Linguistic Interdependence: The Building Blocks of a Language

After listening to a quick introduction to morphology last lecture, I quickly started to notice the complexity of the English language when it comes to the effects of different suffixes can have on the root of as word.  Some are very easy, like adding an –s to the end of most words to make them plural.  However, some affixes can affect the pronunciation of the root, making this process a little less straightforward and worth discussing. In thinking about this, I was interested in the different properties between two derivational suffixes, those that can change word category or modify meaning.  –ation and –er in particular can both take verbs and turn them into nouns, but I noticed that they have different effects on the root. 

For example, for the word recommend in its root form, the stress is on the last syllable. When changing its word category to the noun recommendation, the stress shifts to the penultimate syllable. I then noticed that other examples such as aspire -> aspiration, condemn -> condemnation, and alter -> alteration all shift stress to the penultimate syllable in the noun just like recommend.

The suffix –er acts differently. In examples like sing -> singer, race -> racer, teach -> teacher, play -> player, and lecture -> lecturer, the stress remains on the same syllable as in the original word. This shows that affixes interact with roots in more ways than simple attaching.

To go in a slightly different direction for a bit, one of the most fun and engaging activities I did during this class was during section where we would see words from a made up language and compare their phonetic representation and surface representations.  After proposing rules using this evidence, we applied these rules to other words of the same “language.” It was a great way to practice phonology in an exercise I’ve never done anything like before.

How does this relate to my previous assessment about morphology? As somebody who has absolutely no linguistics background, and who has never even heard of most if not all of these terms or their applications before in any context, it is intriguing to see how related these different fields are interdependent with each other.  Seeing these phonological rules unravel by thinking about morphological applications of words is interesting to think about considering that these concepts are building off on each other to create the intricate structure that we naturally and subconsciously understand.

Looking back even more, we can even see the connection with how phonetics directly ties in with our understanding and pronunciation of a word. Just like in homework 1 where speakers can use vowel reduction to simply words during normal speech as opposed to speaking “carefully,” like the difference between <fɔɹ> and <fɚ>, the same type of rule applies to recommend -> recommendation.  By deriving recommendation from its root word recommend, we can see that men syllable undergoes vowel reduction (at least the way I say it). When spoken carefully, recommendation is pronounced <rɛkəmɛndeɪʃən>, but because of vowel reduction caused by normal human speech patterns, recommendation is transformed into <rɛkəməndeɪʃən>.

It was fun to come to this realization of how each of the concepts we are learning continue to build upon each other like a puzzle, making each step a little more than the sum of their parts, eventually creating an inherent and subconscious understanding of something so complex when broken down. The interdependence of linguistic specializations is something not found in every field, and this concept is something I look forward to seeing evolve as we continue to progress this quarter.