<div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Thank you Martin
for the information about Greek. So there are indeed polymorphemic Greek words
in which <i>bio</i>, for example, is used as
the final constituent, right? If so, it seems that at least some Greek roots have
now functioned more like affixes in English. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">From a
crosslinguistic perspective, it is indeed desirable and even necessary (at some
level of analysis) to distinguish between affixes and bound roots. Packard
(2000, 2016a, 2016b) notes that Chinese differs from English in its large
inventory of bound roots and in its frequent use of two bound roots to form a word.
He uses “bound root words” to refer to words consisting of either only bound
roots or a combination of bound roots and free roots. Crucially, such words do
not involve any derivational affix. In the literature on English word
formation, words like <i>psychology</i> are
often labeled “neoclassical compounds” on the assumption that <i>psycho</i> and <i>logy</i> are roots. If <i>psycho</i>
and <i>logy</i> are roots at all, they are bound
roots and this actually makes <i>psychology</i>
a bound root word, not truly a compound, whose components must be existing
words if we follow the traditional definition of this concept closely. <span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">But there is still
the question of whether <i>psycho</i> and <i>logy</i> in <i>psychology</i> are really bound roots or affixes in contemporary
English. In terms of distribution, they function like affixes as <i>psycho</i> appears word-initially and <i>logy</i> occurs word-finally. In terms of
their denotation, they are roots if we adopt Martin’s definition of the notion
of root. So there is a conflict here if both positioning and denotation are
taken into consideration, and this brings us back to the question of how to
best distinguish between affixes and bound roots. <span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Best regards,<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Chao<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Packard, Jerome L.
2000. <i>The Morphology of Chinese: A
Linguistic and Cognitive Approach</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><br><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Packard, Jerome L.
2016a. Chinese morphology. In Sin-wai Chan (ed.), <i>The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language</i>, 215-226. London
& New York: Routledge.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><br><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Packard, Jerome L.
2016b. Lexical word formation. In Chu-Ren Huang & Dingxu Shi (eds.), <i>A Reference Grammar of Chinese</i>, 67-80.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 27pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><br><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span></span></span></p>
</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 2:30 PM Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
From the point of view of English, one doesn't really need the
distinction between prefixes and "compound-only roots", I think.<br>
<br>
(Though perhaps bio-, socio-, geo-, astro- etc. are special in that
they bear stress when combined with -logy, -graphy, -nomy, which is
not the case with prefixes like un-, pro-, pre-, anti-)<br>
<br>
The question of language comparison is different. I have proposed
that a root (as a comparative concept) should be defined as a
minimal form that denotes a thing, an action, or a property
(Haspelmath 2012) – it seems that this corresponds exactly to our
intuition, even though it cannot be applied in all cases in
particular languages. But this is not the purpose of comparative
concepts.<br>
<br>
In Greek, bio-, ge(o)-, and astr(o)- are not restricted (they mean
'life', 'earth', 'star', also outside of compounds), and neither are
anti- (it occurs as a prefix or as a preposition) and auto- (it
occurs as a prefix or as a pronoun or self-intensifier '(s)he; self').<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail-m_71562835770706007moz-cite-prefix">On 16.01.19 18:58, Chao Li wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Dear Colleagues,<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">I was wondering
whether I could consult with you on the use of Greek roots
that had been
borrowed into English. For example, <i>bio</i>,
<i>anti</i>, and <i>auto</i> have their origin in Greek.
They are often analyzed as roots
from Greek. However, in English such forms are generally
positionally
restricted and thus are often found in the list of English
affixes (see
Aikhenvald’s (2007: 28) observation that English has some
forms that “are
problematic as to whether they are better analyzed as
roots or as affixes, e.g.
<i>bio- </i>or <i>anthropo</i>-”). <b>I am
wondering whether the counterparts of forms like <i>bio</i>,
<i>anti</i>, and <i>auto</i> are positionally
restricted in
Greek as well</b>. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">More generally, <b>is
it reasonable if we adopt a criterion that
for a bound form to be analyzed as a bound root, it
should be positionally
unrestricted in a polymorphemic word with the meaning of
the morpheme in
question maintained the same in its different uses?</b>
(It appears that such a
criterion works pretty well for Mandarin Chinese). <b>If
not, what is a good criterion for the distinction
between bound
roots and affixes?</b> (The criterion that the former
have content and
the latter do not doesn’t appear to be quite useful.
Moreover, one may adopt
the definition that a bound root is a bound morpheme
denoting a thing, an
action, or a property. If this definition leads to an
analysis of <i>bio</i>, <i>anti</i>,
and <i>auto</i> as bound roots because the
first one denotes a thing and the latter two denote a
property(??), how would
we analyze <i>un-</i> as in <i>unable</i>?) <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Thank you so much in
advance for your input and insight!<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Best regards,<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">Chao<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt" lang="EN-US">[Aikhenvald, Alexandra
Y. 2007. Typological distinctions in word-formation. In
Timothy Shopen (ed.), <i>Language Typology and Syntactic
Description,
Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon</i>, 2<sup>nd</sup>
edn., 1-65.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]<span></span></span></p>
</div>
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<br>
<pre class="gmail-m_71562835770706007moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="gmail-m_71562835770706007moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig
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