Grammar versus lexicon

What is done by morphology in one language may be achieved through syntax in another. Latin (a language with fairly free word order) marks subject and object by nominative and accusative cases, respectively. English puts the subject before the verb and the object after it.

Some languages have derivational morphemes that correspond to separate lexemes in other languages. Consider the following:

(a) Warao, from Venezuela, has a verbal suffix -puhu- corresponding to the modal verb can in English. From ruhu- ‘sit’ is derived ruhu-puhu- ‘can sit’, which takes the full range of tense-aspect verbal inflections (Osborn 1967). To achieve the same semantic result, English must use the two verbs can and sit in syntactic construction within a VP.

(b) Dyirbal, from north-east Australia, has a verbal affix -yarra- ‘start’. Thus jangga-yarra-nyu (‘eat-START-PAST) is a single word, with the same meaning as started eating in English, a construction that has started as main verb and eating as a complement clause to it (Dixon 1972: 249).

(c) The Uto-Aztecan language Luisen˜o has derivational affixes -vicˇu- ‘want to’ and -ni- ‘make, force to’. From nge´e ‘leave’ can be derived nge´e vicˇu ‘want to leave’, nge´e-ni ‘make leave’ and even nge´e-vicˇu-ni-vicˇu ‘want to make want to leave’ (Langacker 1972: 76–7). Luisen˜o can achieve by a single verb what in English requires constructions involving one, two or three complement clauses.

Many other examples could be given of a concept that is expressed by a derivational process in one language but only as a separate lexical verb in another.

It is not, however, the case that anything which is a verb root in one language may be a derivational morpheme in another. Ideas like ‘lean’, ‘stir’, ‘swallow’, ‘discuss’ and ‘remember’ are always expressed by separate lexical verbs, in every language.