Re: Semantic content (was: Ural-Altaic. A fly)

Joachim Pense wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > Joachim Pense wrote:
> >>
> >> Peter T. Daniels:
> >>
> >> > Joachim Pense wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Peter T. Daniels:
> >> >>
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> But I was relating to your sentence, where you claimed that the
> >> >> >> grammatical morpheme denoting plural has "no semantic content of
> >> >> >> its own", and used it as a definition of "grammatical morpheme".
> >> >> >> Why is plurality not a semantic content?
> >> >> >
> >> >> > The word for that is "plurality," not {s}.
> >> ^^^^
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> I'd say the word for that is "many", or maybe "more than one", not
> >> >> "plurality".
> >> >
> >> > "Many" is not a word for "plurality" -- for one thing, it's an
> >> > adjective, not a noun.
> >>
> >> Probably we did not agree about what you were refering to by "that"
> >> above.
> >>
> >> I was trying to say that the "s" as a plural morpheme denotes the plural,
> >> which to me (as a non-expert) seems to me a very semantic thing (the
> >> difference between one and many is about meaning, isn't it?) So I wanted
> >> to know by you (the expert) what your "no semantic content of its own"
> >> means.
> >
> > Where's the morpheme in "sheep" (pl.)?
>
> Why do you ask that at this point?

Just to start you realizing how complicated morphology can be. There was
heated discussion of whether that word has NO plural morpheme, or a ZERO
plural morpheme. There are good arguments on either side.

> > We distinguish between form and function. Notions of plurality -- or
> > tense, or comparison, etc. -- are marked by grammatical morphemes, but
> > the grammatical morphemes don't bear meaning in themselves; they cannot
> > exist in themselves. They enter into paradigms.
>
> But for example "pre-" or "un-" cannot stand alone either. They are not
> grammatical morphemes in English (as they do not occur in the complete list
> you gave).
>
> So tell my if the "un-" in "undo", "unload", "unclear", "unhappy" bears a
> meaning "in itself"? And what makes it different from the "-s" in sisters
> or the "-ed" in "killed"?

I already told you. Derivation vs. inflection. Derivational affixes are
listed in dictionaries, because they have meanings. Grammatical affixes
are not, because they do not -- they mark the inflections of their base
words.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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