The reordering of morphemes

Several kinds of proposals have been put forth to explain the relative sequencing of morphemes we find in languages. Some are purely synchronic, such as Baker's 1985 Mirror Principle that morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations. According to his analysis, for example, if a sentence in some language is analyzed as the result of first an applicative process (changing 'The zebras handed the crowbar to the girl ' to 'The zebras handed the girl the crowbar') and then passivization (changing 'The zebras handed the girl the crowbar ' to 'The girl was handed the crowbar'), applicative and passive affixes will be added to the the verb in that order. Other explanations of morpheme order, such as that proposed in Rice 1991, have focused on the relative semantic or grammatical scope of morphemes. Thus in a word like [[[beauti]ful]ly], the outer suffix-ly has scope over the full adjective stem beauti-ful to its left, deriving an adverb from the adjective. The inner suffix-ful has scope over just the noun root beauty to its left, deriving an adjective 'full of beauty'. Bybee (1985: 33-5) accounts for morpheme order in terms of 'relevance': 'the semantic relevance of an affix to a stem is the extent to which the meaning of the affix directly affects the meaning of the stem ' (1985: 4). More relevant affixes are predicted to occur closer to the root. Her prediction can be illustrated with markers of aspect and tense. A shif