English Language Questions

[#1procrastinator]

First question, could you break up the word 'embellisment' into four morphemes? em-bell-ish-ment? I did embellish-ment but I realised em- and -ish are affixes.

[binders]

probably not. -ish and -ment are fine, but what are you going to do with em- and -bell-?
they have probably (couldn't be bothered lifting the dico) come from latin in- + bellus, through french em- + bellir.
those are distinct analysable morphemes in those languages, but probably not analysable in english morphology.
though you see a lot of em- in words like embark, embolden, embarrass etc.

I guess the rule of thumb is, if you break up two morphemes like em+bell, can you describe them as meaningful in english?

[#1procrastinator]

^ thanks binders, I think I misunderstood the meaning of morpheme

[binders]

Your instinct was right, those two are morphemes, just not morphemes in english!

Whenever i'm in doubt, i go to this book for clear, good, definitions:
Crystal, D. (1997). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (4th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

you can find a copy in a library here in melbourne through worldcat
eg,. here

in 1st year linguistics, the lecturers get you to chant "a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language" 

[#1procrastinator]

^ Are you talking about em and bell? Couldn't bell be the root and em be the bounded morpheme or something?

[Kaille]

is this thread for everyone?

sorry if i'm taking over someone's thread but i was wondering if derivational and inflectional morphemes can only be suffixes?

[binders]

> #1procrastinator
With bell, can you think of any other words which have this root, and share the meaning?   
A good place to look for evidence for or against is in the big oxford dictionary, which your school or local library will probably have access to.

for example, if you look up debellish, you get this:

Debellish, verb, Obsolete, rare. [from De- + -bellish in Embellish: cf. Bellish verb] transitive  To rob of beauty, disfigure.
1610 G. Fletcher Christ's Victorie (1632) 59 What blast hath thus his flowers debellished?

you could also look up Bellify and Bellish


I wouldn't have thought they were morphemes (em- & bell) in modern english, but there was some evidence in the dictionary.
It goes to show how important it is to just look stuff up!  I guess if you can't find any other examples of a morpheme in english,
with the same base meaning, then it's going to be hard to analyse it into an english morpheme


> Kaille
I can't think of any inflectional morphemes in english which are prefixes.
Though derivational morphemes can be prefixes as well as suffixes.
Think un-, in-, de-, re- ,ex-, a-.  These change the meaning, but not necessarily the word-class of the word they affix to.

[Becky2012]

My language teacher always gets us to recite the inflectional morphemes, which are s, s, 's, ed, ing, er, est, so I'm guessing from that they can only be suffixes

[#1procrastinator]

Ah, so the root should have the meaning also?

Thanks a lot, binders

@Kaille: ja, feel free!

[Kaille]

hi guys,

for the sentence, i called for a meeting between her and chris, is the "between her a chris" an object complement?

[binders]

> #1procrastinator

yeah, i would say so. Consider establish. you can make establishment, disestablish, reestablish etc. but that e+stablish are
from two morphemes in latin.  If you wanted to analyse them into two english morphemes, you'd have to find examples of e- (especial?)
and stablish (can't think of any of the top of my head).  So I would just call it one morpheme in english, the same with em+bell.
See what others think!

To highlight how you want to pin down some kind of meaning for a morpheme (including 'roots'), compare the standard textbook example of words
starting with gl-, like glint, glisten, glare, glitter etc.  You sort of want to say that the gl- sound has some meaning
of bright and sparkly, but then how do you analyse -int, -isten, -are and -itter? they all appear in other words with very different
meanings.

So you just leave them as one morpheme (look up phonesthemes if you're interested in these sounds-but-not-quite-morphemes).


>Kaille

for the sentence, i called for a meeting between her and chris, is the "between her a chris" an object complement?

I think so. it seems to go with a meeting, which is the object of call for.

[nina_rox]

I have a question hopefully someone could help:

What role does inference play in creating coherence in texts? Any good examples?

Thank you!

[Bhootnike]

anyone going tssm english language weekly masterclasses?!

[Starlight]

I have a question hopefully someone could help:

What role does inference play in creating coherence in texts? Any good examples?

Thank you!

check out the 2009 english language exam for this one

[nina_rox]

Okay, I'll have a look now thanks!!