[Lexicog] embiggen

[Sebastian Drude]

Dear David, Rudy,


I find it very ENriching that we, starting from a jocuous form, get into 
a debate on analyses and methodologial issues.


To the points of David:

> 1. en-/em- (or any other morpheme) has only one meaning. (I.e. it is not 
> polysemous.)

I would not agree.  There are several meanings that are not in the topic 
of this discussion -- _empower_, _ensign_, _ensure_ etc.  These are 
other senses, so _en-_ is polysemous anyway.  (It seems indeed to be 
polysemy, not homonomy, as all these uses share a common core -- that of 
verbalizing and possibly transitivizing).

But every new use or sense proposed for a given entity has to be 
carefully demonstrated.  If not, we run the risk to propagate many 
unnecessary meanings.  One thing to check if a postulated meaning 
component can in fact be the effect of some other element (such as the 
suffix _-en_).

> 2. There is only one path from pieces (morphemes) to overall meaning 
> that can be correct.

No, there may be several, especial in situations of language change this 
HAS to be the case.  I even would not agree with a methodological 
principle that holds that any description has to come up with the 
minimal possible sets of rules -- existing rules are an empirical 
question and not a question of descriptive economy (which can be applied 
everything else being equal, in order to take into account the economy 
of usage of our mind's storing and processing capacities).

But again, every "extra"-path has to be made plausible and not 
postulated ad hoc.

> 3. There is a principled distinction between "basic" and "non-basic" 
> meanings which always obtains. (Of course we may not always be able to 
> discern or demonstrate it.)

I would not say that this is a principle question -- it is an empirical 
question, and there may be elements that idiosyncrationally have several 
unconnected meanings.
However, experience say that several meanings usually have devoleped one 
from another historically, and that there may still be some common core 
(or basic meaning).

> 4. Once a basic sense, always the basic sense.

No, there is language change and things may get detached and develop 
autonomously from a certain point in time.

> 5. If a meaning component (e.g. “make”) can be shown to come from one 
> morpheme in a word, it cannot come from another.

I would agree in the sense that in one analysis this is usually the case 
-- but there may be cases of structural ambiguity i.e. parallel valid 
analyses (see #1).

> 6. If a meaning component (e.g. “make”) can be shown to be absent in one 
> use of a morpheme, it is absent from all. (This may be #1 above in 
> another form.)

No, not necessarily, but I would hold that when a meaning component C 
(here: 'make') is absent in one use of element X (_en-_), and there is 
another use of X co-occurring with an element Y (here: conversion) which 
is a plausible candidate for being responsible for that meaning 
component C, than there must be solid arguments to ascribe C to X, and 
not, or simultaneously, to Y, in the second use.

> 7. If a it can be shown that a given meaning component (e.g. “make”) 
> *needn't* be present in a given morpheme, that proves that it *cannot* 
> be present. (Perhaps this is just a stronger form of #6.)

If I was to be undersdood like this, than I expressed myself not clear 
enough and apologize.


To the points of John:

 > Do you have a reference on the Michael Hammond article?

I would also be interested.

 > Why is EN-___-EN a circumfix? ...
 > With EN-___-EN you have a prefix with a Latinate origin and a suffix
 > with an OE origin that presumably have come into the English language
 > at different times.

That does not preclude them from synchronously being two parts of one 
discontinuous morpheme.

 > You also have examples of the prefix EN- without -EN and -EN without
 > EN-, which indicates they can function independently of each other.

The question is whether they have some meaning component that ONLY shows 
up if the two are co-occurring.  If this is the case, it is possible 
that you have a circumfix in these cases, but it still may be that you 
have another possible analysis that avoids the circumfix analysis.

In this case, I would also doubt that we have a circumfix here as I do 
not see anything that is characteristic only to the combination of _en-_ 
and _-en_ and would not be encountered with only one of those (in 
particular, only with _-en_ or by conversion into a tranritive verb, why 
I even questioned that 'make' should be ascribed to _en-_ at all).  But 
maybe I am not aware of some arguments, and the Hammond article could 
ENlight me...

 > You said EN-___-EN is a favorite problem example that has been around
 > in linguistics workbooks for 50 years.

I understood that it was the allomorphy /en/+/em/ of morpheme {em-}, not 
the postulated circumfix.

Cheers, Sebastian

-- 
| Sebastian   D R U D E    (Linguist, Awetí Project)
| Setor de Lingüística -- CCH --  Museu P. E. Goeldi
| Cx. P. 399   --   66 040 - 170  Belém do Pará - PA
| [55] (91) 3217-6123 --  sebadru at zedat.fu-berlin.de
| www.germanistik.fu-berlin.de/il/pers/drude-en.html



 
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