No, I have nothing against Lois’ alter ego. What I dislike is her name. It has grated on me from the first time I heard it, but I never really bothered to think very much about it before today. Although I am going to use “Ultra Woman” as a spring board for discussion, I am posting this in the off-topic section of the MB because my post will only relate to the show tangentially.

I am among the many who have enjoyed Ann’s posts on astronomy, so I decided to write a disquisition on linguistics. My credentials: I have a doctorate in linguistics, with specializations in sociolinguistics and language pedagogy. I have, however, been out of the field for over a decade.

Today, I would like to venture primarily into morphology, the branch of linguistics which discusses how words are assembled. Words are composed of one or more “morphemes”. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. Consider, for example, the word “cats”. It is a single word composed of two morphemes; the first morpheme meaning, roughly, “feline” and the second morpheme being a plural marker. “Cat” is a free morpheme – it can stand as a word in its own right. This contrasts with the plural marker “s” which is a bound morpheme. It cannot stand as a word in its own right; it must be attached to another morpheme in order to form a word.

Keep in mind that the only static languages are dead ones. Morphemes which once were bound can become free, and vice versa. To take a very recent example, “dis” used to be a bound morpheme. But in some lects (See footnote), at least, it can now stand on its own as a verb meaning to show someone disrespect. It is my understanding that this change originated in the lect which, when I was in grad school, linguists referred to as “Black English Vernacular,” or BEV. (I don’t know whether political correctness has resulted in a different term being used by current linguists – as I wrote above, I’ve been out of the field for over a decade.) “Dis” as a free morpheme has spread to be understood, and sometimes used, in other lects within the United States. (I don’t know how widespread it has become – I would love to hear from people outside the U.S. – Has “dis” as a free morpheme spread to you?)

Morpheme boundaries can also change over time in a process called “juncture loss”. Historically, the phrases “an uncle,” “a newt,” and “an apron” would have been rendered as “a nuncle,” “an ewt,” and “a napron”. These changes may not be apparent in the spoken versions of the two-word phrases, but they become obvious even in spoken language when one inserts another word between the article and the noun; e.g. “a favourite (n)uncle,” “a pet (n)ewt,” “a gaudy (n)apron”. Incidentally, J.R.R. Tolkien undoubtedly knew of this when he used the phrase “my nuncle Tim” in one of his poems. (http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/j__r__r__tolkien/poems/1878)

So, back to “Ultra Woman”. Is “Ultra” a bound or a free morpheme? While it is true that the space between it and “Woman” could present an argument in favour of it being a free morpheme, it is only a weak one. Written word boundaries do not always correspond to linguistic ones. To see this, one need only consider the morpheme pairs which may be written with a space, a hyphen, or directly connected as compound words in writing; e.g., “no one” vs. “no-one,” “all right” vs. “alright”, or “ultra liberal” vs. “ultra-liberal”.

One test used to see whether a morpheme is bound or free is to see whether it can be the answer to an ordinary (i.e., non meta-linguistic) question. This would only work for words in certain syntactic categories. “Super” is a free morpheme. It can stand alone as the answer to, “How do you feel?” “Ultra,” too, can stand on its own as the answer to “How conservative is he?”

Now a brief excursion into syntax – how sentences are constructed. I’ll get into far more details on syntax in another post, should there be interest. Right now, I’ll just touch on the fact that words can be put together in certain ways to make phrases. For example, “very” can be used to modify adverbs (“very quickly”) or adjectives (“very big”) but not nouns (*“very dog” - An asterisk is used in linguistics to precede ungrammatical phrases or sentences.)

So where does my problem with “Ultra Woman” come from? “Ultra” is like “very” – it can be used to modify adjectives or adverbs, but not nouns. For example, “ultra violent” is a perfectly good English phrase, but *“ultra violence” is not. Some other examples:

“Ultra professorial”

“Ultra soft” (A phrase I’ve heard used in advertisements)

“Ultra clean” (This example comes straight from a setting on my laundry machine)

“Ultra feminine”

“Ultra quickly”

“Ultra quietly”

“Ultra gently”

But all of the following are ungrammatical:

*”Ultra professor”

*”Ultra softness”

*”Ultra cleanliness”

And now, my difficulty with *”Ultra Woman” should be evident. “Ultra feminine woman,” while lacking zing, would use “ultra” in a manner consistent with general usage. *“Ultra Woman,” however, violates such usage. Hence the reason I find the phrase so irritating. (Note that when I label it “irritating,” I have my “native speaker of English” hat on; not my “linguist” hat. Linguists are descriptivists, not presciptivists. I’ll expand upon that in another post, should this post generate any interest.)

Thank you for sticking with me on my ramble through a small corner of linguistics.

Joy,
Lynn

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Footnote: A “lect” is the way an individual or a group of individuals speaks. If this post generates enough interest, I will discuss different types of lects in another post.