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.Like most morphological criteria, however, this one is complicated by the irregular and impoverishednature of English inflectional morphology; for example, many verbs have irregular past or perfect forms,and in some cases either or both of these forms may not in fact be distinct from the (uninflected) baseform, so that a single form may serve two or three functions (thereby neutralising or syncretising therelevant distinctions), as Table (3) below illustrates:(3) TABLE OF VERB FORMSBASE PERFECT PAST PRESENT PROGRESSIVEshow shown showed shows showinggo gone went goes goingspeak spoken spoke speaks speakingsee seen saw sees seeingcome came comes comingwait waited waits waitingmeet met meets meetingcut cuts cutting(The largest class of verbs in English are regular verbs which have the morphological characteristics ofwait, and so have past, perfect and passive forms ending in the suffix -d.) The picture becomes even morecomplicated if we take into account the verb be, which has eight distinct forms (viz.the base form be, theperfect form been, the progressive form being, the past forms was/were, and the present forms am/are/is).The most regular verb suffix in English is -ing, which can be attached to the base form of almost any verb(though a handful of defective verbs like beware are exceptions).The obvious implication of our discussion of nouns and verbs here is that it would not be possible toprovide a systematic account of English inflectional morphology unless we were to posit that wordsbelong to grammatical categories, and that a specific type of inflection attaches only to a specific categoryof word.The same is also true if we wish to provide an adequate account of derivational morphology inEnglish (i.e.the processes by which words are derived from other words): this is because particularderivational affixes can only be attached to words belonging to particular categories.For example, thenegative prefixes un- and in- can be attached to adjectives to form a corresponding negative adjective (cf.pairs such as happy/unhappy and flexible/inflexible) but not to nouns (so that a noun like fear has nonegative counterpart *unfear), nor to prepositions (so that a preposition like inside has no negativeantonym *uninside).Similarly, the adverbialising (i.e.adverb-forming) suffix -ly in English can beattached only to adjectives (giving rise to adjective/adverb pairs such as sad/sadly) and cannot be attachedto a noun like computer, or to a verb like accept, or to a preposition like with.Likewise, the nominalising(i.e.noun-forming) suffix -ness can be attached only to adjective stems (so giving rise to adjective/nounpairs such as coarse/coarseness), not to nouns, verbs or prepositions (Hence we don t find -nessderivatives for a noun like boy, or a verb like resemble, or a preposition like down).In much the sameway, the comparative suffix -er can be attached to adjectives (cf.tall/taller) and some adverbs (cf.soon/sooner) but not to other types of word (cf.woman/*womanner); and the superlative suffix -est canattach to adjectives (cf.tall/tallest) but not other types of word (cf.e.g.down/*downest; donkey/*donkiest,enjoy/*enjoyest).There is no point in multiplying examples here: it is clear that derivational affixes havecategorial properties, and any account of derivational morphology will clearly have to recognise this fact(See e.g.Aronoff 1976, and Fabb 1988).As we noted earlier, there is also syntactic evidence for assigning words to categories: this essentiallyrelates to the fact that different categories of words have different distributions (i.e.occupy a differentrange of positions within phrases or sentences).For example, if we want to complete the four-wordsentence in (4) below by inserting a single word at the end of the sentence in the --- position: 30(4) They have no ---we can use an (appropriate kind of) noun, but not a verb, preposition, adjective, or adverb, as we see from:(5)(a) They have no car/conscience/friends/ideas [nouns](b) *They have no went [verb]/for [preposition]/older [adjective]/conscientiously [adverb]So, using the relevant syntactic criterion, we can define the class of nouns as the set of words which canterminate a sentence in the position marked --- in (4) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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