I knew of the zero morpheme concept for the irregular plurals; I wasn't
aware, however, that it applied to non-irregular functional shifts.
Thank you to everyone who responded--this listserv and the people who
populate it is the greatest!
John
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:45 AM, Claudia Kiburz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> My students have asked me why some adjective take "ly", for example, lonely
> and lovely. Is there a historical or derivational reason?
>
>
> *"Spruiell, William C" <[log in to unmask]>* wrote:
>
> 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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