ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

6.4 Phonetic, Morphological, and Semantic Motivation of Words

 

The term motivation denotes “the relationship existing between the phonemic or morphemic composition and structural pattern of the word, on the one hand, and its meaning on the other” (Arnold, p. 33). Three main types of motivation are observed: phonetical, morphological, and semantic.

Phonetical motivation occurs when there is a certain similarity between the sound-form of a word and its meaning when speech sounds may suggest spatial and visual dimensions, shape, and size, e.g., tick- tock, cuckoo, ratatat and sizzle. These lexemes are phonetically motivated because the sound clusters are a direct imitation of the sounds these words denote. This process in linguistics is onomatopoeia, which is “the use of a word for which the connection between sound and meaning seems non-arbitrary because the word’s sound echoes its meaning” (Denham & Lobeck, 2011, p. 140). Although the examples of onomatopoeia show that a certain non-arbitrary element of lexemes exists, these formations are never organic elements of a language system (de Saussure, 1959, p. 69). Moreover, these sound imitations are not the same in all languages; for example, English bow-bow corresponds to French ouaoua, which proves that even sound imitations in different languages are somewhat arbitrary. Other examples illustrate this assumption: cuckoo (English), kukučka (Slovak), kukushka (Russian), koekoek (Dutch), Kuckuck (German), dzeguze (Latvian), gegutė (Lithuanian), kukavica (Slovenian), guguk kuşu (Turkish), and kuke (Tatar). Interjections are closely related to onomatopoeia; however, they do not contradict the arbitrariness of the sound-form (e.g., English ouch! refers to French aïe!, to Russian oi!, to Ukranian oi!, and to Turkish uf!). Interjections are “spontaneous expressions of reality dictated, so to speak, by natural forces (de Saussure, 1959, p. 69). As seen from the argument above, phonetical motivation, a direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its meaning, is not universally recognized in modern linguistic science.

Morphological motivation is the relationship between morphemes. All one-morpheme words (e.g., bring, cut, reach, room, and build) are unmotivated. In words composed of more than one morpheme, “the carrier of the word-meaning is the combined meaning of the component morphemes and the meaning of the structural pattern of the word” (Ginzburg at al., p.25). The derived word re-submit is motivated because its morphological structure suggests the idea of submitting again. In this example, we can observe a direct connection between the structural pattern of the word and its meaning. Morphological motivation is relative, and the degree of motivation varies: there exist various grades of motivation, ranging from the extremes of complete motivation (e.g., endless) to lack of motivation (e.g., matter, number, and repeat). An example of partial motivation is cranberry. There is no lexical meaning in the morpheme cran-, but the lexemes blackberry and blueberry are examples of complete morphological motivation (blue + berry and black + berry); they are named for the color of their berries. The lexeme raspberry is also motivated because it takes its name from English rasp (to scrape roughly), in reference to the thorny canes bearing the berries. Morphological motivation is understood as a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement, and the meaning of the word. The degree of morphological motivation may be partial and complete. There are cases where unmotivated words are observed.

Semantic motivation is the “co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word within the same synchronous system” (Arnold, p.34). It functions as an association between the primary and secondary (derived) meanings of a word based on a metaphorical extension of the primary meaning. Metaphorical extension may be viewed as “generalisation of the denotative meaning of a word permitting it to include new referents which are in some way like the original class of referents” (Ginzburg at al., 1979, p. 27), e.g., foot and the foot of the mountain. Metaphor is a word or a phrase that does not carry the literal meaning of a lexeme or a phrase but is a figurative meaning. Similarity of various aspects and/or functions of different classes of referents may account for the semantic motivation of a number of minor meanings (Ginzburg et al., 1979, p. 27); for example, any extension associated with foot is semantically motivated (foot locker, football, footnote, flatfoot, footage, and the foot of the mountain. Metaphoric extension may be observed in the so-called trite metaphors, such as foot the bill, footloose and fancy-tree, get off on the wrong foot, have a foot in the door, not to put a foot wrong, put one’s best foot forward, put one’s foot down, and put one’s foot in it). Semantic motivation suggests a direct connection between the primary and figurative meanings of the word. This connection may be understood as a metaphoric extension of the primary meaning based on the similarity of different classes of referents denoted by the word.