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From: allen@osu-eddie.UUCP (John Allen)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Underlying Structure of Words
Message-ID: <111@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Feb-85 20:47:38 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.111
Posted: Mon Feb 18 20:47:38 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Feb-85 07:16:09 EST
References: <406@cadovax.UUCP>
Organization: Ohio State Univ., CIS Dept., Cols, Oh.
Lines: 45

> Has anybody ever considered the syntactic structure of words?

    Yes, there is a whole field of linguistics devoted to just this.  It is
called morphology.

> For example, since the term "unemployable" is taken to mean
> "unable to be employed" rather than "able to be unemployed,"
> the word must have an underlying structure of (un(employ able))
> rather than ((un employ) able).
> 
> "-able" is more tightly bound to "employ" than "un-" is. Is this
> because "employable" is a word and "unemploy" is not? (Or is it?)

    Generally, each affix (includes suffixes, prefixes, and infixes)
attaches to a specific subset of the parts of speech, (which in one theory
are characterized as follows

                              Noun-like
                    Verb-like|  +    -
                    --------------------
                        +    | Adj  Verb
                        -    | Noun Prep

This allows you to say things like "z-" attaches to the category [+V],
instead of saying that it attaches to verbs and adjectives.)  In the above
example "-able" attaches to [+V] with the approximate meaning of "able to be
x-ed" (able to be employed) and the new word is an adjective.  The prefix
"un-" is slightly unusually in that there are actually two distinct prefixes
with different meanings.  "un-" attaches to verbs with the meaning of "to
reverse the action of" (e.g. "unzip") and the resulting word is a verb.
"un-" attaches to adjectives with the meaning "not" and the resulting word
is an adjective.
    The reason that "unemploy" sounds strange is that it would have to mean
something like "to reverse the action of employing, to fire?"
    It is interesting to note here that the word "unzippable" is ambiguous.

"unable to be zipped"          (un+(zip    +able)   )
                                       verb      adj adj
"able to be unzipped"          ((un+zip    )    +able)
                                       verb verb      adj

Hope this helps

                                        John Allen
					allen@osu-eddie