Common Semantic Denominators of the Internal Vowel Alternation System in English

• Authors: Elena Even-Simkin , Yishai Tobin
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Internal Vowel Alternation (IVA) system is commonly referred to as arbitrarily appearing in a small number of the so-called irregular noun plurals (e.g. goose–geese, mouse–mice) and past tense verb forms (e.g. sing–sang, take–took) in Modern English. But, historically, IVA was a prevalent and productive process in Old English in both the nominal and the verbal systems. In this paper, we will postulate that the IVA is a full-fledged sign system composed of a signal (signifiant) that is connected to a meaning (signifié) in the Saussurean sense. It has already been demonstrated that the IVA nominal and verbal forms are systematic phonologically (Even-Simkin & Tobin 2009). In this paper we will present the semantic systems underlying the IVA forms. Beedham (2005:114) argues that "[a]ll linguistic forms must fit into the system somehow, and they all must have a meaning, it is simply a case of working out how they fit in and what the meaning is". In this semantic analysis of the IVA forms we will show that the English IVA systems are both motivated and systematic semantically – i.e. that differences in form always imply differences in meaning (Bolinger 1977). We will maintain that each IVA pattern reflects a fundamental common semantic denominator. Thus our study connects the form (phonology) and the meaning (semantics) of the phenomenon of IVA as a full-fledged system of linguistic signs in English.

Keywords

EN

IVA system; past tense verbs; noun plurals; semantic aspect

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 47
• Pages: 308

Dates

published

2011

received

2010-12-15

revised

2011-03-15

accepted

2011-03-16

online

2011-06-14

Contributors

author

Elena Even-Simkin

• Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Be'er-Sheva, Israel

author

Yishai Tobin

• Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Be'er-Sheva, Israel

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/psicl-2011-0019