The Identification of Morphemes

Recent developments and publications concerning the analysis and classification of morphemes have been of great importance: they have provided a variety of new approaches to old problems, refined the statements of relationships, demonstrated the applicability of the method to a number of languages, emphasized the importance of distributional criteria, and pointed out a number of unsolved or perhaps only partially solved problems. All this has been a genuine gain. Nevertheless, a close examination of some of these developments is rather disturbing, and certain rather basic objections can be raised. For one thing, the term morpheme has come to be used by Hockett, and to a somewhat lesser extent by others, as a designation for forms which are related almost wholly in terms of distribution. I do not wish to deny the significance of tactics in linguistic structure; but when the primary criterion for the choosing of alternative possibilities is stated by Hockett as being ‘tactical simplicity’, I am inclined to doubt the validity of quite so much stress being laid upon distributional characteristics, especially when such a choice leads to the conclusions which Hockett has described. In both Bloch's and Hockett's recent papers on morphemic problems there is a conspicuous tendency to make covert distinctions more important than overt ones, though the treatment is quite different as regards detail.