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[bradrn]

This is really the key to most terminological debates. The function of a morpheme is about its syntactic and semantic distribution, not the term you happen to choose to summarise that distribution.

Terminological question: Does a tense have a morpheme? It feels hard to say that the English simple past has a morpheme, and this is not an isolated example - good examples can be found in all of the 3 classical IE languages.

By contrast you seem to be implicitly working from some sort of ‘lexical-incremental’ theory in which each ‘morpheme’ is its own autonomous entity, and features are added to a word only by adding that ‘morpheme’ to a stem. That works well enough for very regular agglutinative languages, but as you can see it quickly runs into problems with others. It’s probably for this reason that modern linguists seem to avoid the term ‘morpheme’ except in informal use — indeed, Corbett only uses the term twice in the whole book. (See also Anderson’s 1992 book A-Morphous Morphology.)

You're the one who switched from the naming of tenses to the meaning of morphemes.

Well-, you asked whether ‘a tense ha[s] a morpheme’. The answer is, I think, that it’s a meaningless question.

An issue with the realisational approach is that it allows one to claim person and number for English relative pronouns. While that is probably correct for several forms, it does allow a great deal of other marking.

How so?

[jal]

Are you saying that write, wrote and written have but a single morpheme between them, or are you saying they're three different morphemes?

Three different ones. They cannot, syncronically, be analyzed otherwise.


JAL

[jal]

-en is a semi-productive morpheme in my dialect. For instance, new strong past participles with -en can be derived from strong preterites in cases, such as aten and dranken. (Yes I will say and have heard both of these, and they did not sound ungrammatical to me or to the person with whom I was speaking.)

That's quite interesting.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Are you saying that write, wrote and written have but a single morpheme between them, or are you saying they're three different morphemes?

Three different ones. They cannot, syncronically, be analyzed otherwise.

I would say four different morphemes, as there are three different morphemes in the stem ablaut, and an extra morpheme in the -en past participle ending.

Would you argue that in your native Dutch that Dutch past participles cannot be divided into a ge- prefix, a stem ablaut in the case of strong past participles and certain historically weak past participles that also involve a stem change relative to the present stem and/or the preterite stem, and a -d weak suffix or -en strong suffix?

[Richard W]

Are you saying that write, wrote and written have but a single morpheme between them, or are you saying they're three different morphemes?

Three different ones. They cannot, syncronically, be analyzed otherwise.

HERESY!

Also false. I'm pretty sure I successfully analysed the past form brung the first time I heard it. (I cannot remember my initial act of relating brought to bring. That may have been a slower process, as I still have some trouble with distinguishing brought and bought.)

The ablaut process of write -> wrote still seems live. Its expansion to dive and arrive may be fairly recent, though partly separated from the formation of the past participle. For example, I once had doubts about the validity of stridden, while I had no doubt about the validity of strode.

[bradrn]

For example, I once had doubts about the validity of stridden, while I had no doubt about the validity of strode.

This is interesting. I can’t recall having seen ‘stridden’ before, and it does feel extremely weird to me. I have no idea why.

(I also am unsure what I would have given as the past participle of ‘stride’ if I had been asked previously. Perhaps it’s just a defective verb for me.)

[Travis B.]

For example, I once had doubts about the validity of stridden, while I had no doubt about the validity of strode.

This is interesting. I can’t recall having seen ‘stridden’ before, and it does feel extremely weird to me. I have no idea why.

(I also am unsure what I would have given as the past participle of ‘stride’ if I had been asked previously. Perhaps it’s just a defective verb for me.)

I would say that 'stride' is defective to me; I had never even heard of 'stridden' before this thread.

[Travis B.]

Note from repeating sentences like "I've stridden over to the computer" to myself, 'stridden' seems comprehensible if somewhat alien.

[Richard W]

I would say that 'stride' is defective to me; I had never even heard of 'stridden' before this thread.

That was my thought when I first considered the matter, over fifty years ago. On the other hand, bestridden from bestride gives me no problem. I do have a problem inventing an ordinary example with stridden; the verb stride just doesn't seem natural in the perfect, while the transitive verb bestride readily makes sense in the perfect.

[jal]

I would say four different morphemes, as there are three different morphemes in the stem ablaut, and an extra morpheme in the -en past participle ending.

No, I argue that the -en isn't a synchronic morpheme, your specific dialectal oddities notwithstanding.

Would you argue that in your native Dutch that Dutch past participles cannot be divided into a ge- prefix, a stem ablaut in the case of strong past participles and certain historically weak past participles that also involve a stem change relative to the present stem and/or the preterite stem, and a -d weak suffix or -en strong suffix?

Why on earth would I argue such an utterly daft thing? (Other than calling -en a "strong suffix", and let's not quibble about -d not having inherent voicing akin to English plural -s.)

Also, stem ablauts have little to do with morphemes, or are ablauts now counted as a morpheme??


JAL

[jal]

Also false. I'm pretty sure I successfully analysed the past form brung the first time I heard it. (I cannot remember my initial act of relating brought to bring. That may have been a slower process, as I still have some trouble with distinguishing brought and bought.)

It's so funny that on the one hand you ask n00b questions that even a quick google could answer, and on the other hand you're so full of confidence about other things. I sense a bit of Dunning-Kruger here...

Hint: you cannot tell someone they're wrong, and then "proving" it by saying "I am right".


JAL

[/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/]

Hint: you cannot tell someone they're wrong, and then "proving" it by saying "I am right".

wrong; you can because I said so and I'm always right¹.

¹this is blatant irony, in the event that you couldn't tell.

[Travis B.]

I would say four different morphemes, as there are three different morphemes in the stem ablaut, and an extra morpheme in the -en past participle ending.

No, I argue that the -en isn't a synchronic morpheme, your specific dialectal oddities notwithstanding.

Would you argue that something does not have morpheme-hood just because it is not productive per se?

Would you argue that in your native Dutch that Dutch past participles cannot be divided into a ge- prefix, a stem ablaut in the case of strong past participles and certain historically weak past participles that also involve a stem change relative to the present stem and/or the preterite stem, and a -d weak suffix or -en strong suffix?

Why on earth would I argue such an utterly daft thing?

So you would argue that Dutch past participles can be divided into morphemes but English past participles cannot?

(Other than calling -en a "strong suffix", and let's not quibble about -d not having inherent voicing akin to English plural -s.)

I would argue that -en is a strong past participle suffix in this context in both Dutch and English, the only difference between that in English not all strong past participles receive it, and in some dialects such as my own certain weak past participles can optionally receive it (e.g. in the case of boughten).

English plural -s only has inherent phonemic voicing after a vowel, otherwise it agrees in voicing to what precedes it. And what about Dutch -d voicing when an attributive ending -e is attached to it (unless there is some aspect of Dutch here I don't quite get)?

Also, stem ablauts have little to do with morphemes, or are ablauts now counted as a morpheme??

One could consider an ablaut to be an obligatory infix that can be changed but never omitted.

[hwhatting]

Also, stem ablauts have little to do with morphemes, or are ablauts now counted as a morpheme??

Yep, and not just "now", they counted already when I studied linguistics over 30 years ago (to be exact, "sing", "sang", and "sung" are three different morphemes).

[jal]

Would you argue that something does not have morpheme-hood just because it is not productive per se?

I would argue that synchronically it indeed would not have morpheme-hood, because the meaning attached to it is indistinguishable from the meaning of the word as a whole. written cannot synchronically be analyzed as "write" + "-en", it's just as opaque as "wrote".

So you would argue that Dutch past participles can be divided into morphemes but English past participles cannot?

Again, why on earth would I argue such an utterly daft thing? What did I write that leads you to conclude I somehow don't think -ed is a morpheme?

I would argue that -en is a strong past participle suffix in this context in both Dutch and English, the only difference between that in English not all strong past participles receive it, and in some dialects such as my own certain weak past participles can optionally receive it (e.g. in the case of boughten).

-en is indeed a Dutch strong verb past participle suffix, though I'm not sure what Dutch linguistics says about its morphemehood. By itself, it isn't a morpheme though, it needs to be combined with ge-. Circumfix ge-en could be seen as a strong verb morpheme, but of course most strong verbs also need a vowel change.

English plural -s only has inherent phonemic voicing after a vowel, otherwise it agrees in voicing to what precedes it.

Is that the standard analysis? I'd say that since vowels are voiced, "it agrees in voicing to what precedes it" is the whole rule, no need for a special vowel rule.

And what about Dutch -d voicing when an attributive ending -e is attached to it (unless there is some aspect of Dutch here I don't quite get)?

That's not voicing, that's un-devoicing, if you like. As you know, Dutch is a word-final obstruent devoicing language, so an inherently voiced /d/ (because of a preceeding voiced consonant) is pronounced [t] at the end of a word. When an -e is attached (not an attributive ending per se, it follows the normal rules for adjectives here), the /d/ isn't final anymore, so is realized as a [d].

One could consider an ablaut to be an obligatory infix that can be changed but never omitted.

One could, but I think that one goes against the generic consensus on what is, and what isn't an infix (and a morpheme).


JAL

[jal]

Yep, and not just "now", they counted already when I studied linguistics over 30 years ago (to be exact, "sing", "sang", and "sung" are three different morphemes).

Well, of course these are three different morphemes (like I named "write", "wrote" and "written" three different morphemes), but Travis seemed to imply (and he repeated that in his last post above) that the vowel itself is a seperate infix morpheme from the rest of the word.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Would you argue that something does not have morpheme-hood just because it is not productive per se?

I would argue that synchronically it indeed would not have morpheme-hood, because the meaning attached to it is indistinguishable from the meaning of the word as a whole. written cannot synchronically be analyzed as "write" + "-en", it's just as opaque as "wrote".

So all possible combinations of historical morphemes have to each be treated as part of a synchronic stem if not all such combinations are synchronically accessible?

So you would argue that Dutch past participles can be divided into morphemes but English past participles cannot?

Again, why on earth would I argue such an utterly daft thing? What did I write that leads you to conclude I somehow don't think -ed is a morpheme?

Yet you deny that English -en is a strong past participle morpheme and insist that it is part of the stem on the grounds that it is not fully productive.

I would argue that -en is a strong past participle suffix in this context in both Dutch and English, the only difference between that in English not all strong past participles receive it, and in some dialects such as my own certain weak past participles can optionally receive it (e.g. in the case of boughten).

-en is indeed a Dutch strong verb past participle suffix, though I'm not sure what Dutch linguistics says about its morphemehood. By itself, it isn't a morpheme though, it needs to be combined with ge-. Circumfix ge-en could be seen as a strong verb morpheme, but of course most strong verbs also need a vowel change.

But about when it is combined with prefixes like be- and ver- where there is no ge-?

English plural -s only has inherent phonemic voicing after a vowel, otherwise it agrees in voicing to what precedes it.

Is that the standard analysis? I'd say that since vowels are voiced, "it agrees in voicing to what precedes it" is the whole rule, no need for a special vowel rule.

The standard analysis is that English plural -s is -/s/ after non-sibilant fortis obstruents.

And what about Dutch -d voicing when an attributive ending -e is attached to it (unless there is some aspect of Dutch here I don't quite get)?

That's not voicing, that's un-devoicing, if you like. As you know, Dutch is a word-final obstruent devoicing language, so an inherently voiced /d/ (because of a preceeding voiced consonant) is pronounced [t] at the end of a word. When an -e is attached (not an attributive ending per se, it follows the normal rules for adjectives here), the /d/ isn't final anymore, so is realized as a [d].

You seemed to imply that final -d was /t/ rather than devoiced /d/.

[jal]

So all possible combinations of historical morphemes have to each be treated as part of a synchronic stem if not all such combinations are synchronically accessible?

I would argue so, yes. What use is describing a "morpheme", in a synchronic analysis, if the intended morpheme is neither productive nor experienced as contributing to its supposed meaning?

Yet you deny that English -en is a strong past participle morpheme and insist that it is part of the stem on the grounds that it is not fully productive.

I do. But arguing against the morphemic status of -en does not imply I also argue against the morphemic status of -ed.

But about when it is combined with prefixes like be- and ver- where there is no ge-?

In that case you could argue it is a morpheme on its own. But again, I'm not sure how Dutch linguists (or linguists studying Dutch) in general analyze this. It might well be -en isn't treated as a morpheme at all. A quick google turns up nothing, alas.

You seemed to imply that final -d was /t/ rather than devoiced /d/.

My apologies for the confusion. It's /d/, realized as [t]. There is also /t/, realized as [t]. As I wrote, the final t/d of the past participle takes its voicing from the preceding consonant (or perhaps also vowel, although I can't think of a weak verb with a stem ending in a vowel right now). So you have e.g.

hakken - gehakt - gehakte: /t/, [t] and [t]
and
leggen - gelegd - gelegde: /d/, [t] and [d]


JAL

[bradrn]

I really do not get what people are arguing about here. Insofar as I can understand anything of the dispute at all, people seem to be having trouble with the very concepts of nonconcatenative morphology and unproductive morphology. Which is weird, given how common both of those are…

[Travis B.]

I really do not get what people are arguing about here. Insofar as I can understand anything of the dispute at all, people seem to be having trouble with the very concepts of nonconcatenative morphology and unproductive morphology. Which is weird, given how common both of those are…

I really don't understand jal's arguments here -- he seems to be saying that any non-fully-productive affixes are collectively part of the stem, and any change in them is a change in the entire stem, and he seems to be denying that ablaut is an example of nonconcatenative morphology that can be analyzed separate from the rest of the stem such that the rest of the stem forms a template into which the ablaut vowel is inserted as an infix.