A Morphology-phonology Interface Study

The English formative –man is derived from the free morpheme man,typically acting as the second constituent in word formation.This kind of word-formation has a long etymological history and quite strong productivity.The formative –man has been subject to a relatively rich body of morphological research,but its morphological status is still unclear.Phonologically,the pronunciation of the formative –man is variable,most of words with reduced vowel [m?n],some with full vowel [m?n] and a certain number of words vary between [m?n] and [m?n].Related phonological studies are still rare,and the phonological features of –man need to be further explored.Besides,there has hardly been any effort to combine these two areas in order to present a comprehensive analysis of the formative –man.Therefore,there is still much room to cast light on this topic.This thesis presents a morphology and phonology interface study of English words with the formative –man,based on a self-built dataset.In the morphological part,it mainly discusses the morphological status of –man within the framework of historical grammaticalization and Construction Morphology theory,which describes the diachronic process of –man from a free morpheme to a suffix-like element and introduces its basic constructions in details.The phonological part then deepens the previous research(van de Weijer et al.,2019),continuing to explore the reduced pronunciation of –man(i.e.with schwa)in English surnames.At the same time,it also gives a detailed description of the pronunciation of –man between British English and American English.Based on the above two aspects,this thesis finally hypothesizes that the reduced –man can be regarded as a semi-suffix and compares it with comparable Chinese semi-suffixes with human reference.The study finds that: 1.morphologically,the formative –man at present is at an intermediate stage of grammaticalization,rather than a compound component or suffix,since it experiences semantic bleaching and vowel reduction.2.Phonologically,the reduced –man commonly exists in English surnames and it doesn’t have a direct connection with etymological age.In terms of the differences in pronunciation of –man between British English and American English,American English is more likely than British English to pronounce [m?n] if there are two variants.Besides,American English usually has a secondary stress before –man with a full vowel.3.The hypothesis is confirmed: the reduced –man can be regarded as a semi-suffix,since it shares basic characteristics with similar the Chinese semi-suffixes with human reference in word formation,i.e.with bleached meaning,similar formation patterns and relatively high productivity.Moreover,the reduced –man is also more predictable than other types of pronunciation.Therefore,this morphology and phonology interface study not only provides a more comprehensive perspective on –man itself,but also offers a practical method for the study of suffix-like elements,enriching relevant theoretical research.