Structures

John M. Anderson

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9783110729566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This grammar of English embraces major lexical, phonological, syntactic structures and interfaces. It is based on the substantive assumption: that the categories and structures at all levels represent mental substance, conceptual and/or perceptual. The adequacy of this assumption in expressing linguistic generalizations is tested. The lexicon is seen as central to the grammar; it contains signs with conceptual, or content, poles, minimally words, and perceptual, and expression, poles, segments. Both words and segments are differentiated by substance-based features. They determine the erection of syntactic and phonological structures at the interfaces from lexicon. The valencies of words, the identification of their semantically determined complements and modifiers, control the erection of syntactic structures in the form of dependency relations. However, the features of different segment types determines their placement in the syllable, or as prosodies. Despite this discrepancy, dependency and linearization are two of the analogical properties displayed by lexical, syntactic and phonological structure. Analogies among parts of the grammar are another consequence of substantiveness, as is the presence of figurativeness and iconicity.

Part III: Lexicon

Prelude to Part III: Formatives, words, compounds, and phrases

phonological structure and morphology – derived functional categories – derived contentives – morphosyntax and morphophonology – inflectional morphology – modes of signifying, and of troping – lexical structure and syntactic structure

Book 1 of this work offered an account of the syntactic and phonological categories that are essential to an account of English Grammar and its lexicon. In this Book we are concerned in Part IV with the structures that are projected from the content poles of the signs stored or created in the lexicon, the syntax. In the present Part we are concerned with the structures that determine the shape of lexical phonology: the morphological structure that expounds lexicosyntactic structures, and lexical phonological structure proper, as the output to the morphophonological interface. The two Parts of this book thus move away from the concerns of Part II in different directions, into syntax in Part IV and into exponence, morphological and phonological, in Part III.

Part II, in Book 1 on linguistic categories in general, focused on the syntactic categories appealed to in the lexicon and their significations, and in particular the changes in mode of signifying associated with derivation of one category from another, whether signalled morphologically or not. Recall that ‘derivation’ here involves addition of structure, not mutation. This followed on from the survey of categories, phonological and syntactic, and their relationship to parts of speech. Our concern was not with the morphological structures that expound derivations, the structures of derivational morphology. We have thus had even less concern with the resources of inflectional morphology, which signals the presence of secondary lexicosyntactic categories. However, the syntactic behaviour of these categories has been introduced in Book 1, and their morphological status will also be an important part of Part III.

However, exponence, both morphological and phonological, is crucially em­­­bodied in phonological structure, including suprasegmentals. So I want to recall and expand on the view of phonological structure arrived at in Part I, before we look at its role in morphological structure.

In Part I we established the set of minimal sequential units that are contrastive in one position, at least, and I offered internal structures for such units, firstly, in a notation where the minor phonological features overlap with the primary, so we have both {V} and {{v}} as members of the set of features, where this overlap is based on obvious perceptual similarity. However, I also offered a notation based on the recurrence of ‘C’ and ‘V’ throughout, at different levels of delicacy, again intending to reflect perceptual similarities. Thus, we might represent the vowel in bee as {V{c{c}}, where the first {c} contrasts with the {v} of the low vowel and the second with the {{v}} of the high back rounded. In what follows here, I shall maintain the first, compromise notation, as easier for humans to work with, though it fails to capture generalizations embedded in the uncompromising CV notation (which would be easy to digitalize for bots).

Chapter 12 offered a table of the maximal system of contrasts among both vowels and consonants, i.e. those contrasts that are motivated in at least one situation, or part of spech. I cite these here again, for reference.

Table VI:Classification of English Consonants.

	LABIAL	CORONAL	TONGUE BODY	MAJOR
PLOSIVE	{ {u}}: [p]	{ }: [t]	{u}: [k]	{C}
voiced	{v{u}}: [b]	{v}: [d]	{u,v}}: [g]	{C}
FRICATIVE	{ {u}}: [f]	{ }: [s]	{u}: [ʃ]	{C;V}
mellow		{c}: [θ]		{C;V}
voiced	{v{u}}: [v]	{v{v}}: [z]	{u{v}}: [ʒ]	{C;V}
voiced mellow		{v,c}: [ð]		{C;V}
AFFRICATE		{ }: [ʧ]		{{ }{ }}
voiced		{v}: [ʤ]		{{ }{ }}
SONOB	{{u}}: [mp]	{ }: [ld/nd/nt/ns]	{u}: [ŋk]	{{V}{ }}
NASAL	{c{u}}: [m]	{c}: [n]	{c.u}: [ŋ]	{V;C}
LATERAL		{ }: [l]		{V;C}
RHOTIC		{v}: [r]		{V;C}
SEMI-VOWELS	{u}\{V}: [w]		{i}\{ V}: [j]	{V}

where SONOB CORONAL – coronal sonorant + obstruent – collapses various contrasting homorganic possibilities

Table VII:Classification of Vowels of Accented Syllables.

TRANSITIVE {V/}
{i} [ı] pit				{u} [ʊ] put
{i,v} [ε] pet		{ } [ʌ] putt		{u,v} [ɒ] pot
		{v} [a] pat
INTRANSITIVE {V}
{i} [i] pea				{u} [u] pooh
{i,v} [e] pay				{u;v} [o] po
		{v;u} [ɔ] paw
		{v} [ɑ] pa
COMPLEX INTRANSITIVE {V{x}{y}}
{v}{i} [aı] buy	{u,v}{i} [ɔı] boy		{v}{u} [aʊ] bough

But these view the picture of contrasts through a very long lens. We need to recognize that in the first place contrast is a property of the subsystems operating at the different phonological parts of speech also distinguished in Chapter 12.

Each syllable displays some part of the linear pattern in (I.147a), where ­N(ucleus) is obligatory and the P(ost-)O(nset) presupposes an O(nset) and equally the Pr(e-)C(oda) presupposes a Coda; S(pecifier) has a special distribution, as investigated in Part I; and the exclamation-marked !Pr(e-)N!(ucleus) is to allow for words like spew – which I shall refrain from pursuing here.

(I.147)

a.

b.

Each part of speech is associated with a phonological category or cross-class, except for the specifier whose content is merely a valency, filled out as {\C} in initial position. This specifies adjunction to the minimal plosives, those I have labelled [π, τ, κ], i.e. the neutralized set. The parts of speech are not in linear contrast, since linearity is determined by the extended sonority hierarchy, but each part of speech displays associative contrast, as with the neutralized plosives of the post-specifier onset. In the onset obstruents precede sonorants and semi-vowels. If an obstruent is lacking but there is a prenucleus sonorant or semi-vowel, the latter is converted to an onset, as indicated in (I.147b); the same is true in the coda.

As well as the neutralization associated with the specifier, there are other neutralizations affecting adjacent systems. I illustrate these from the pre-nuclear area again; I leave the more exciting happenings in the coda to the interested reader (if any there be) who can renew familiarity with chapters 11–13 in Part I. One instance from the onset was illustrated in (I.146).

(I.146)

The < >-bracketed symbols indicate a combination that is restricted to post-­specifier position and the round brackets to post-onsets that are associated with obvious loanwords. [ʃ] rejects most post-onsets, so that only the unmarked fricative [s] can occur in that context, except that the palatal can precede the [r] that the unmarked fricative cannot combine with. So can the [f] and [θ] fricatives, and the former can also precede [l]. [s] can also precede some fricatives, though ­typically loans. Against this background of the complexity and specif...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part III: Lexicon
• Part IV: Syntax
• Fit the 1st: Finites
• Fit the 2nd: Non-Finites
• Fit the 3rd: Placement, Alt-Placement, and Sub-Placement