIC CHANGE...............................................................................
171 175 176 177 178
10
Table of contents
9.6. CHANGE THROUGH MEANING EXTENSION: METAPHOR AND METONYMY.................................................................................... 9.7. CONTACT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH...................................................................................................... 9.8. THE ORIGIN OF CORE AND NON-CORE ENGLISH VOCABULARY............................................................................................................. BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................
180 182 187 191
List of tables and figures
Table 4.1.
Classification of English words by morphological structure.......
52
Table 4.2.
Kinds of morphological relationship...............................................
59
Table 4.3.
The eight English inflectional morphemes (adapted from Delahunty & Garvey 2010).....................................................................
60
Table 4.4.
Features of inflectional and derivational affixes.............................
61
Table 6.1.
Affixes: basic contrasting features....................................................
87
Table 6.2.
Stratum 1 and Stratum 2 affixes........................................................
90
Table 6.3.
Sample of Stratum 1 and Stratum 2 affixes.....................................
91
Table 6.4.
Phonological properties of some English suffixes.........................
92
Table 6.5.
English compounds vs Romance NpN constructions..................
98
Table 6.6.
Types of compounds according to their function.........................
103
Table 6.7.
Onomatopoeic words in different languages (adapted from Anttila 1989)..............................................................................................
114
Table 7.1.
BBI (2009) classification of seven types of lexical collocations (adapted, with further examples from MacMillan Collocations Dictionary, 2010).................................................................................
135
Table 8.1.
Componential analysis of the vulpine lexical family (Jackson & Ze Amvela 2000: 107).........................................................................
148
Table 9.1.
Source of words in Contemporary English.....................................
184
Table 9.2.
Loan shifts in Old English (source Hock 1986: 398).....................
187
Table 9.3.
The contribution of language to the core vocabulary of Present-Day English (Hughes 2000: 393).............................................
190
Figure 1.1. Dictionary entry for brash, adapted from the OALD...................
19
Figure 1.2. Example of the word “relation” in the first edition of Roget’s Thesaurus (1852).................................................................................
23
Figure 1.3. Example of the word ‘relation’ in Wordnet (from website)..........
24
Figure 1.4. Example of a word sketch for the word relation in Skell...............
24
Figure 2.1. Diagram tree analysis of sentences...................................................
32
12
List of tables and figures
Figure 4.1. Subdivisions of morphology (adapted from Haspelmath & Sims 2010: 19)...................................................................................... Figure 4.2. Types of morphemes.......................................................................... Figure 6.1. Dressler’s (2005) cline of transparency for compounds (adapted).. Figure 9.1. The noun “house”, source: the online version (modified in 2021) of the OED................................................................................. Figure 9.2. Source of foreign words considering meaning...............................
53 55 101 171 188
PREFACE
Recent linguistic research has been taking a fresh look at the well-known traditional division between lexis and grammar in general language descriptions, challenging some of its theoretical foundations. Often, rather simplistically, speakers and learners have assumed that knowing a language consists principally, on the one hand, in knowing its words and, on the other, in being familiar with the rules to combine them plausibly. In this view, speakers would only need to have an excellent dictionary at hand, where the words and meanings they need or wish to learn can be found, and a grammar, to provide them with the required combinatorial rules that enable them to produce sentences which are judged grammatically acceptable. However, this sharp division between vocabulary and grammar has been challenged, for example, by scholars who work on the contents of the so-called mental lexicon. The mental lexicon is a term or concept often invoked by linguists to refer to some sort of dictionary that all native speakers possess with linguistic material they have memorised to use language efficiently. The trouble is that there is still insufficient knowledge as to what is and what is not memorised, stored, or retrieved by native speakers from their mental lexicon. Do language users memorise only words or do they memorise parts of words too? Do they memorise only simple words or also complex ones? Also, more importantly, do native speakers memorise phrases as chunks, or are these covered by grammar rules which they will readily apply any time they need to use them? Linguistic research has also been enriched by the observation of psycholinguists, who have attempted to describe or explain how the so-called mental lexicon works. To date, there are some certainties, but also many doubts concerning how it operates. There is evidence that speakers do not only store words in their mental lexicon, but
14
Miguel Fuster Márquez & Sergio Maruenda Bataller
also store parts of words, including inflected forms, and even large numbers of word sequences which function as meaning units in themselves. This is a compelling reason for proposing an integrative approach in our description of English, which may treat phenomena previously dealt with separately in different disciplines, namely morphology, lexicology and phraseology, and also meaning issues. As will be shown in this book, morphology centres around the scientific description of morphemes, but morphemes are necessary in the formation of complex words. Words are also the material from which transparent and more opaque phrases, which speakers must learn as wholes, are obtained. A treatment of the meaning of words and phrases is also essential since the primary goal of words in language is to convey meanings. It is pointless to have or create words if they do not have some kind of meaning or function in language. As will be found in these pages, not infrequently there are grey areas in the linguistic treatment of each of the fields that we are putting together here. For example, there is no widely accepted linguistic criterion which can help us to distinguish between compounds and phrases. Also, for example, phraseology, as a new area in linguistics, has not developed a full-fledged, widely accepted linguistic terminology. However, we cannot and wish not to avoid looking into the complexities of concepts present in linguistic forums or avoid offering different or rival interpretations in the subfields dealt with. There is room for much of it in this book. In ordinary conversation, we hear phrases like ‘this is the exception that proves the rule.’ Perhaps in mathematics rules come without exceptions, but in language descriptions it is not unusual to find edge cases or, as linguists often call them, counterexamples. There are many of them, particularly in the most ordinary or basic kinds of discourse. The fact is that many of the generalisations in language descriptions which are reached in theoretical linguistics, although they may seem quite appealing, can also have limited applicability, and exceptions can be found. Today, often, linguists who deal with morphology, vocabulary and phraseology are more inclined to talk about theoretical
Preface
15
models which suggest more or less general tendencies and not rules. It is our hope that such critical awareness will stimulate the interested reader to further autonomous research and analysis. This book starts with a general discussion around lexicology, lexicography, the ‘word’ concept and word types in chapters 1, 2 and 3. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with English morphology. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the formation of English words and phrases. Chapter 8 centres on various aspects of word meaning. Finally, chapter 9 briefly covers lexical and semantic changes in the English language across time. All the various points dealt with in this book and the ensuing discussions can be easily grasped and followed without major theoretical obstacles, and many examples are used to illustrate them. Occasionally, the contrastive features of Romance languages, are brought in to illustrate or highlight differences or similarities between other languages and English. Finally, we would like to thank former students and colleagues because they made us see, for instance, that some linguistic aspects were not treated adequately, or that certain arguments should need refinement. We also want to gratefully acknowledge the constant support and encouragement of our colleagues in IULMA (Instituto Universitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas) at the Universitat de València. We are especially thankful to our colleagues and friends Manuel Pruñonosa (Universitat de València) and Jesús Fernández (Universidad de Granada) for kindly having given us invaluable insights and, more importantly, for warning us of various errors and inconsistencies in earlier drafts. Truth to tell, only in some cases we have stubbornly decided not to follow the sound advice of colleagues and editors. Therefore, we are entirely responsible for any shortcomings which may be detected in the published version. Finally, we wish to thank the NEWSGEN team for their support and encouragement by means of the Grant PID2019-110863GB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY 1.1. ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY Although there is a wealth of research in the field of English Lexicology and is part of the curricula in a great number of universities worldwide, it is fair to say that there is no consensus about its nature or scope. Let us examine a series of definitions provided by dictionaries: (1)
(2)
A branch of linguistics concerned with the semantic structure of the lexicon, hence e.g., with semantic fields and sense relations. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (2014, 3rd ed.) The study of words and their meaning and use. Cambridge Dictionary Online
These definitions seem quite restrictive, since readers are led to understand that lexicology only combines two kinds of information and interests from two well-known linguistic fields such as semantics (‘the study of meaning’) and pragmatics (‘the study of word use’). A rather different view is obtained from the definition in (3): (3)
the study of the overall structure and history of the vocabulary of a language’ Collins Dictionary. (online edition, 2021)
For the Collins Dictionary, a lexicologist is interested in ‘word structure’ (i.e., its morphology), and in word origins (i.e., historical issues). It thus seems that, as portrayed in the above dictionaries, lexicologists are interested in relatively different endeavours. Other dictionary definitions may equally vary in scope and focus. The Oxford Companion to the English Language (4) provides a more comprehensive definition that epitomises the views and practices of many contemporary lexicologists:
18
Miguel Fuster Márquez & Sergio Maruenda Bataller
(4)
An area of language study concerned with the nature, meaning, history and use and word elements and often also with the critical description of lexicography. Although formerly a branch of philology, lexicology is increasingly treated as a branch of linguistics, associated with such terms as lexemes, lexical field, lexical item, lexicon, lexis, on the premise that they offer (or could offer, if tightly defined and widely adopted) a more precise and useful basis for the study of language than imprecise terms such as word and vocabulary. Oxford Companion to the English Language (online edition, 2018, 2nd ed.)
Quite succinctly, we may state that lexicologists are interested in every aspect of the lexis of a given language, but most particularly in providing “a systematic description of vocabulary units” (BednárováGibová 2018: 11). From the above, we can gather that the different linguistic disciplines are interconnected and that the study of words is better understood when analysed in the light of such a relationship. English lexicologists aim to study the vocabulary (or, more technically, the lexicon). It should be noted that both linguists and psycholinguists have used the lexicon to theorise on the structure and content of the so-called native speakers’ ‘mental lexicon’, which enables users to produce and interpret words (Lieber 2016). Thus, the lexicon of a language would consist in “a list of forms that speakers of a language know or memorise” (Aronoff & Fudeman 2011: 112).
1.2. ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY There is apparently more consensus regarding the work of lexicographers. The Collins English Dictionary (CED) defines lexicography as “the process or profession of compiling dictionaries”. Therefore, English lexicography refers to the body of past and present work carried out to compile English dictionaries of various kinds, often describing words from the standpoint of meaning. There is a long-standing tradition of dictionary-making that is rooted in a set of established formal conventions that we will mention
Introduction to English lexicology
19
here in some detail. Besides, we must acknowledge the contribution of Corpus Linguistics to current practices in English lexicography and linguistics, most particularly since the 1960s. In this respect, the use of corpora (i.e., large collections of texts in electronic format) and of more sophisticated corpus-processing software have greatly contributed to the advance of modern lexicographical practice by providing more accurate and updated instances of typical usage. We may say that practically all learners’ dictionaries and most English grammars in the last decades are highly indebted to the data obtained from large corpora. With the sponsoring of publishers, these corpora have increased in size and availability over the years, some of them even storing billions of words. Likewise, carefully designed corpora have provided linguists and lexicographers with evidence of authentic language use (Fuster-Márquez & Clavel-Arroitia, 2010). In spite of their different goals, lexicology and lexicography nurture each other. While it is fair to say that a great deal of the interest in the field of lexicology comes from the invaluable research and practice of lexicographers, it is also true that many lexicologists have been involved in the process of creating dictionaries. This fruitful relationship is evinced by a quick glance at the organisation of word consultation in dictionaries. For example, the short entry of the word brash in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) includes the information below:
Figure 1.1. Dictionary entry for brash, adapted from the OALD
20
Miguel Fuster Márquez & Sergio Maruenda Bataller
The use of the bold type brash is a typical way of listing words in dictionaries, also known as headwords or lemmas. Words chosen as headwords are purely conventional. Educated dictionary users are familiar with those conventions through schooling. English dictionaries tend to use ‘canonical’, ‘base’ forms as headwords. Thus, for instance, in the case of English adjectives, only an invariable form is possible. However, for nouns, it is customary to provide the singular as headword (e.g., man is used to represent both man and men). In the case of verbs, the bare infinitive is used as the canonical form. Thus, the form walk also stands for the derived forms walks, walking or walked. Dictionaries commonly differ in various aspects, such as (1) the number of items listed, (2) the in-depth treatment of these items, and (3) the arrangement of meanings and various other features within the same entry. For instance, the editors of the OALD do not include aspects of word origin, probably because this information is not very relevant for learners of English as a second or foreign language (Atkins & Rundell 2008: 207-208). Note, however, that some of the most prestigious dictionaries today include standard British and/or American pronunciation, in the form of phonological transcription and/or (online) audio pieces. This contrasts, for instance, with the case of a Romance language like Spanish, where lexicographers hardly ever provide phonological transcriptions of Spanish words. This is probably due to the degree of predictability of pronunciation from the written form in this language. The pronunciation of many English words is not straightforwardly deduced from their orthographical representation, while Spanish words show a higher degree of correspondence between speech and writing. Next to the phonological transcription, the italics adj. indicates the word class or lexical category. This information shows that every English word is identified as having a specific syntactic role in phrases, clauses, or sentences. Subsequently, the OALD provides two distinct meanings for this word; that is, this word is treated as having multiple meanings. Importantly, when dictionary makers list several meanings under the same headword, they typically judge these meanings as