22.2346, Qs: Early Sense of the Word 'Morpheme'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-2346. Fri Jun 03 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.2346, Qs: Early Sense of the Word 'Morpheme'

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1)
Date: 01-Jun-2011
From: Stephen Anderson [sra at yale.edu]
Subject: Early Sense of the Word 'Morpheme'
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:50:32
From: Stephen Anderson [sra at yale.edu]
Subject: Early Sense of the Word 'Morpheme'

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Wells (1947:8) says that "the term morphème was current in 
Saussure's day, but with a specialized significance: the 'formative' 
elements of a word (affixes, endings, etc.) as opposed to the root." On 
the other hand, there is consensus that the word was invented by 
Baudouin de Courtenay, and his 1895 definition is "that part of a word 
which is endowed with psychological autonomy and is for the very 
same reason not further divisible. It consequently subsumes such 
concepts as the root (radix), all possible affixes, (suffixes, prefixes), 
endings which are exponents of syntactic relationships, and the
like" (translation from Stankiewicz's Anthology). 

I vaguely recall something like the usage Wells reports, but I can't find a 
source. In particular, everything in Baudouin, Kruszewsky, and other 
work of that vintage seems to use Baudouin's general sense rather 
than the limited one. Can anyone enlighten me about some early 
linguist who used 'morpheme' in a way that excluded roots?
-- 
Steve Anderson 

Linguistic Field(s): Discipline of Linguistics
                     History of Linguistics
                     Morphology







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