Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 10 стр.

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Two additional remarks are necessary here: (1) Two or more

morphemes may sound the same but be basically different, that is, they may

be homonyms. Thus the -er morpheme indicating the doer of an action as in

writer has a homonym — the morpheme -er denoting the comparative

degree of adjectives and adverbs, as in longer. Which of the two

homonymous morphemes is actually there in a given case can of course only

be determined by examining the other morphemes in the word. Thus, the

morpheme -er in our first example, writer, cannot possibly be the morpheme

of the comparative degree, as the morpheme writ- to which it is joined on is

not the stem of an adjective or adverb, and so no comparative degree is to

be thought of here.

(2) There may be zero morphemes, that is, the absence of a

morpheme may indicate a certain meaning. Thus, if we compare the forms

book and books, both derived from the stem book-, we may say that while

books is characterised by the -s-morpheme as being a plural form, book is

characterised by the zero morpheme as being a singular form.

In grammar, we are of course concerned with the grammatical, or

structural, meaning of morphemes: we do not here study the meanings of root

morphemes, which are necessarily lexical, and as to derivation morphemes, i.

e. those which serve to build words, we are only interested in them in so far as

they are grammatically relevant, and that is the case if they show that the

word belongs to a certain part of speech, and if they serve to distinguish one part of

speech from another. This grammatical significance of derivation morphemes, if it

is there at all, is always combined with their lexical meaning. For instance, if

we take this pair of words: write v. and writer n., the derivative morpheme -er

has a grammatical significance, as it serves to distinguish a noun from a verb,

and it has its lexical meaning, as the lexical meaning of the noun writer is

different from that of the verb write.

Inflection morphemes have no lexical meaning or function. There is not

the slightest difference in the way of lexical meaning between live and lived, or