Correct morphological parse of a word "indecipherable"

Question

What will be the correct morphological parse of word

 indecipherable in-prefix>decipher-stem>able-suffix
    or 


     indecipherable in-prefix>de- prefix >cipher-stem>able-suffix

What will be the correct bracketing for above ?

The logical decomposition is un- Not (-able Possible (de- Reverse (cipher))). In other words, something that is indecipherable is something that is not possible to decipher. This is unambiguous, unlike the morphological parse of unlockable, which can either mean 'not able to be locked' or 'able to be unlocked'. — John Lawler, Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 11:43

ArnoldM · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-27 12:38:14Z

2

The stem "decipher" is taken as the argument of the recursive function such that:

indecipherable: (in-prefix>decipher-stem>able-suffix) becomes

indecipherable: ( in-prefix>decipher-stem (de-prefix>cipher-stem)>able-suffix)

answered Mar 27, 2016 at 12:38

ArnoldM

1384 bronze badges

1

what do you mean ?
– karu
Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 13:22
1

The recursion is the fact that a secondary parse is being included in a primary or parent parse, so this actually means that both parse forms that you had given as options should be unified into a comprehensive morphological parse; "decipher" is also a component that can be decomposed into standard grammatical units. The recursive (unified) morphological parse should illustrate this idea.
– ArnoldM
Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 13:44
could you please explain further ?
– karu
Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 14:22
which is the "correct" stem
– karu
Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 14:33
1

"cipher" is the absolute stem.
– ArnoldM
Commented Mar 27, 2016 at 14:58

| Show 2 more comments

1 Answer 1