Meaning

9.5. [...] Our fundamental assumption implies that each linguistic form has a constant and specific meaning. If the forms are phonemically different, we suppose that their meanings also are different — for instance, that each one of a set of forms like quick, fast, swift, rapid, speedy, differs from all the others in some constant and conversational feature of meaning. [...] On the other hand, our assumption implies also that if the forms are semantically different (that is, different as to linguistic meaning), they are not “the same”, even though they may be alike as to phonetic form. Thus, in English, the phonetic form [bε ə ] occurs with three different meanings: bear ‘to carry; to give birth to’, bear ‘ursus’, and bare ‘uncovered’. Similarly, [рε ə ] represents two nouns (pear and pair)and a verb (pare), and many other examples will occur to the reader. [...]

10.1. [....] A linguistic form which is never spoken alone is a bound form; all others (as, for instance, John ran or John or run or running)are free forms.

In other cases we wait in vain for the occurrence of a form even as part of some other form. For instance, having heard the form cranberry, we soon recognize the component berry in other forms, such as blackberry, and may even hear it spoken alone, but with the other component of cranberry we shall have no such luck. Not only do we wait in vain to hear an isolated * cran, but, listen as we may, we never hear this element outside the one combination cranberry, and we cannot elicit from the speakers any other form which will contain this element cran-. [...] We shall come to the conclusion that the element cran- occurs only in the combination cranberry. However, since it has a constant phonetic form, and since its meaning is constant, in so far as a cranberry is a definite kind of berry, different from all other kinds, we say that cran-, too, is a linguistic form. Experience shows that we do well to generalize this instance: unique elements, which occur only in a single com­bination, are linguistic forms. [...]

10.2. We see, then, that some linguistic forms bear partial phonetic-semantic resemblances to other forms; examples are, John ran, John fell, Bill ran, Bill fell; Johnny, Billy; playing, dancing; blackberry, cranberry; strawberry, strawflower. A linguistic form which bears a partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to some other linguistic form, is a complex form.

The common part of any (two or more) complex forms is a linguistic form; it is a constituent (or component)of these complex forms. The constituent is said to be contained in (orto be included in or to enter into)the complex forms. If a complex form, beside the common part, contains a remainder, such as the cran- in cranberry, which does not occur in any other complex form, this remainder also is a linguistic form; it is a unique constituent of the complex form. The constituent forms in our examples above are: John, ran, Bill, fell, play, dance, black, berry, straw, flower, cran- (unique constituent in cranberry), -y (bound-form constituent in Johnny, Billy), -ing (bound-form constituent in playing, dancing). In any complex form, each constituent is said to accompany the other constituents.

A linguistic form which bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form, is a simple form or morpheme. Thus, bird, play, dance, cran-, -y, -ing are morphemes. Morphemes may show partial phonetic resemblances, as do, for instance, bird and burr, or even homonymy, as do pear, pair, pare, but this resemblance is purely phonetic and is not paralleled by the meanings.

From all this it appears that every complex form is entirely made up, so far as its phonetically definable con­stituents are concerned, of morphemes. The number of these ultimate constituents may run very high. The form Poor John ran away contains five morphemes: poor, John, ran, a- (a bound form recurring, for instance, in aground, ashore, aloft, around), and way. However, the structure of complex forms is by no means as simple as this; we could not under­stand the forms of a language if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents. Any English-speaking person who concerns himself with this matter, is sure to tell us that the immediate constituents of Poor John ran away are the two forms poor John and ran away; that each of these is, in turn, a complex form; that the imme­diate constituents of ran away are ran, a morpheme, and away, a complex form, whose constituents are the mor­phemes a- and way; and that the constituents of poor John are the morphemes poor and John. Only in this way will a proper analysis (that is, one which takes account of the meanings) lead to the ultimately constituent morphemes. The reasons for this will occupy us later.

10.3. A morpheme can be described phonetically, since it consists of one or more phonemes, but its meaning can­not be analyzed within the scope of our science. For instance, we have seen that the morpheme pin bears a phonetic resemblance to other morphemes, such as pig, pen, tin, ten, and, on the basis of these resemblances, can be analyzed and described in terms of three phonemes, but, since these resemblances are not connected with resemblances of meaning, we cannot attribute any meaning to the phonemes and can­not, within the scope of our science, analyze the meaning of the morpheme. The meaning of a morpheme is a sememe. The linguist assumes that each sememe is a constant and definite unit of meaning, different from all other meanings, including all other sememes, in the language, but he cannot go beyond this. There is nothing in the structure of morphemes like wolf, fox, and dog to tell us the relation between their meanings. [...]

A workable system of signals, such as a language, can contain only a small number of signaling-units, but the things signaled about — in our case, the entire content of the practical world — may be infinitely varied. Accordingly, the signals (linguistic forms, with morphemes as the smallest signals) consist of different combinations of the signaling-units (phonemes), and each such combination is arbitrarily assigned to some feature of the practical word (sememe). The signals can be analyzed, but not the things signaled about. [...]

10.4. Since every complex form is made up entirely of morphemes, a complete list of morphemes would account for all the phonetic forms of a language. The total stock of morphemes in a language is its lexicon. However, if we knew the lexicon of a language, and had a reasonably accurate knowledge of each sememe, we might still fail to under­stand the forms of this language. Every utterance contains some significant features that are not accounted for by the lexicon. [...]

(3) Phonetic modification is a change in the primary phonemes of a form. For instance, when the forms do [duw] and not [nɒ t] are combined into a complex form, the [uw] of do is ordinarily replaced by [ow], and, whenever this happens, the not loses its vowel, so that the combined form is don’t [downt]. In this example the modification is optional, and we have also the unmodified forms in do not, with a difference of connotation. In other cases we have no choice. Thus, the suffix -ess with the meaning ‘female’, as in count -ess, is added also to duke [d(j)uwk] but in this combination the form duke is modified to duch- [dʌ tʆ -], for the word is duchess ['dʌ tʆ ı z].

Strictly speaking, we should say that the morpheme in such cases has two (or, sometimes, more) different phonetic forms, such as not [nɒ t] and [nt], do [duw] and [dow], duke and duch-, and that each of these alternants appears under certain conditions. In our examples, however, one of the alternants has a much wider range than the other and, accord­ingly, is a basic alternant. In other cases, the alternants are more on a par. In run and ran, for instance, neither alternant is tied to the presence of any accompanying form, and we might hesitate as to the choice of a basic alternant. We find, however, that in cases like keep: kep-t the past-tense form contains an alternant (kep-) which occurs only with a certain accompanying form (-t); accordingly, to obtain as uniform as possible a statement, we take the infinitive form (keep, run) as basic, and describe the alternant which appears in the past tense (kep-, ran) as a phonetically modified form. We shall see other instances where the choice is more difficult; we try, of course, to make the selection of a basic alternant so as to get, in the long run, the simplest description of the facts.