[Lexicog] sub-morphemic particles??

[Helge Gundersen]

Bloomfield called them root-forming morphemes (Language, 244f). A more 
conventional name nowadays is phonaesthemes (or phonesthemes). OED 
defines that as a "phoneme or group of phonemes having recognizable 
semantic associations, as a result of appearing in a number of words of 
similar meaning".

There's a lot written about it, although it's not a mainstream topic, so 
not well known by those not particularly interested in it. I don't have 
the time to dig out a lot of bibliographical references now (and I've 
been away from the topic for a while), but you can search the net for a 
start.

Also, Ben Bergen wrote an article in Language (vol. 80) called "The 
psychological reality of phonaesthemes", which contains several 
interesting references as well. Some people have done psycholinguistic 
research, which statistically confirms the reality of the phenomenon 
(which doesn't mean that every connection a particular person posits 
should be considered real, but that really applies to linguistic 
phenomena in general).

The semantic aspect of the phenomenon falls under the broader (it seems) 
topic of sound-symbolism (another search term).

Since the unit, presumably, has meaning, it could be considered a 
morpheme, but it could also be considered a *submorphemic unit*, a 
meaningful unit that doesn't share some of the other properties commonly 
associated with morphemes. It would perhaps be a matter of definition 
whether to include it under the heading of morphology, but it's a part 
of lexicology anyway. (It would be mistaken and very unfortunate to 
include it in phonology, which otherwise concerns itself with 
meaning-differentiating units, not meaning-bearing units.)

In this morphological respect, it falls under a broader range of 
phenomena which are hard to single out as hard-core morphemes, see 
already Bloomfield. Think of how many pronouns that share some common 
phonology, for example. And what about the relationship between "pope" 
and "papal"? It doesn't confirm to the descriptions of derivational 
morphology commonly found (it't not regular), and "pape" is not a 
variety of "pope" on its own.

For a textbook discussion of various kinds of "problematic" (for many 
linguistic theories, that is) phenomena of this kind, also touching on 
phonesthemes, I strongly recommend Part 3 Morphology in John Taylor: 
Cognitive Grammar, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Regards,

Helge Gundersen
http://no2014.uio.no/tekster/project/staff/index.php?side=helgegu




On 23.02.2007 07:41, Allan Johnson wrote:
> 
> 
> Last Saturday, talking about how hot the sun had been when I went 
> jogging that afternoon, I said that the sun had “blared” at me the whole 
> time. Then thinking about what I had just said, I corrected myself – 
> “no, I think the word is “glared”. But that slip-up made me wonder if 
> there’s some real connection between the following words:
> 
>  
> 
> blare – for something (like a radio) to make a sound intense enough that 
> you want to plug your ears
> 
> glare – for something (like the sun) to emit light bright enough that 
> you need to squint or close your eyes
> 
> stare – for someone to look at you intently enough to make you feel 
> uncomfortable
> 
>  
> 
> They all seem to share the idea of an intensity that’s too intense for 
> comfort. And they all share that a-r-e ending. What would you call that 
> piece of the word? Is it a morpheme? Or maybe something on a 
> sub-morphemic level?
> 
>  
> 
> It would be interesting to know if anything along these lines has been 
> researched. It might shed some light on things I’ve seen in Austronesian 
> languages – things which also sometimes seem to carry meaning on a level 
> below that of the morpheme.
> 
>  
> 
> Allan J.


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