A synctironic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into immediate constituents (IC's). Immediate constituents are any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger linguistic unity. First suggested by L. Bloomfield¹ it was later developed by many linguists.2 The main opposition dealt with is the opposition of stem and affix. It is a kind of segmentation revealing not the history of the word but its motivation, i. e. the data the listener has to go by in understanding it. It goes without saying that unmotivated words and words with faded motivation have to be remembered and understood as separate signs, not as combinations of other signs.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterised by morphological divisibility (analysable into morphemes) is involved in certain structural correlations. This means that, as Z. Harris puts it, “the morpheme boundaries in an utterance are determined not on the basis of considerations interior to the utterance but on the basis of comparison with other utterances. The comparisons are controlled, i. e. we do not merely scan various random utterances but seek utterances which differ from our original one only in stated portions. The final test is in utterances which are only minimally different from ours. "³

A sample analysis which has become almost classical, being repeated many times by many authors, is L. Bloomfield's analysis of the word ungentlemanly. As the word is convenient we take the same example. Сomparing this word with other utterances the listener recognises the morpheme - un - as a negative prefix because he has often come across words built on the pattern un - + adjective stem: uncertain, unconscious, uneasy, unfortunate, unmistakable, unnatural. Some of the cases resembled the word even more closely; these were: unearthly, unsightly, untimely, unwomanly and the like. One can also come across the adjective gentlemanly. Thus, at the first cut we obtain the following immediate constituents: un - + gentlemanly. If we continue our analysis, we see that although gent occurs as a free form in low colloquial usage, no such word as lemanly may be found either as a free or as a bound constituent, so this time we have to separate the final morpheme. We are justified in so doing as there are many adjectives following the pattern noun stem + - ly, such as womanly, masterly, scholarly, soldierly with the same semantic relationship of `having the quality of the person denoted by the stem'; we also have come across the noun gentleman in other utterances. The two first stages of analysis resulted in separating a free and a bound form:

1) un~ + gentlemanly,

2) gentleman + - ly. The third cut has its peculiarities. The division into gent-+-lemon is obviously impossible as no such patterns exist in English, so the cut is gentle - + - man. A similar pattern is observed in nobleman, and so we state adjective stem+ man. Now, the element man may be differently classified as a semi-affix (see § 6.2.2) or as a variant of the free form man. The word gentle is open to discussion. It is obviously divisible from the etymological viewpoint: gentle < (O) Fr gentil < Lat gentilis permits to discern the root or rather the radical element gent - and the suffix - il. But since we are only concerned with synchronic analysis this division is not relevant.

If, however, we compare the adjective gentle with such adjectives as brittle, fertile, fickle, juvenile, little, noble, subtle and some more containing the suffix - lei-He added to a bound stem, they form a pattern for our case. The bound stem that remains is present in the following group: gentle, gently, gentleness, genteel, gentile, gentry, etc.

One might observe that our procedure of looking for similar utterances has shown that the English vocabulary contains the vulgar word gent that has been mentioned above, meaning `a person pretending to the status of a gentleman' or simply'man', but then there is no such structure as noun stem + - le, so the word gent should be interpreted as a shortening of gentleman and a homonym of the bound stem in question.

To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only two IC's, one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages we obtain the following formula:

un - + { [{gent - + - le) + - man] + - ly}

Breaking a word into its immediate constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents (which may differ from their actual sequence). Furthermore we shall obtain only two constituents at each cut, the ultimate constituents, however, can be arranged according to their sequence in the word: un-+gent-+-le+-man+'ly.

A box-like diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

We can repeat the analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built, this may be carried out in terms of proportional oppositions. The main requirements are essentially the same: the analysis must reveal patterns observed in other words of the same language, the stems obtained after the affix is taken away should correspond to a separate word, the segregation of the derivational affix is based on proportional oppositions of words having the same affix with the same lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning. Ungentlemanly, then, is opposed not to ungentleman (such a word does not exist), but to gentlemanly. Other pairs similarly connected are correlated with this opposition. Examples are:

ungentlemanly ___ unfair __ unkind __ unselfish gentlemanly fairkindselfish

This correlation reveals the pattern un - + adjective stem.

Lexicology is primarily concerned with derivational affixes, the other group being the domain of grammarians. The derivational affixes in fact, as well as the whole problem of word-formation, form a boundary area between lexicology and grammar and are therefore studied in both.

Language being a system in which the elements of vocabulary and grammar are closely interrelated, our study of affixes cannot be complete without some discussion of the similarity and difference between derivational and functional morphemes.

The similarity is obvious as they are so often homonymous (for the most important cases of homonymy between derivational and functional affixes see p.18). Otherwise the two groups are essentially different because they render different types of meaning.

Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and the same word. A word form, or the form of a word, is defined as one of the different aspects a word may take as a result of inflection. Сomplete sets of all the various forms of a word when considered as inflectional patterns, such as declensions or conjugations, are termed paradigms. A paradigm has been defined in grammar as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word, e. g. near, nearer, nearest; son, son's, sons, sons'.

Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form⁴different words. One and the same lexico-grammatical meaning of the affix is sometimes accompanied by different combinations of various lexical meanings. Thus, the lexico-grammatical meaning supplied by the suffix - y consists in the ability to express the qualitative idea peculiar to adjectives and creates adjectives from noun stems. The lexical meanings of the same suffix are somewhat variegated: `full of, as in bushy or cloudy, `composed of, as in stony, `having the quality of, as in slangy, `resembling', as in baggy, `covered with', as in hairy and some more. This suffix sometimes conveys emotional components of meaning.

E. g.: My school reports used to say: “Not amenable to discipline; too fond of organising," which was only a kind way of saying: “Bossy." (M. Dickens) Bossy not only means `having the quality of a boss' or `behaving like a boss'; it is also a derogatory word.

This fundamental difference in meaning and function of the two groups of affixes results in an interesting relationship: the presence of a derivational affix does not prevent a word from being equivalent to another word, in which this suffix is absent, so that they can be substituted for one another in context. The presence of a functional affix changes the distributional properties of a word so much that it can never be substituted for a simple word without violating grammatical standard. To see this point consider the following familiar quotation from Shakespeare:

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Here no one-morpheme word can be substituted for the words cowards, times or deaths because the absence of a plural mark will make the sentence ungrammatical. The words containing derivational affixes can be substituted by morphologically different words, so that the derivative valiant can be substituted by a root word like brave. In a statement like I wash my hands of the whole affair (Du Maurier) the word affair may be replaced by the derivative business or by the simple word thing because their distributional properties are the same. It is, however, impossible to replace it by a word containing a functional affix (affairs or things), as this would require a change in the rest of the sentence.

The American structuralists B. Bloch and G. Trager formulate this point as follows: “A suffixal derivative is a two-morpheme word which is grammatically equivalent to (can be substituted for) any simple word in all the constructions where it occurs. "¹

This rule is not to be taken as an absolutely rigid one because the word building potential and productivity of stems depend on several factors. Thus, no further addition of suffixes is possible after - ness, - ity, - dom, - ship and - hood.

A derivative is mostly capable of further derivation and is therefore homonymous to a stem. Foolish, for instance, is derived from the stem fool - and is homonymous to the stem foolish - occurring in the words foolishness and foolishly. Inflected words cease to be homonymous to stems. No further derivation is possible from the word form fools, where the stem fool - is followed by the functional affix - s. Inflected words are neither structurally nor functionally equivalent to the morphologically simple words belonging to the same part of speech. Things is different from business functionally, because these two words cannot occur in identical contexts, and structurally, because of the different character of their immediate constituents and different word-forming possibilities.

After having devoted special attention to the difference in semantic characteristics of various kinds of morphemes we notice that they are different positionally. A functional affix marks the word boundary, it can only follow the affix of derivation and come last, so that no further derivation is possible for a stem to which a functional affix is added. That is why functional affixes are called by E. Nida the outer formatives as contrasted to the inner formatives which is equivalent to our term derivational affixes.

It might be argued that the outer position of functional affixes is disproved by such examples as the disableds, the unwanteds. It must be noted, however, that in these words - ed is not a functional affix, it receives derivational force so that the disableds is not a form of the verb to disable, but a new word - a collective noun.

A word containing no outer formatives is, so to say, open, because it is homonymous to a stem and further derivational affixes may be added to it. Once we add an outer formative, no further derivation is possible. The form may be regarded as closed.

The semantic, functional and positional difference that has already been stated is supported by statistical properties and difference in valency (combining possibilities). Of the three main types of morphemes, namely roots, derivational affixes and functional affixes (formatives), the roots are by far the most numerous. There are many thousand roots in the English language; the derivational affixes, when listed, do not go beyond a few scores. The list given in “Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary” takes up five pages and a half, comprising all the detailed explanations of their origin and meaning, and even then the actual living suffixes are much fewer. As to the functional affixes there are hardly more than ten of them. Regular English verbs, for instance, have only four forms: play, plays, played, playing, as compared to the German verbs which have as many as sixteen.

The valency of these three groups of morphemes is naturally in inverse proportion to their number. Functional affixes can be appended, with a few exceptions, to any element belonging to the part of speech they serve. The regular correlation of singular and plural forms of nouns can serve to illustrate this point. Thus, heart:: hearts; boy:: boys, etc. The relics of archaic forms, such as child:: children, or foreign plurals like criterion:: criteria are very few in comparison with these.

Derivational affixes do not combine so freely and regularly. The suffix - en occurring in golden and leaden cannot be added to the root steel-. Nevertheless, as they serve to mark certain groups of words, their correlations are never isolated and always contain more than two oppositions, e. g. boy:: boyish, child:: childish, book:: bookish, gold:: golden, lead:: leaden, wood:: wooden. The valency of roots is of a very different order and the oppositions may be sometimes isolated. It is for instance difficult to find another pair with the root heart and the same relationship as in heart:: sweetheart.

Knowing the plural functional suffix - s we know how the countable nouns are inflected. The probability of a mistake is not great.

With derivational affixes the situation is much more intricate. Knowing, for instance, the complete list of affixes of feminisation, i. e. formation of feminine nouns from the stems of masculine ones by adding a characteristic suffix, we shall be able to recognise a new word if we know the root. This knowledge, however, will not enable us to construct words acceptable for English vocabulary, because derivational affixes are attached to their particular stems in a haphazard and unpredictable manner. Why, for instance, is it impossible to call a lady-guest - a guestess on the pattern of host:: hostess? Note also: lion:: lioness, tiger:: tigress, but bear:: she-bear, elephant:: she-elephant, wolf:: she-wolf; very often the correlation is assured by suppletion, therefore we have boar:: sow, buck:: doe, bull:: cow, cock:: hen, ram:: ewe.

Similarly in toponymy: the inhabitant of London is called a Londoner, the inhabitant of Moscow is a Muscovite, of Vienna - a Viennese, of Athens - an Athenian.

On the whole this state of things is more or less common to many languages; but English has stricter constraints in this respect than, for example, Russian; indeed the range of possibilities in English is very narrow.russian not only possesses a greater number of diminutive affixes but can add many of them to the same stem: мальчик, мальчишка, мальчишечка, мальчонка, мальчуган, мальчугашка. Nothing of the kind is possible for the English noun stem boy. With the noun stem girl the diminutive - ie can be added but not - ette, - let, - kin / - kins. The same holds true even if the corresponding noun stems have much in common: a short lecture is a lecturette but a small picture is never called a picturette. The probability that a given stem will combine with a given affix is thus not easily established.

To sum up: derivational and functional morphemes may happen to be identical in sound form, but they are substantially different in meaning, function, valency, statistical characteristics and structural properties.

THE VALENCY OF AFFIXES AND STEMS. WORD-BUILDING PATTERNS AND THEIR MEANING