ABSTRACT
There can be only two reasons for favoring a linguistic device such as a distinct morphemic level of description: The device makes the learning of a language easier, and/or once the language has been learned, it makes language use more effective. On the learning side, I sometimes think, as I stand phrasebook in hand trying to hold a conversation in an unfamiliar language, that morphemic systems were designed by some malevolent genius deliberately to confuse people. In languages that have few bound morphemes, why are the same phonemic or written forms used for several quite different functions? Why does English -s signal the plural, the possessive, and the third person singular present; why does German use -en to indicate masculine singular for adjectives, dative plural for most nouns and adjectives, infinitive and first and third person plural present for many verbs? In languages where there are many bound morphemes, what is there to be gained from such profligacy? The hours of rote learning I put in as a schoolboy to master the dozens of forms of amare could have been better spent if the Romans had used one form of the verb to love together with a few helpful auxiliaries, like is, was, have, and shall.
