Bill and all,
Thank you for catching and for so gently correcting my erroneous example. Would you suggest a reading that clarifies why or how the morphological analysis of functional shift differs from zero affixation with inflectional morphemes? On a slightly different topic, too, how would you analyze an example in which an adjective stands in for a noun, as in Hey, beautiful! Would this be considered an instance of functional shift or rather an instance in which an element is understood to be gapped (if that's the right parlance), i.e. the noun.
All best,
Natalie Gerber
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 5:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology
I've seen some accounts that appear to be treating all "affixless
category-changing derivation" as zero-affixation -- but it's because of
a theoretical position that forces that kind of analysis. If I remember
correctly (with an even bigger *if* than is usual), there are approaches
that mandate that the grammatical category of a complex element be that
of its head, even in morphology. Thus, a deverbal noun (for example) has
to have a nominal "head." With normal category-shifting affixes, such
approaches can treat the affix as the head, so "motion" has "-tion" as a
head, and "move" governed by it. With functional conversion, the zero
has to "be" there so it can act as a head with a grammatical category.
Zero elements make me skittish -- they're too easy to "cheat" with in
theory construction -- so I particularly like the approach Herb lays
out, where they're limited to exception cases in paradigms where other
words would have affixes. I'm even happier just to think of them as
notational conventions, since (to mangle a classic line) I'm not sure
how one would establish whether or not there's any "there" there.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology
Zero affixation is different from functional shift, as Natalie's example
suggests. The plural of "deer" is "deer." That would be considered
zero affixation, where some, usually ill-defned, subset of a word class
does not take the expected suffix. Usually zero suffixation is
inflectional, as with this plural example. Functional shift is a
derivational process. In a language like English where there is so much
inflectional morphology and so little of it regular, there is no
expected suffix for changing a word from a noun to a verb, or from any
category to any other category, and so the terms "functional shift,"
"zero derivation," and "conversion" are ways of labeling changes in word
class that have no effect on stem form.
Herb
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: May 29, 2008 2:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology
Just to second Kathleen's note. What I've read on morphology does
consider functional shift to be a morphological change and records this
by calling such changes as zero affix, which accounts for the fact that,
e.g., in irregular noun plurals there is no -s, or derivational affix
attached.
John, if it's of interest, I can send a short lesson on morphology
created by a Ph.D. in linguistics that will help address this.
Natalie Gerber
SUNY Fredonia
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Kathleen
M. Ward
Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 11:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology
My speciality is certainly not morphology, but all the books I've read
call this kind of "derivation without change in form" a morphological
change that is variously called "conversion," "functional shift," or
"zero-morph derivation.
Kathleen M. Ward
UC Davis
On May 29, 2008, at 7:34 AM, John Crow wrote:
If a word changes function but does not change form, is that
considered to be a morphological change? For example, rich, normally
considered to be an adjective, can easily function as a noun (the rich).
If it becomes an adverb (richly), morphology is obviously involved here.
What about the adjective-to-noun shift?
Thanks,
John
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