bound roots

[Marc Joanisse]

Carolyn,
One thought that folks have had about what you describe is this: the
concept of a dichotomy between underived (corner) and derived (baker)
might be artificial, and instead a continuum exists between the two.
Where a word lies on that continuum is determined by how strongly it
overlaps phonologically and semantically with other words. So you could
imagine that at the one end you have transparently derived pairs like
"run-runner", which share a strong semantic and phonological overlap.
At the other extreme are cases that have no semantic overlap, like
"moth-mother". Cases like  "dress-dresser" and "turn-return" are
somewhere in between, with their relatedness determined by the degree
of semantic and phonological overlap.

Here's a nice review:

Seidenberg, M.S. and Gonnerman, L.M. (2000). Explaining derivational
morphology as the convergence of codes.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
4 (9)  353-361

-Marc-

On Nov 11, 2004, at 6:49 PM, Carolyn Chaney wrote:

> In my Language for Teachers class we were discussing various kinds of
> morphemes, and we discovered that we had difficulty knowing if certain
> words were free morphemes or a combo of an affix plus a bound root.
> This
> was particularly difficult when the word has a syllable that looks
> like am
> affix, such as mothER or DEcide.  Cases where there are several like
> words
> (receive, deceive, conceive) look like bound roots.  Mother seems
> clearly
> to be a free morpheme, as a mother is not one who moths.  But what
> about
> decide?  inept?  nonchalant?  uncouth?  refine?  Uncouth, for example,
> is
> given in texts as an affix plus bound root, but surely it doesn't mean
> not-couth.  Does anyone have a clear explanation of how to distinguish
> words with affix-looking parts from words that really have affixes +
> bound
> roots, preferably an explanation that does not require looking up
> derivations in the dictionary?
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
> Carolyn Chaney
> Just call me stumped
>
>
>
>
>
--
Marc Joanisse, Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience
The University of Western Ontario
marcj at uwo.ca
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/lrcn