Rules Of Word Formation-Pullet Surprise

MORPHOLOGY & SYNTAX

(Fifth Semester)

Rules Of Word Formation- Pullet Surprise

INTRODUCTION

Morphology is the study of word structure. It interacts with syntax and phonology. Morphological rules is a linguistics rule for the formation of words. The morphological rules of English play as an important rule, because it works forming original word to be new words. And then some of the new words will be entered into English Dictionary as non productive words or grammatical words, and the other new words will be not entered into English dictionary as non productive words or ungrammatical words. By using the morphological rules such as lexical gaps, derivational morphology, and pullet surprise, we will create many words. So, in this paper will be discussed the morphological rules till creating new words and then some of them will enter to English dictionary.

DISCUSSION

Rules of Word Formation

            Morphological rules are a linguistics rule for the formation of words. There are many ways to create new words enter English dictionary by using the morphological rules such as lexical gaps, derivational morphology, and pullet surprise.

A.    Lexical gaps

 ‘I never heard of “Uglification”, ‘Alice ventured to say. ‘What is it?’

                The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. ‘Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed. ‘You know what to beautify is, I suppose?’

                ‘Yes.’ Said Alice doubtfully: ‘it means-to make-anything- prettier.’

                ‘Well, then, ‘the Grypon went on, ‘if you don’t know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

When the Mock Turtle listed the different branches of Arithmetic for Alice as ‘Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision’, Alice was very confused. She wasn’t really a simpleton, since uglification was not a common word in English until Lewis Carroll used it. There are many ways in which words enter a language[1]. Still, most English speakers would immediately know the meaning of uglification even if they had never heard or used the word before because they would know the meaning of its individual parts—the root ugly and the affixes -ify and -cation.

The redundancy of alternative forms such as Chomskyan/Chomskyite, all of which conform to the regular rules of word formation, may explain some of the accidental gaps (also called lexical gaps) in the lexicon. Accidental gaps are well-formed but nonexisting words. The actual words in a language constitute only a subset of the possible words. Speakers of a language may know tens of thousands of words. Dictionaries, as we noted, include hundreds of thousands of words, all of which are known by some speakers of the language. But no dictionary can list all possible words, because it is possible to add to the vocabulary of a language in many ways. (Some of these will be discussed here and some in chapter 10 on language change.) There are always gaps in the lexicon—words not present but that could be added. Some of the gaps are due to the fact that a permissible sound sequence has no meaning attached to it (like blick, or slarm, or krobe). Note that the sequence of sounds must be in keeping with the constraints of the language. *bnick is not a “gap” because no word in English can begin with a bn.[2]

We said earlier that knowledge of morphology includes knowledge of individual morphemes, their pronunciation, and their meaning, and knowledge of the rules for combining morphemes into complex words. The Mock Turtle added -ify to the adjective ugly and formed a verb. Many verbs in English have been formed in this way: purify, amplify, simplify, falsify. The suffix -ify conjoined with nouns also forms verbs: objectify, glorify, personify. Notice that the Mock Turtle went even further; he added the suffix -cation to uglify and formed a noun, uglification, as in glorification, simplification, falsification, and purification. By using the morphological rules of English, he created a new word. The rules that he used are as follows:[3]

Uglify à adjective + ify à  verb “to make adjective”

Uglification à verb + cation à noun “the process of making adjective”

The other example of lexical gaps are Un-rule such as *unsad, *unbrave, *unrich. We find happy and unhappy, but no sad *unsad , not brave *unbrave, not rich *unrich. Forms such as the last third (marked with an asterisk) may be merely accidental gaps in the lexicon. If someone refers to a person as being *unsad we would know that the person referred to was ‘not sad’, *unbrave person would not be brave, *unrich person would not be rich.

B.     Derivational Morphology

Bound morphemes such as –ify and –ations are called derivational morphemes. When they are added to root morphemes or stems a word is derived. This method of word formation reflects the wonderful creativity of language.[4]

            Bound morphemes like -ify and -cation are called derivational morphemes. When they are added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived. The addition of -ify to pure—purify—means “to make pure,” and the addition of -cation—purification—means “the process of making pure.” If we invent an adjective, pouzy, to describe the effect of static electricity on hair, you will immediately understand the sentences “Walking on that carpet really pouzified my hair” and “The best method of pouzification is to rub a balloon on your head.”

Suppose you hear someone say: ‘He likes to be nussed.’ You might ask ‘Is he really nussable?’ even if you don’t know what the verb nuss means. Children do this all the time.

This means we must have a list of the derivational morphemes in our mental dictionaries as well as the rules that determine how they are to be added to roots or stems to form new stems or words. The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word.

We saw earlier morphemes occur in a fixed order, as un + loved but not *loved + un. In addition, the order in which new morphemes is affixed in a complex word is significant. A word is not a simple sequence of morphemes but has a hierarchical structure.

            Consider the word unsystematically, composed of five morphemes. As shown in the example earlier, the root is system, a noun, to which we added –atic, an adjectival suffix, and then added the prefix un-, which is added to adjectives to form the new adjective stem (or word) unsystematic. If we had added the preffix un- first, we would have derived a non-word *unsystem since un- cannot be added to nouns.

Derivational morphemes have clear semantic content. In this sense they are like content words, except that they are not words. As we have seen, when a derivational morpheme is added to a base, it adds meaning. The derived word may also be of a different grammatical class than the original word, as shown by suffixes such as -able and -ly. When a verb is suffixed with -able, the result is an adjective, as in desire + able. When the suffix -en is added to an adjective, a verb is derived, as in dark + en. One may form a noun from an adjective, as in sweet + ie. Other examples are:[5]

Noun to adjective	Verb to noun	Adjective to adverb	Noun to verb	Adjective to noun	Verb to adjective
boy + -ish	acquitt + -al	exact + -ly	moral + -ize	tall + -ness	read + -able
virtu + -ous	clear + -ance	quiet + -ly	vaccin + -ate	specific + -ity	creat + -ive
elizabeth + -an	accus + -ation		brand + -ish	feudal + -ism	migrat + -ory
pictur + -esque	confer + -ence		haste + -an	free + -dom	run(n) + -y
affection + -ate	sing + -er
health + -ful	conform +  -ist
alcohol + -ic	predict + -ion

Not all derivational morphemes cause a change in grammatical class. Some derivational suffixes do not cause a change in grammatical calss. Prefixes never do.

Noun to noun	Verb to verb	Adjective to adjective
friend + -ship	un- + do	pink + -ish
human + -ity	re- + cover	in + flammable
king + -dom	dis- + believe	il + -legal
new jersey + -ite	auto- + destruct	in- + accurate
vicar + -age		un- + happy
paul + -ine		dis- + agreeable
america + -n		sub- + minimal
humanit + -arian
dis- advantage

Many prefixes fall into this category:

a + moral	mono + theism
auto + biography	re + print
ex + wife	semi + annual
super + human	sub + standard

There are also suffixes of this type:

vicar + age	brisbane + ite
green + ish	commun + ist
priest + hood	music + ian
americ + an	pun + ster

When a new word enters the lexicon by the application of morphological rules, other complex derivations may be blocked. For example, when Commun + ist entered the language, words such as Commun + ite (as in Trotsky + ite) or Commun + ian (as in grammar + ian) were not needed; their formation was blocked. There may however exist alternative forms: for example, Chomskyan and Chomskyist and perhaps even Chomskyite (all meaning “follower of Chomsky’s views of linguistics”). Semanticist and semantician are both used, but the possible word semantite is not.

Sometimes, however, alternative forms do coexist, linguist and linguistician are both used, but note that the possible word linguite is not. The redundancy of such alternative forms, all of which conform to the regular rules of word formation, may explain some of the accidental gaps in the lexicon. This further shows that the actual words in the language constitute only a subset of the possible words.[6]

Finally, derivational affixes appear to come in two classes. In one class, the of a suffix triggers subtle changes incpronunciation. For example, when we affix -ity to specific (pronounced “specifik” with a k sound), we get specificity (pronounced “specifisity” with an s sound). When deriving Elizabeth + an from Elizabeth, the fourth vowel sound changes from the vowel in Beth to the vowel in Pete. Other suffixes such as -y, -ive, and -ize may induce similar changes: sane/sanity, deduce/deductive, critic/criticize.

On the other hand, suffixes such as -er, -ful, -ish, -less, -ly, and -ness may be tacked onto a base word without affecting the pronunciation, as in baker, wishful, boyish, needless, sanely, and fullness. Moreover, affixes from the first class cannot be attached to a base containing an affix from the second class: *need + less + ity, *moral + ize + ive; but affixes from the second class may attach to Zbases with either kind of affix: moral + iz(e) + er, need + less + + ity, *moral + ize + ive; but affixes from the second class may attach to bases with either kind of affix: moral + iz(e) + er, need + less + ness.[7]

There are many other derivational morphemes in English and other languages, such as the suffixes meaning ‘diminutive’, as in the words pig + let and sap + ling. ness.

Some of the morphological rules are productive, meaning that they can be used freely to form new words from the list of free and bound morphemes. The suffix –able appears to be a morpheme that can be freely conjoined with verbs to derive an adjective with the meaning of the verb and the meaning of –able, which is something like ‘able to be’ as in accept + able, blam(e) + able, pass + able, change + able, adapt + able, and so on. The meaning of –able has also been given as ‘fit for doing’ or ‘fit for being done’.

Such as a rule might be stated as:

(1)   VERB + able = ‘able to be VERB –ed’

e.g. accept + able = ‘able to be accepted’

The productivity of this rule is illustrated by the fact that we find –able in such morphologically complex word as un + speakabl(e) + y and un + get + at + able. We have already noted that there is a morpheme in English meaning ‘not’ which has the form un- and which, when combined with adjective such as afraid, fit, free, smooth, American, and Australian, forms the antonyms, or negatives, of these adjectives; for example, unafraid, unfit, unAustralian, and so on.

We can also add the prefix un- to derived words that have been formed by morphological rules:

un + believe + able

un + accept + able

un + speak + able

The rule that forms these words may be stated as:

(2)   un + ADJECTIVE = ‘not –ADJECTIVE’

This seems to account for all the examples cited. Yet we find happy and unhappy, cowardly and uncowardly, but no sad and *unsad or brave and *unbrave. Forms such as the last two (marked with an asterisk) may be merely accidental gaps in the lexicon. If someone refers to a person as being *unsad we would know that the person referred to was ‘not sad’, and an *unbrave person would not be brave. But, as the linguist Sandra Thompson points out, it may be the case that the ‘un-rule’ is not as productive for adjectives composed of just one morpheme as for adjectives that are themselves derived from a verb. The rule seems to be freely applicable to an adjectival form derived from a verb, as in unenlightened, unsimplifed, uncharacterised, unauthorised, undistinguished, and so on.

                                            

It is true, however, that one cannot always know the meaning of the words derived from free and derivational morphemes from the morphemes themselves. Thompson has also pointed out that the un- forms of the following have unpredictable meanings:

Unloosen	‘loosen, let loose’
Untrip	‘rip, undo by ripping’
Undo	‘reverse doing’
Untread	‘go back through in the same steps’
Unearth	‘dig up’
Unfrock	‘deprive (a cleric) of ecclesiastic rank’
Unnerve	‘fluster’

Although the words above must be listed in our mental lexicon since their meanings cannot be determined by knowing the meanings of their parts, morphological rules must also be in the grammar, revealing the relation between words and providing the means for forming new words. Morphological rules may be more or less productive. The rule that adds an –er to verbs in English to produce a noun meaning ‘one who performs an action (once or habitually)’appears to be a very productive morphological rule; most English verbs accept this suffix: lover, hunter, predictor, (notice that –or and –er have the same pronunciation), examiner, exam-taker, analyser, and so forth. Now consider the following:

sincerity	From	Sincere
Warmth	From	Warm
Moisten	From	Moist

            The suffix –ity is found in many other words in English, such as chastity, scarcity, and curiosity, and –th occurs in health, wealth, depth, width, and growth. We find –en in sadden, ripen, redden, ripen, weaken, deepen. Still, the phrase *The fiercity of the lion sounds somewhat strange, as does the sentence *I’m going to thinnen the sauce. Someone may use the word coolth, but, as Thompson points out, when such words as fiercity, thinnen, fullen, or, coolth are used, usually it is either an error or an attempt at humour.

            It is possible that in such cases a morphological rule that was once productive (as shown by the existence or related pairs such as scarce/scarcity) is no longer so. Our knowledge of the related pairs, however, may permit however us to use these examples in forming new words, by analogy with the existing lexical items.[8]

C.    Pullet Surprises

The speakers of language know the morphemes of that language and the rules for word formation is shown as much by the ‘erors’ made as by the non -deviant forms produced. Morphemes combine to form words. These words from our internal dictionaries. No speaker of a language knows all the words. Given our knowledge of the morphemes of the language and the morphological rules, we can often guess the meaning of a word we do not know. Sometimes we guess wrongly.

Amsel Greene collected errors made by her students in vocabulary –building classes and published them in a book called Pullet Surprises. The title is taken from a sentence written by one of her high –school students: ‘In 1957 Eugene O ‘Neil won a Pullet Surprises.’ What is most interesting about these errors is how much they reveal about the student’s knowledge of English morphology. Consider the creativity of these students in the following examples:

Word	Student’s definition
deciduous	‘able to make up one’s mind’
longevity	‘being very tall’
fortuitous	‘well protected’
bibliography	‘holy geography’
adamant	‘pertaining to original sin’
Diatribe	‘food for the whole clan’
polyglot	‘more than one glot’
Gullible	‘to do with sea birds’
homogeneous	‘devoted to home life’

The student who used the word indefatigable in the sentence:

            She tried many reducing diets, but remained indefatigable.

Clearly shows morphological knowledge: in, meaning ‘not’ innefective ; de, mening ‘off’ as in decapitate; fat, as in ‘fat’; able , as in ‘-able’; and combined meaning, ‘not able to take the fat off’.[9]

CONCLUSION

Many new words enter in English dictionary with many ways that are brought by morphological words of English. The morphological rules such as derivational morphology, lexical gaps, pullet surprise are as the ways to form the new words. Derivational morphology is used for all aspects of word structure involving affixation that is not inflectional. Lecixal gaps are called accidental gaps. Lexical gaps are well formed, but it includes into non productive words or ungrammatical words. Pullet surprise happens when we try to guess the meaning of a word we do not know that is sometimes we guess wrongly. In the other word pullet surprise is error of vocabulary building classes. Pullet surprise is found in 1957 by O’Neil. In conclusion, there are many ways to create new words enter English dictionary by using the morphological rules.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Andrew Carstairs and McCarthy. 2002. An introduction to English Morphology. Edenburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.

Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd.

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams. 2002. An Introduction to Language. Seventh Edition. The United States: Wadsworth.

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Ninth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty.

Alwasilah, Chaedar. 1986. Pengetahuan kebahasaan I. Jakarta: UniversitasTerbuka.

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[1] Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd. Page 73.

[3] Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Ninth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty. Page 47-48.

[4] Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd. Page 74.

[5] Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Ninth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty. Page 48.

[6] Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd. Page 76.

[7] Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Ninth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty. Page 49-50.

[8] Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd. Page 76-77.

[9] Fromkin, Victoria, David Blair and Peter Colins. 1999. An Introduction to Language. Fourth Edition. Australia: Harcout Australia Pty Ltd. Page 78.