T h e s e c o n d g r o u p embraces morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.
The root-morpheme man- found in numerous words like postman['poustmэn], fisherman [fi∫эmэn], gentleman ['d3entlmэn] in comparisonwith the same root used in the words man-ma de ['mænmeid] and manservant['mæn,sэ:vэnt] is, as is well-known, pronounced, differently, the[æ] of the root-morpheme becomes [э] and sometimes disappears altogether.The phonetic reduction of the root vowel is obviously due to thedecreasing semantic value of the morpheme and some linguists argue thatin words like cabman, gentleman, chairman it is now felt as denoting anagent rather than a male adult, becoming synonymous with the agent suffix-er. However, we still recognise the identity of [man] in postman,cabman and [mæn] in man-made, man-servant. Abrasion (истирание) has not yetcompletely disassociated the two, and we can hardly regard [man] as havingcompletely lost the status of a root-morpheme. Besides it is impossibleto say she is an Englishman (or a gentleman) and the lexical oppositionof man and woman is still felt in most of these compounds (cf. thoughMadam Chairman in cases when a woman chairs a sitting and even allwomen are tradesmen). It follows from all this that the morpheme –manas the last component may be qualified as semi-free.
Procedure of morphemic analysis
The procedure generally employed for thepurposes of segmenting words into the constituentmorphemes is the method ofImmediate and UltimateConstituents. This method is based on a binary principle,i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediatelybreaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to asthe Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis isin turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completedwhen we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e.morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are referred to as theUltimate Constituents (UCs). For example the noun friendliness is firstsegmented into the IC friendly recurring in the adjectives friendlylooking
and friendly and the -ness found in a countless number of nouns,such as happiness, darkness, unselfishness, etc. The IC -ness is at thesame time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elementspossessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC friendly is nextbroken into the ICs friend-and -ly recurring in friendship, unfriendly,etc. on the one hand, and wifely, brotherly, etc., on the other. Needless tosay that the ICs friend-and -ly are both UCs of the word under analysis.
In the diagram showing the segmentation of the noun friendliness the lower layer contains the ICs resulting from the first cut, the upper onethose from the second, the shaded boxes representing the ICs which are atthe same time the UCs of the noun.The morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carriedout on thebasis of two principles: the so-called r o o t p r i n c i p l e and the a f f i x p r i n c iple. According to the affix principle thesegmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on theidentification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words; for example,the identification of the suffixational morpheme -less leads to thesegmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixationalmorpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a word-cluster;the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable,agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root -agree- and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-. As a rule, theapplication of one of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentationof words.
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