Semantic Components in Kechua Person Morphemes

Abstract

0. The term1 SEMEME was defined by Bloomfield2 as 'the meaning of a morpheme'. Inasmuch as any language is a semiotic system in which continuous reality is arbitrarily classified into discrete categories3 that correspond to speech forms, it is useful to maintain this definition. By doing so we have the morpheme as the minimal unit of meaningful speech form (Saussure's signifiant4) and the sememe as the minimal unit of discretely classified reality (Saussure's signifi6) corresponding to it. There are, however, certain types of morphemes whose meaning is quite obviously complex from a structural viewpoint-morphemes whose sememes do not consist merely of a continuous series of features or a gradient 'area of meaning', but are further analyzable into discrete semantic elements. For these we must deal with semantic features that are submorphemic (and hence subsememic). We do not here refer to semantic complexities that appear as a result of arbitrary or logical subdivisions of meaning unmarked by features of linguistic form; these we rule out as not being symbolized by the semiotic system and therefore not structurally relevant. But examples abound in which submorphemic semantic features are correlated with some formal feature involving either the phonemic shape or the distribution of the morphemes, or both. We term such submorphemic (or subsememic) features SIMULTANEOUS SEMANTIC COMPONENTS or, for brevity, SEMANTIC COMPONENTS;5 and we assign to them structural relevance within the language system. 0.1. One type of sememe with multiple semantic components is seen in paradigms where two or more morphemes each mark a separate specific meaning but mark a single over-all meaning in common; if such morphemes occur with identical distributions (i.e. are mutually replaceable) in one or more environments, there is one more semantic component than there are morphemes (or sememes).