Deconstructing and redefining English

This week’s readings covered a variety of topics that were both interesting, yet perplexing, in my current study of linguistics. Subjects such as linguistic analysis about near-synonyms in the Atkins research paper and the discussions on typology and motion events in the Slobin reading were unique academic dialogues that illustrated the complexities of linguistics. However, the reading that I found most interesting and accessible were the Haspel readings on the basic concepts of lexemes, morphology and morphological trees. There were three specific concepts throughout the Haspel readings that intrigued me and I think provided me with a foundational understanding of the week’s upcoming discussions.

The first is the description of technical terms of linguistics that differentiate it from the typical everyday language we use to describe English. The overall theme is on determining what a word is in fact. For example, there are multiple constructions that must be acknowledged to explore this question for linguists. Whereas a lexeme is essentially a set of word-forms, a word-form is a smaller subset that are concrete meaning they are used in dialogue and texts. Related to this idea is the contradictory nature of the process that dictionary makers should be informed by the analyses of linguists, but what is typically done is that lexicographers do not consult linguist’s theoretical decisions. In addition, I found the concept of a morpheme as the smallest meaningful constituent as critical in convincing me on the ideas of what makes a word meaningful. However, a continual thought I had throughout this reading is why these morphemes have meaning as in what is the process to turn letters into a morpheme to have a meaning.

The second concept that interested me was the discussion surrounding cross language linguistic morphemes. For example, as an individual only fluent in English, it is challenging to fully understand the variations of languages and how language works at an intimate level. In one of the examples, I found the morphological operation of reduplication, whereby part of the base or the complete base is copied and attached to the base as interesting. It does not seem like this is popular in the English language, however, because the only words I can think of include goody-goody and flip-flop. Whereas in Ponapean and Mangap-Mbula, the base word being a verb is reduplicated to mean “be (verb word).”

The third concept that fascinated me throughout this reading is how hierarchical structures works and how they can create multiple meanings. For example, when one creates a tree structure for undoable, it may either mean ‘which cannot be done’ or ‘which can be undone.’ Moreover, this analysis is present in many other languages and it is meaningful to realize what different languages share and what makes them a language in the first place.