English Words ‘The air is always thick with our verbal emissions. There are so many things we want to tell the world. Some of them are important, some of them are not. But we talk anyway. A life without words would be a horrendous privation.’ (from the Introduction) Words and language, keys to human identity, are fascinating subjects. The aim of this book is to arouse curiosity about English words and about the nature of language in general, especially among students who are not intending to specialise in linguistics. The book covers a wide range of topics, including the structure of words, the meaning of words, how their spelling relates to pronunciation, how new words are manufactured or imported from other languages, and how the meaning of words changes with the passage of time. It also investigates how the mind deals with words by highlighting the amazing intellectual feat performed routinely when the right word is retrieved from the mental dictionary during conversation. Words of all sorts are examined—from great poetry, nonsense verse and journalism to advertising. It is demonstrated that in their very different ways they are all worthy of serious study. This textbook is an accessible descriptive introduction, suitable for students of English language and communication, showing how the nature of words can be illuminated by insights from a broad range of areas of linguistics and related subjects. Francis Katamba is Lecturer in Linguistics at Lancaster University. His publications include Morphology (1993) and Introduction to Phonology (1989). English Words Francis Katamba London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1994 Francis Katamba All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Katamba, Francis English words/Francis Katamba p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. English language—Lexicology. I. Title PE1571.K38 1994 423.028–dc20 93–33393 ISBN 0-203-20528-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20531-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-10467-X (hbk) ISBN 0-415-10468-8 (pbk) To Janet, Francis and Helen Contents Preface x Acknowledgements xii Abbreviations xiv Key to symbols used xvi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Why study words? 1 1.2 Overview of coming chapters 4 2 What is a word? 6 2.1 Introduction 6 2.2 Words are like liquorice allsorts 7 2.2.1 Word-forms 7 2.2.2 Words as vocabulary items 11 2.2.3 Grammatical words 15 2.3 Summary 17 Exercises 18 3 Close encounters of a morphemic kind 19 3.1 The quest for verbal atoms 19 3.2 Close morphological encounters: zooming in on morphemes 19 3.3 Morphemes and their disguises 22 3.3.1 Allomorphs: morph families 22 3.3.2 Contrast 25 3.4 Freedom and bondage 26 3.5 Sound symbolism: phonaesthemes and onomatopoeia 27 3.6 Verbal blueprints 28 vi 3.6.1 Tiny words (isolating languages) 30 3.6.2 Get the glue (agglutinating languages) 31 3.6.3 Labyrinthine words (synthetic languages) 31 3.6.4 Verbal juggernauts (polysynthetic languages) 33 3.6.5 No thoroughbreds 33 3.7 Summary 35 Exercises 35 4 Building words 37 4.1 Words and jigsaws 37 4.2 Know the pieces of the jigsaw 37 4.2.1 Roots are the core 37 4.2.2 Affixes are for appending 38 4.3 The main types of word-building: inflection and derivation 40 4.4 Derivation: fabricating words 41 4.4.1 Affixation: prefixes and suffixes 42 4.4.2 Conversion 48 4.4.3 Compound parade 49 4.4.4 Wishy-washy words 54 4.5 Summary 55 Exercises 55 5 Masquerading allomorphs 57 5.1 The right mask 57 5.2 Phonologically conditioned allomorphs 57 5.2.1 Selecting underlying representations 61 5.2.2 Derivations 63 5.3 Phonology in the shade: lexical and grammatical conditioning 65 5.4 Madness without method: suppletion 66 5.5 Summary 66 Exercises 66 6 A lexicon with layers 69 vii 6.1 The nature of the lexicon 69 6.2 Morphological information in the lexicon 70 6.3 Syntactic information in the lexicon 70 6.4 Does it ring true (phonological information) 71 6.5 Rendezvous with lexical phonology and morphology 71 6.5.1 Neutral and non-neutral affixes 72 6.5.2 The lexicon is like a layered cake 73 6.6 Productivity, the time-warp and cranberries 77 6.7 Peeping beyond the lexicon 79 6.8 Summary 80 Exercises 80 7 Should English be spelt as she is spoke? 83 7.1 Writing systems 83 7.2 Is the English orthography mad? 84 7.2.1 The apparent madness in the English spelling system 85 7.2.2 There is a method in the madness: spelling rules and pronunciation 86 7.2.3 Is A for apple? Why vowel letters pinch like ill-fitting shoes 90 7.3 Morphological signposts in the spelling 94 7.4 Lexical signposting in the spelling 96 7.5 Spelling reform 96 7.6 Is speech degenerate writing? 99 Exercises 101 8 Word manufacture 103 8.1 The production line 103 8.2 Keeping tabs on idioms 106 8.3 Clitics 108 8.4 Summary 111 Exercises 111 9 Words galore 113 9.1 A verbal bonanza 113 viii 9.2 Jargon 113 9.3 Slang 114 9.4 Clichés and catch-phrases 115 9.5 A rose by any other name 119 9.5.1 Semantic widening 120 9.5.2 Semantic narrowing 121 9.5.3 Going up and down in the world 122 9.5.4 Loss account 122 9.5.5 Lexical revivals 124 9.5.6 Metaphors 124 9.6 Clipping 124 9.7 Acronyms and abbreviations 126 9.8 Fads and copycat formations 127 9.9 Back-formation 128 9.10 Blends 128 9.11 Euphemism 129 9.12 Summary 131 Exercises 131 10 A lexical mosaic: sources of English vocabulary 133 10.1 The nature of borrowing 133 10.1.1 Direct and indirect borrowing 133 10.1.2 Loanwords and loanshifts 134 10.1.3 Likely loans 135 10.1.4 Why borrow? 135 10.1.5 The grass is ever greener on the other side 138 10.1.6 Nativisation of loanwords 139 10.1.7 Effects of borrowing 142 10.2 Scandinavian loanwords 143 10.3 The French influence 144 10.3.1 The Norman French legacy 144 ix 10.3.2 French words in modern English 146 10.4 Words from other modern European languages 150 10.5 Loanwords from non-European languages 151 10.6 The Germanic inheritance 152 10.7 Summary 154 Exercises 154 11 The mental lexicon 157 11.1 A mind full of words 157 11.1.1 Types of lexical information 158 11.1.2 The organisation of the mental lexicon 160 11.1.3 To parse or not to parse 161 11.2 Modelling the mental lexicon 164 11.2.1 Understanding speech 164 11.2.2 Selective listening 166 11.2.3 Exploiting syntactic and semantic clues 167 11.3 The articulatory programme 169 11.3.1 Speech errors as evidence in favour of the articulatory programme 169 11.3.2 Two-stage models of lexical access in speech production 171 11.3.3 It’s just on the tip of my tongue 174 11.3.4 Malapropisms 175 11.4 Aphasia 176 11.4.1 Broca’s aphasia 176 11.4.2 Wernicke’s aphasia 177 11.5 Freudian slips 178 11.6 The spreading activation model 179 11.7 Summary 180 Exercises 181 Glossary 183 References 190 Indexes 195 Preface This book developed out of a course on English words that I have taught at Lancaster over the last few years. It is intended to arouse curiosity about English words and about language in general, especially among students who are not intending to specialise in linguistics. Is it not strange that we spend so many of our waking hours talking and yet we know so little about words? Putting words under a microscope and peering at them seems to be a dead boring and absolutely unrewarding subject. Most people know more about sport, cars, computers, gardening, virtually about anything than they know about words. If you are one of them, then read on. This book was written for you. It is intended to disabuse you of the false impression that investigating words is tedious, dry and totally unenjoyable. English Words takes you on a voyage of discovery during which you find out how words are structured, how they convey meaning, how their spelling relates to pronunciation, how new words are manufactured, how the meaning of words changes as time passes and how words are imported from other languages. Finally, in the concluding chapter we marvel at the ability you and I have to store tens of thousands of words in our minds and to retrieve the right words instantaneously in conversation.