Separation Hypothesis

University of Stuttgart
Institute of English Linguistics
HS: Advanced Morphology
WS 2004/2005

Separation Hypothesis

by: Eva Forster

1. INTRODUCTION 3

2. LEXEME-BASED THEORIES VS. MORPHEME-BASED THEORIES 5

2.1. Morpheme-based theories: Lexical Morphology  5
2.2. Morpheme-based theories: Lexeme/Morpheme base Morphology (LMBM)  6

3. THE SEPARATION HYPOTHESIS (SH)  8

3.1. The starting point of SH  8

Polyfunctional affixes  8
Zero-morphology and empty morphs 10

3.2. SH – an outline 11

Lexical Derivation  11

4. ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF SH  14

6. PROBLEMS WITH SH 15

7. CONCLUSION 16

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY  17

1. Introduction

Morphology, which can be roughly defined as "the study of words and their structure" (Bauer 2003: 3), is one part of linguistic theory, which had to fight for its justification the hardest in the middle of the 20th century, even though it is "one of the oldest concerns of linguistics" (Aronoff 1983: 355). Yet, after its heyday in the nineteenth century, it slowly was marginalized and lost its supreme status, the major reason being the rise of generative linguistics¹, which mainly focused on syntax and phonology. This change of attitude to morphology paradoxically can be explained by its central position it has within linguistic theory. Since it is concerned with words, which

- obviously have phonological properties,
- can be put together to form sentences,
- in many cases have a special syntactic function and
- are composed of parts, which again can have a meaning of their own,

morphology is situated at the interface of phonology, syntax and semantics. (cf. Spencer, Zwicky 2001: 1). As a consequence some linguists started to consider morphology as a part of phonology or syntax, denying it an independent status.

However, when the first enthusiasm in the new field of syntax had abated, linguists began to recognise the implications, which discoveries in the field of syntax and phonology had for morphology. This is one of the reasons why morphology from around the 1970s on regained some of its earlier importance, even though it "has not generally managed to establish itself alongside [phonology and syntax]" (Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 3). Since then a great variety of approaches to morphology have been developed (e.g. Lexicalist Morphology, Word-and- Paradigm Morphology, Parallel Morphology, Meaning-based morphological theories such as Lexeme-Morpheme-Based Morphology, Natural Morphology, Distributed Morphology and many more).

In the following I will concentrate on one special idea in theoretical linguistics and its implications for morphology – the Separation Hypothesis, developed by Robert Beard (1966- 1995). Beard tried "to find a universal set of principles governing all meanings expressed morphologically, […] and claims that the semantic side of morphology obeys principles which are to a large extent independent of its formal, or morphophonological, side." (Carstairs-McCarthy 1992:173) As a consequence his approach is a rigid separation of the two aspects of morphology – form and meaning (therefore the name of his hypothesis, on which he built his morphological framework).

The aim of this paper is to show how the Separation Hypothesis works and to elaborate on the main arguments in favour of this hypothesis and the problems that might occur when dealing with morphology in this way. To highlight its unique status and underline its main ideas it will be contrasted with Lieber′s lexical approach to morphology. Yet, this approach will be introduced only as far as it is needed to accentuate the characteristics of Beard′s theory. As the very short glance on morphology as a subdiscipline has shown, this field of linguistic theory is, due to its status as an interface, an ideal area for divers investigations. It goes without saying that the Separation Hypothesis, the basis of Lexeme-Morpheme-Base Morphology, could be contrasted with numerous other theories different or similar to it, in order to set it apart. Nevertheless, this paper will focus only on Lieber′s lexical approach to morphology in opposition to Beard′s, since a) Beard himself uses her theory as a contrast in his papers and b) any other outline simply would go beyond the scope of this paper.

2. Lexeme-based theories vs. morpheme-based theories

Among the different approaches to morphology one can differentiate between at least two ways of looking at the field of activity of morphology. Aronoff distinguishes lexeme-based morphology from morpheme based morphology in particular, stating that the latter "reduce[s] language to simplex signs, each of which is an arbitrary union of sound and meaning". In contrast lexeme-based morphology "starts from two decidedly unstructuralist assumptions: that the morpheme is not the basic unit of language and that morphology and syntax are not one and the same." (qtd. In http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/lexbase.html). Morpheme-based morphology, in other words, assumes that language contains only one type of meaningful unit, the morpheme, which includes stems and affixes, all of which are signs. Lexeme-based morphology assumes that only lexemes, derived or underived, are signs, and that affixes, reduplication, revowelling, metathesis, subtraction, stem mutation, and the like, are means of phonologically marking independent derivational operations which a lexeme might have undergone.

Lexeme-based morphology, it follows, assumes the Separation Hypothesis, that assumption that the derivation of meaning and the realization of phonological marking are distinct processes in word-formation. Advocates of morpheme-based morphology include Lieber (1992), Bresnan (1982), DiSciullo and Williams (1987), Selkirk (1982), and Scalise (1986). The leading advocates of lexeme-base morphology are Aronoff (1976, 1994), Anderson (1992), Beard (1966-1995), Halle and Marantz (1993), Zwicky (1989) and Stump (1991). (Beard: http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/lexbase.html)

2.1. Morpheme-based theories: Lexical Morphology

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1 Noam Chomsky′s "Syntactic Structures" was published in 1957.