| Structuralism takes the morpheme as a basic unit of word formation.Therefore,according to the morphological characteristics of the word structure and its internal components,some attached elements in English,such as-y in daddy and-en in mitten have been defined as derivational affixes.And the same is true of Chinese attached elements,such as lao-in laohu,da-in daxiang,and-zi in guizi.However,through the comparative analysis,it is found that the presence or absence of these attached elements does not affect the lexical meaning and syntactic category of original words,that is,these attached elements,with neither lexical meaning nor grammatical functions,have only phonetic form.Therefore,such attached elements do not satisfy the connotative requirement of morpheme as a "combination of sound and meaning."The definition of morpheme in traditional morphological theory cannot cover the elements "having meaning without sound"(such as empty category Pro),nor can it explain the property and function of linguistic elements "having sound without meaning".Therefore,under the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology(DM),this dissertation,based on the idea of Separatism,the distributed word formation model,and the dynamic derivation of word formation,uses induction method,qualitative study,and formal analysis method to categorize these attached elements"having sound without meaning" and further explain their existential motivations and linguistic functions theoretically.Meanwhile,the dissertation,combined with phase theory,expounds when and how such attached elements get involved in the compositional process of word formation.Based on the language facts of English and Chinese,and combined with some related phenomena of other languages,this dissertation,through comparative analysis,finds that such attached elements "having sound without meaning" are not Vocabulary Items inserted into the morphemes which are operated in Narrow Syntax,because they do not manifest the conceptual meaning and grammatical function of morphemes.In view of the distribution and function of the attached elements embodied in word formation,this dissertation,combined with the distributed process of word-formation in DM and the concept of ornamental morphology in post-syntax,defines these elements "having sound without meaning",such as-y in daddy and-zi in guizi,as phonological affixes.They refer to the ornamental elements "having sound without meaning" inserted after Spell-out in PF to satisfy the linguistic phonological rules without influencing the structure and meaning of the word.In short,phonological affixes have no influence on word structure and semantic understanding for they do not express the lexical meaning,nor do they manifest the grammatical function.From the morphological properties,phonological affixes,like lexical affixes,are bound and fixed,and some of them can substitute each other.By observing the distribution of phonological affixes in English and Chinese,the study finds that the insertion of phonological affixes includes attachment and reduplication.Based on the fixing feature of phonological affixes,the attachment type is further divided into pre-attachment(such as lao-,and α-)and post attachment(such as-zi,-er,-tou,-ba,-y and-en).The insertion of phonological affixes in English and Chinese is driven by language prosodic structure.For example,the function of English phonological affixes is to construct a disyllable to satisfy trochee foot type;while the insertion of Chinese phonological affixes is to form disyllable standard foot to realize the tendency of disyllabification of Chinese words.In view of the "prosody-formed"function of phonological affixes and the way of insertion,the dissertation defines the category containing phonological affixes as "prosody-formed words".The simplex,derivational words,and compound words all have the possibility of forming the prosody-formed words.There is only a linear,but not hierarchical structural relationship between phonological affixes and base in prosody-formed words.Meanwhile,the dissertation clarifies the conceptual connotation of morphemes and Vocabulary Items,and the compounding rules between roots in DM.Morphemes in DM,with only syntactic and semantic properties,are further divided into lexical morphemes and functional morphemes.Lexical morphemes only have the conceptual meaning without categorial property and phonological representation,while functional morphemes,as a set of syntactic and semantic features,only have grammatical function of categorization in the process of word formation.Vocabulary Items,as phonological representation of morphemes,are classified into free items and bound items.Derivational affixes,being bound vocabulary items,are classified into lexical affixes(such as-er)and functional affixes(such as-ment)according to the linguistic function.The former,which provides lexical meaning in word formation,is the vocabulary item equivalent to lexical morpheme,while the latter,which shows the grammatical function,is the vocabulary item equivalent to category-determining morpheme.The study also proposes that in word formation process,the combination between roots in complex is affected by the mapping of syntactic rules within the word,making the syntactic relation of compound structure correspond to the phrase structure.The study breaks the theoretical and operational bound brought by the concept of"sound-meaning combination" of morphemes and further clarifies the inherent logical relationship of "form-function-meaning" in language.The proposal of "phonological affixes" not only enriches the conceptual connotation of ornamental morphology in DM,but also promotes DM model from morphosyntax to phonology.In addition,the category of "prosody-formed words" not only solve the problem of no definite category of such words,but also provides a new perspective for the study of word formation based on the syntactic principles. |
