I categorial structure of the word notion of Opposition. Oppositions in Morphology

III. MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE WORD
1. Word as a Nominative Unit
The word is a basic nominative unit. Without words there cannot be any communication even in thought, to say nothing about speech communication.
From the point of view of its nominative function, the word is an elementary indivisible constituent part of the lexicon.
It is not easy to identify the word because the words are heterogeneous from the point of view of both content and form.
To find the criteria of word identification linguists resort to the notions of functional correlation and continuum. Functional correlation connects the elements which have similar and different properties. In fact, within a complex system of interrelated elements there exist two types of phenomena - "polar" and "intermediary". Polar phenomena stand to one another in an explicit opposition. Intermediary phenomena are located in the system in between the polar phenomena, making up a gradation of transitions. A total of these transitions makes up a continuum. Thus, between proper nouns and common nouns - polar phenomena - there exist different transitions of semi-proper nouns which make up a continuum.
Giving a definition to the word on these lines, it is necessary to describe the notional one-stem word and the grammatical morpheme as the opposing polar phenomena. The continuum existing between them is constituted by functional words. Functional words are very limited in number and perform various grammatical functions. In distinction to these, notional words are infinite in number and are nominative units proper.
Thus, the word is the nominative unit of language built up by morphemes and indivisible into smaller segments as regards its nominative function.
2. Morphemic Structure of the Word
The morphological system of language reveals its properties through the morphemic structure of words. So, it is but natural that one of the essential tasks of morphology is to study the morphemic structure of the word.
In traditional grammar the study of the morphemic structure of the word is based upon two criteria - positional and semantic (functional). The positional criterion presupposes the analysis of the location of the marginal morphemes in relation to the central ones. The semantic criterion involves the study of the correlative contribution of the morpheme to the general meaning of the word. In accord with the traditional classification, morphemes at the upper level are divided into root morphemes and affixal morphemes (lexical and grammatical)
The morphemic composition of modern English words has a wide range of varieties but the preferable morphemic model of the common English word is the following: prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix.
Further insights into the correlation between the formal and functional aspects of morphemes may be gained in the light of the "alloemic" theory put forward by Descriptive Linguistics. In accord with this theory, lingual units are described by means of two types of terms - "allo-terms" and "eme-terms". Eme-terms denote the generalized, invariant units of language characterized by a certain functional status, e.g., phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, phrasemes, etc., but in practical analysis this terminology is applied only to the analysis of phonemes and morphemes. Allo-terms denote the concrete manifestations or variants of the eme-units. Allo-units are distinguished by their regular co-location with other elements of language. Typical examples of allo-units are allophones and allomorphs.
The allo-emic identification of lingual elements forms the basis for the so-called "distributional" analysis. The aim of the distributional analysis is to study the units of language in relation to the adjoining elements in the text.
In the distributional analysis three main types of distribution are discriminated contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution, and complementary distribution. Contrastive and non-contrastive distributions concern identical environments of different morphs. The morphs are said to be in contrastive distribution if their meanings (functions) are different; such morphs constitute different morphemes, e.g., "returned // returning // returns". The morphs are in non-contrastive distribution if their meanings (functions) are identical; such morphs constitute "free alternants" ("free variants") of the same morpheme, e.g., the suffixes "-ed" and "-t" in the verb forms "learned // learnt", or the suffixes "-s" and "-i" in the noun forms "genies" // genii". As for complementary distribution, it concerns different environments of formally different morphs which fulfil one and the same function; such morphs are termed "allo-morphs", e.g., there exist a few allomorphs of the plural suffix of the noun: "-en" (children), "-s" (toys), "-a" (data), "-es" (crises), "-i" (genii), the zero allomorph (trout //trout), etc.
The application of distributional analysis to the morphemic level results in the classification of morphemes on distributional lines. In accord with this classification a few "distributional morpheme types" are identified: free and bound morphemes, overt and covert morphemes, additive and replacive morphemes, continuous and discontinuous morphemes, segmental and supra-segmental morphemes.