Language is an amazing thing. It works in weird and wonderful ways. Sometimes the most vibrant things about language are the very ones which cause some the most grief. Take zero morphology (aka unmarked derivational morphology) for instance. Quite a mouthful, but then most linguistic terminology is. You see there's morphology: the study of the forms of language, i.e., identifying what the minimum units of meaning are and how those pieces fit together. What words? No, not quite. In some languages (e.g., Mandarin) morphemes and words are nearly the same thing, but in some languages (e.g., English) they are not. Think about books. It's a single word, because we set it off in written texts with spaces or punctuation or both. But it's made up of two meaningful bits: book (a noun and a word in its own right) and -s (an inflectional ending signifying the plural number, which cannot stand on its own). Some languages have way more inflections than does English, and as a matter of fact, Old English had way more than our current English does. But there's more to morphology than just inflectional morphology. There's something called derivational morphology. That's the kind of bits that can turn a word from one syntactic category to another. (Think of parts of speech, noun, verb, et al.) Many inflected languages have lots of morphological bits (affixes and such) to do this with. For example, in English there are a bunch of abstract nouns that were derived from adjectives: e.g., warmth from warm, length from long, strength from strong, dearth from dear. Another example would be causative verbs from adjectives: e.g., redden from red, widen from wide. Some things to take note of are: (1) sometimes the bit that does the deriving (called a morpheme, in the latter case -en) is sometimes used with different syntactic categories (e.g., lengthen is from length, a noun not an adjective) and (2) derivation is not obligatory, as say pluralizing or subject-verb concord, (e.g., we have blacken, but not *greenen, *bluen, *souren. Another interesting thing is that English (and other less-inflected languages) have something called zero morphology: i.e., words can be cast to another part of speech without adding any morphemes (such as-en) or as some prefer to say by adding a zero morpheme. This has been a feature of the language since Middle English times (roughly 1100–1450 CE): e.g., verbs from nouns, ice (15th century) bottle (17th century), verb (20th century). Some of these processes are still productive: e.g., -ize, -ify[/i], and others more or less non-productive, e.g., -th. (I tried coining chilth from cool, but it never caught on.) Terms exist, like denominal verb to describe verbing nouns or deverbal nouns for nouning verbs, but the newer, non-specialist terms are more inventive because they use zero morphology to make their point.

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(I tried coining chilth from cool, but it never caught on.)

that's probly because coolth already fills the bill.

that's probly because coolth already fills the bill

But, I felt that the ablaut was more in keeping with the process. The verb chill is related to cool, both the verb and the adjective.

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There's something called derivational morphology. That's the kind of bits that can turn a word from one syntactic category to another.

Derivational morphology embiggens the smallest words.

embiggens

Yes, that's the idea. The interesting thing about this word is that it sheds light on a different derivational morphemes for creating causatives: the prefix en-, as in enlarge from large (but compare enlighten and enliven) and the suffix -en as above. These are the kinds of words, which, if created today, would send some into fits. The two affixes en- and -en have the same meaning. (They're unrelated, even though they're spelled the same.) The two verbs, enlighten and enliven, are working overtime and exhibit another natural property of language which so worries self-appointed guardians of language: redundancy. If you look in the OED, you'll find that there were two other verbs enlight and enlive which are today obsolete. And, you could be sure that if somebody uttered the word enlargen, that many would take that person to task for degrading the language.

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Originally posted by zmježd:
But, I felt that the ablaut was more in keeping with the process.

foul and filth, bear and birth, slow and sloth, weal and wealth, heal and health.

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more in keeping with the process.

¡¿process?! as though there were rhyme and reason to this stuff??

¡¿process?!

Yes, process. Specifically, a morphological process. Rhyme and reason don't have to come into anything. A morpheme or two goes in, and something else comes out. You don't have to be able to predict the changes, to recognize them after the fact. And, they, on the whole, tend to be rather regular. It's the exceptions which need 'xplaining.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

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It's the exceptions which need 'xplaining.

As in the Example and Counterexample thread.

As in the Example and Counterexample thread.

Yes, on a more specific point. I was trying to be more general in this separate thread. Why is something that is quite natural in English (as well as other languages) upset folks so much? I was trying to show that not all grammatical categories are consistent on the surface. Another example would be comparatives and superlatives of adjectives. There are two competing ways to form them: e.g., adding -er and -est to the adjectives in question, or using periphrasis, more and most. The former tends to be used with shorter adjectives (and adverbs) and the latter with longer ones, but not always. Some forms just need to be memorized. There are irregularities, too, some with suppletion (e.g., good ~ better ~ best.

Forming causatives verbs in English is quite complicated also, while other languages take a simpler approach). (1) Using periphrasis is the most productive, make to V, cause to V; (2) then, the -en suffix (above); (3) some verbs have causatives that are different lexical items, e.g., to die ~ to kill; and, (4) some verbs exhibit ablaut (or apophony, a variation in vowels), e.g., sit ~ sat, lie ~ lay, rise ~ raise, (these last are the remnants of the oldest method where the vocalic variation comes from what used to be the productive, in Old English, morphological process of adding a -j- after the root).

Prescriptivist grammarians see descriptivist linguists as betraying their duty to keep and preserve the language. This is a specious argument. First, describing how a language actually works does no such thing. Languages change whether they have been described or not. Second, linguists are often exasperated that people who profess a love of language are oftentimes clueless about the obscure object of their affections. Verbing nouns is no more a threat to the language than the swallows' returning to Capistrano is.

Another misrepresentation is that descriptivists are all about everything goes. That's not true either. We're not making things up as we go along. We're describing the state of the language, and as is the case with most specialists we've devised (and revised) methods and a vocabulary. Non-standard dialects and languages are just as rules based as the standard ones, as I have pointed out on occasion. Also, every linguist I have every known or read writes using the standard, formal register of English. That's another great distinction which sometimes gets lost in the rhetoric. People speak differently on occasion: sometimes, the very same people. (No surprise there.) James Murray, the justly famous chief editor of the OED, spoke Lallans Scots English, but the OED articles which he wrote and edited were in the standard, formal English of their kind. Telling people that their language isn't a language, rather than teaching them the standard and when and where to use those two different dialects or registers is what teachers should be doing. Not passing on ill-thought-out, undigested linguistic ukases à la Truss or Strunk-White.

well said, zmjezhd.

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Originally posted by zmježd:
some verbs exhibit ablaut (or apophony, a variation in vowels), e.g., sit ~ sat, lie ~ lay, rise ~ raise, (these last are the remnants of the oldest method where the vocalic variation comes from what used to be the productive, in Old English, morphological process of adding a -j- after the root).

This process predated Old English, at least according to Lehmann (and this). Proto-Germanic had *ligan "lie" and *lagjan "cause to lie", ie "lay", which became Old English licgan and lecgan then lie and lay. It seems the same thing happened with hang: Proto-Germanic *χaŋχan "to hang", and *χaŋgōjan "to cause to hang". There are still two verbs in German: hangen and hängen.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

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Originally posted by goofy:
This process predated Old English

Maybe it was a Proto-Indo-European process. When added to verb roots with the *o-vocalism, *-eje-/*-ejo- forms causatives:
*legh- "to lie"
*logh-eje- "to make lie down"

*sed- "to sit"
*sod-eje- "to make sit"