Talk:Cranberry morpheme

Untitled
A shortened name is "cran morph". AnonMoos 02:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

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disputing 'phonetic cran morphs'
I would disagree with the claim that...

Phonetically, the first morphemes of gooseberry and raspberry also count as cranberry morphemes

It is arguably true that phonetically the strings [guz] and [rɑzp] never exist on their own in English, but this fact is irrelevant. Their surface level realisation in their respective compounds only arises because of anticipatory voicing (i.e. assimilation): for both examples the voiced /b/ of 'berry' brings about the voicing /s/ -> /z/ change in the coda of the first syllable (note that the /p/ in raspberry is silent, hence does not block the voicing).

This kind of assimilation is merely an articulatory tendency (if a somewhat entrenched one) and may not even occur in some people's speech. On a cognitive level, therefore, there is no bound morpheme 'gooze' nor 'razp' - whereas there is a bound morpheme 'cran' - and so I think the above claim should be removed.

(I'm not an expert on this though, so I'll leave the decision up to someone else) Barflyuk 15:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

cranberry morphemes = a poor choice of name
Just found this over at http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001146.php :

''The cranberry is indeed the "craneberry" but not in the sense of a measure of herring. Rather, it's because the tall flower stem of the cranberry with its hooked blossom looks like the long neck and beaky head of the crane. That's why "cranberry morpheme" is a poor choice of terms for the phenomenon. Allowing for spelling, "Cranberry" is a compound just like "blueberry" or "gooseberry," and it's separable in exactly the same way.''

So perhaps 'cranberry morpheme' is actually a stupid name. While other cran morph examples have no place whatsoever in PDE (e.g. '-kempt' in unkempt, '-heveled' / '-sheveled' in disheveled, '-gruntled' in disgruntled), the old word 'cran' can very easily and immediately be likened to PDE 'crane'.

On the other hand, the etymological form 'cran' is clearly defunct now, separated from PDE both by spelling and pronunciation, and so I personally would put it on a par with 'kempt', 'gruntled' etc. After all, every cram morph can surely be proven to have existed as a standalone word at one time or another, if you're just willing to trawl through their etymology far enough, e.g. OE kempt = PDE combed.

A curious subject either way. Especially in relation to Cognitive Linguistics (e.g. if you're a Historical Linguist with a vast swathe of etymological knowledge, can there be any cran morphs? wouldn't your lexicon include items such as 'kempt'?) Barflyuk 16:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * "Cran morph" (or Cranberry morpheme in full expanded form) is pretty much the standard linguistic term, however. AnonMoos 19:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

question
Does '-pute' in 'compute' & 'dispute' count as a cranberry morpheme, or to qualify must it be a bound morpheme which occurs only in a single morphologically complex lexical item?

Merge with Fossil word
I oppose the merge with the "Fossil word" article, since cran morphs are prosodically and morphologically bound forms, which do not occur as separate words -- which is not the case with fossil words... AnonMoos 19:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Spick and span
"Spick and span" seems to belong more at the Fossil word article than in this one. AnonMoos 11:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Circus of speciousness
Can someone please edit/rewrite this article so it makes sense to someone who doesn't have 8,000 years of graduate-school background?

I think my biggest problem with it is the way it's riddled with pimped-up jargon. Is there any reason, for example, to say "the canonical example" instead of "the most well-known example"? For example. Too, there's a fair amount of copyediting needed in the further interest of overall clarity, not to mention correct grammar and effective syntax.

I'm not saying we need to dumb it down. I'm actually saying the opposite: I want it to be more easily understood by people who DON'T already know about morphemes, and not a little showboating venue for the amusement of linguistics fancypants. Yeah, you.

Anyway, I just read the entire article and clicked on just about every internal link, and I must confess I still don't know what a cranberry morpheme is.

Por exemplo[sies]:


 * A:Phonetically, the first morphemes of gooseberry and raspberry also count as cranberry morphemes, as they don't occur by themselves but the spelling gives a clue to their obscure origins.


 * 1. To what does "phonetically" refer in the above sentence? Structure dictates it refers to "count," but "phonetically to count" (or "to count phonetically,") makes very little sense to me, either literally or figuratively.


 * 2. The "they" in "they don't occur" is also sort of a floater.  Restructured:  "the [...] morphemes [...] don't occur by themselves."  Huh?  "By themselves" where?  In the...world?  In my mind?  In your butt?


 * 3. "...the spelling gives a clue to their obscure origins."  "The" spelling?  The spelling of what?  "Gooseberry" or "raspberry"?  Or "goose"?  Or "berry"?  Or "rasp"?  What about "spberry" or "ooseb"?  And what's "obscure" about a goose or a rasp?  Or do you mean the obscure origins of berries?  I thought they came from fertilized flowers, but I confess I'm not a pollenologist.


 * 4. I may be wrong, but I think we need a comma somewhere in the vicinity of that "but."

As for "mulberry":


 * The so-called "cranberry morpheme," "mul," actually comes from "morula," originally, if you go back real, real far. Loosely defined, this describes a single thing that's composed of other, smaller, closely connected things in a specific combination.  A good example is a very early embryo that's composed of just a few cells (which is, in fact, called a "morula").  Another is, well, a raspberry -- which is not really a single berry but a cluster of a whole bunch of smaller berries all mushed together.  Guess what else is a morula?  That's right:  a mulberry.  This means, literally, a berry that's morular.


 * Here's what else is morular: http://www.kitchencontraptions.com/archives/pictures/img47l-thumb.jpg  It's more commonly known as a "muddle," and it's used to mash fruits and herbs, mostly in the drink-mixing process.  Please note the business end.


 * But guess what else it's called? That's right:  a "mull."  It's why "mulled wine" is called that, incidentally -- because mulled wine is made of wine that's got mashed spices in it, among other things.


 * This is all to prove that, according to the information/definition in this article, "mul" can't actually be a "cranberry morpheme" at all, since "mul" is not only phonetically, but literally (since it's in "mulberry," which is "multicelled berry"), a word by itself.

B:Compare these to blackberry, which has two obvious unbound morphemes.


 * When I click on "unbound morphemes," I read that they are, in fact, "free morphemes," and that to be one, you have to "stand alone." Standing alone isn't given a definition, but the implication is that "blackberry" can be broken up into words that can "stand alone," as words, themselves: "black" and "berry."  "Blackberry" is offered as an example of a word that ISN'T composed of "cranberry morphemes," which, I'm now led to believe (based on having been shown what they AREN'T) are groups of letters that can be pronounced, but are not actually words, as such.  This seems to make sense with regard to "cranberry," but not with either "gooseberry" or "raspberry," each of which can be split down the middle, giving you "berry," "goose," and "rasp."  You don't even have to alter the spelling of the latter two; they're already words.  So what, exactly, makes them "cranberry morphs," then?

I'm not saying there isn't a perfectly reasonable explanation; I'm sure there is, and I'm sure I'm able to understand it. I'm just not seeing it anywhere in this article.

Thanking you for your attention to this matter: Sugarbat (talk) 01:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

TOTAL rewrite needed (again)...
I've got a strong feeling that whoever wrote this page, also wrote the one for morpheme, because that's a shocker as well. My friend: typical, characteristic or just well-known examples of phenomena are not properly described as "canonical". And then, to link "canonical" from this article to the unrelated and primarily theological word "canon" elsewhere is just being obtuse beyond words. The subject of cranberry morphemes in not an intrinsically arduous one, or at least it shouldn't be. It should be a bit of fun. I think you are confusing everyone with your awkward literary style, and your numerous lapses in logic. Take for instance: The canonical example is the cran of cranberry. It is unrelated to the word cran meaning a case of herrings, and though it actually comes from crane (the bird), this is not immediately evident. What is the point you are confusing us with. If “cran” is unrelated to a term for a case of herrings, and no one would imagine it is, why is this red herring brought into the picture at all. There are thousands of words in English which contain morphemes the reasons for whose presence being not “immediately evident”. There is no need to mention this. And you must be the same person who wrote the rubbish under morpheme, because you use “actually” there in the same gormless fashion that you do here. Look, you could reasonably assert of cran “that it ULTIMATELY comes from crane”, but to say that it ACTUALLY does so adds nothing at all to the meaning of the words, and often is just confusing. The lead sentence in a page is where many readers make the decision to stay and leave, and your attempt does not encourage staying. In linguistic morphology, a cranberry morpheme (or fossilized term) is a type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning or a grammatical function but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other.[1]

This is an unnecessarily complex opening, but its main flaw is that combines complexity with illiteracy. You do not mean “the other [word]” here, you mean “another [word]”, because the definite article “the” presupposes that some kind of comparison between two SPECIFIC words has been going on, and that is not the case. The note [1] at the end suggests that you pulled this out of some more comprehensive account, and then had neither the skill nor the inclination to amend it to suit the context of what is being written here. Moreover, as in many of the sentences in which compare terms, you segue between “morphemes” and “words” with no explanation as to how and why the first embraced the second.

You are also over-inclined to employ brackets, which is a sure indicator of a real amateur at work. Proficient writers use bracketed asides sparingly. They are usually subordinate phrases of some kind, and the brackets can usually be replaced with commas. Bracketed asides should NEVER be used in the introductory sentences of an explanation. If it is an “aside”, it often means that it does not fit in well where it is, and should be dealt with elsewhere. Please get someone to fix this. The irony is that this rubbish is being written not by some old granny on “preserving apricots” but by an “expert” in linguistic features ON a linguistic feature. Of all fields of expertise, one might expect that such a practitioner would have the facility to write well and clearly. Instead, a “linguist” is serving us up bowl after bowl of alphabet soup farrago, here and elsewhere in WP Myles325a (talk) 04:34, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never contributed to this article, but your talk page message caught my eye. I'll not mince words&mdash;writing vaguely-directed prescriptive diatribes like this one is an unproductive and obnoxious practice. If you had taken so much as a glance at the revision history of the article, you would have seen that this article has been left virtually untouched since 2006, so it's highly unlikely that the original author will ever know (or care) that you left a message here. If the present state of the article so offends you, pitch in and fix it yourself. Considering that only 20% of your edits are to articles, though, I imagine you're not much in the habit of contributing productively when it comes to article content. &mdash;Bill Price (nyb) 05:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, Bill, if you think I went to town here have a look at my note at morpheme. I don't know what you mean by this note being "vaguely-directed". I would have thought it could be accused of the very opposite: picky and pedantic. I QUOTE what I think is inadequate writing, and sometimes suggest variations. Neither do I know what you intend by "prescriptive" as a pejorative for my recommendations. Is this politically correct week at the Barnstars Weekly Leg Up? Do you even KNOW what prescriptive means? OF COURSE, it's bloody prescriptive. I'm saying that this shit is not good enough, and it needs fixing real bad. I thought that was what these talk pages were for.

Well, sigh, I guess I WILL have to go ahead and do the whole bloody thing myself. I said in one of these posts that this is not my field, but if an entire PLANET-LOAD of geekboy linguists are too plain lazy to get off their arses and have a go, I guess I WILL have to do it myself. Just keep an eye on it and tell me how I am doing. Myles325a (talk) 03:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * By "vaguely-directed", I mean that you address a faceless singular author, as if Wikipedia articles are written by staff writers at the New York Times instead of a swarm of disconnected individuals from around the globe. It's especially bizarre in this instance because all of the original authors are almost certainly long gone. And by "prescriptive", I meant the general sense of "endorsing or commanding a course of action". The general rule here is to do, not to command others to do. (Limited cases such as 3rd-party GA reviews are a partial exception to this rule.) Discussion, on the other hand, is largely used as a means of establishing consensus when editors disagree on the course an article is taking. &mdash;Bill Price (nyb) 03:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Btw, awaotnwpi*, I just hope that the "original authors" are involved with Marcrame Patterns or the like. I would not wish them on Simple Wikipedia. I'm not sure what GA is, but it's the sort of acronym dropping that separates the wonks from real people. Please avoid it: not all of us LIVE in WP land. I can only imagine it has something to do BCWPU (Barnstar Commandants Weekly Piss Up). And I WILL see you there, one day, we'll have a glass of cognac and a fat cigar...

* awaotnwpi - As We Aficionados Of The Net Would Put It.

Hinterland?
Hinterland is raised as an example of a word only one of whose elements (land) has a recognisable native cognate. But hinter is a cognate for hind, and as a native English speaker, I can attest that this is recognizably the case. Perhaps there's a better example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.201.165.119 (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Does "cran-" even actually count as a cranberry morpheme anymore?
If I told you that I bought some cran-raspberry juice at the store today, you would probably understand that I'm talking about a juice that was made from a combination of cranberries and raspberries, right? So isn't "cran-" by definition taking on a basic semantic meaning of "cranberry" when I say that and when you hear that? Because it's not just that one example, I've seen all kinds of other cran-fruit things. Cran-apple, cran-grape, hell, I see cran-mango in my list of Google autocompletes, and that's not even a fruit combo I would've come up with as a marketable option if I were the one doing the inventing of the fruit juices.

My understanding of a cranberry morpheme is that it's not a mere synonym for "bound morpheme", it's a morpheme that in fact literally doesn't add any meaning of its own by itself. I think decades of marketing by cranberry promotion boards may have turned "cran-" into a mere bound morpheme and not an actual cranberry morpheme, turning it into a way to signal that your product contains cranberries (or in the case of our food system, at least some vaguely a cranberry-like substance).

Now, "mulberry" I think might still be a cranberry morpheme; even in a different fruit-related context, if I said that I baked a "cran-apple pie", most people would expect it to contain and/or taste like cranberries, but if I said I baked a "mul-apple pie", I think it might take someone maybe eating a slice of the actual pie, or a least a look at the thing, to realize that I put mulberries in it alongside the apples. (Mulberries and apples, like cranberries and mangoes, are another pair of fruits that I wouldn't necessarily guess to combine anyway... mulberries and cranberries maybe, but that's not the point.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.5.140.161 (talk) 02:29, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I would think the new cranberry related uses constitute the creation of a new morpheme rather than a change in meaning of the original. عُثمان (talk) 20:59, 20 December 2022 (UTC)