It is not always easy to determine a word’s internal structure. In the case of words such as cranberry and huckleberry, it is tempting to assume that the root is berry, but this leaves us with the morphemes cran- and huckle-. These elements are obviously not affixes like un- or re- since they occur with only one root. At the same time, however, neither cran- nor huckle- can be considered a free morpheme since neither ever stands alone as an independent word. The status of such morphemes continues to be problematic for linguists, who generally classify them as exceptional cases (or refer to them as cranberry morphemes). A slightly different problem arises in the case of words such as receive, deceive, conceive, and perceive or permit, submit, and commit. The apparent affixes in these words do not express the same meaning as they do when they are attached to a free morpheme. Thus, the re- of receive, for example, does not have the sense of ‘again’ that it does in redo (‘do again’). Nor does the de- of deceive appear to express the meaning ‘reverse the process of’ associated with the affix in demystify or decertify. Moreover, the other portions of these words (ceive and mit) have no identifiable meaning either. Because they have no meaning, ceive and mit are not morphemes of a normal sort. However, they have do have some interesting properties. For example, when certain suffixes are added to words ending in ceive, ceive quite regularly becomes cept (as in ‘receptive, deception’); similarly, mit becomes miss when the same suffixes are added (permissive, admission). These changes are not phonologically determined, since the ss does not occur before these suffixes in other words ending in t (prohibitive, edition). The changes must therefore be due to idiosyncratic properties of mit and ceive, similar to those of the morpheme man, whose plural is always men rather than the expected mans (postmen, brakemen, and so on). Mit and ceive are thus very similar to morphemes.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 13:47:40 +0000
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