Inflectional Material Research Articles

Inflection in Lingua Franca: from Haedo’s Topographia to the Dictionnaire de la langue franque

The Mediterranean contact language Lingua Franca (LF), although usually categorized as a pidgin, is known to display a number of non-pidgin-like characteristics. A number of these pertain to its inflection, which shows (for a pidgin) an unusually high degree of retention of lexifier inflectional material. The present paper attempts to situate the inflectional categories of LF, as well as their exponence, between those that are generally found in pidgins and those that characterize LF’s Romance lexifiers. In doing so, the paper contributes both to the descriptive analysis of LF and to the theoretical understanding of its place in the typology of contact languages.

The Within-the-Noun-Category Zero Derivation in Macedonian

Zero derivation is a process when from a lexeme that belongs to one lexical category or subcategory another one is formed, which, from derivational point of view has the same form but, since inflectional material is allowed to be used, the form can be changed inflectionally; the category or subcategory of the new lexeme is definitely changed, and what connects the source and the target lexeme is the meaning – it is similar, more precisely, expanded. When discussing this process within a category, which is a clear type, that is, the process is realized even without using any inflectional material and there is complete overlap between the source and the target lexeme, this paper focuses on changes within the noun category in Macedonian. That is when the natural subclass of the noun is changed, and the process goes from countable to uncountable noun, from uncountable to countable, from proper to common and from static to dynamic noun. The target lexeme, which is the newly zero derived element, becomes a member of another subclass, different from the subclass to which the source lexeme naturally belongs, and thus accepts the characteristics of the new lexical subcategory or the new subpart of speech and behaves accordingly. The clear or prototypical side of the process is seen in the formal overlapping of both lexemes, from both derivational and inflectional point of view.

The Inflectional Type of Verb to Noun and Noun to Verb Zero Derivation in Macedonian

This paper studies the process of zero derivation in which from a lexeme that belongs to one lexical category, by using metaphoric transfer, a new lexeme is derived, with expanded meaning, with a form changed from inflectional point of view, thus becoming a member of another word class. In this way, the lexeme before and the one after the process belong to different lexical categories, so that zero derivation happens when, as the process requires, nothing derivational is used, but the suffixes which are used for this phenomenon and that are being added, replaced or dropped are of inflectional type. This notion is a characteristic of Macedonian because this Slavic language is rich in inflectional suffixes and that aids the zero derivation, since all the conditions for the process are met: the meaning is expanded, the word class is changed while the form is changed as much as the process allows, that is, only when inflections are used. Of the several types and directions, the paper studies two: from verb (both imperfective and perfective) to noun and vice versa, from noun to verb (imperfective and perfective). Thus, the examples and the analysis will show which inflectional material is used and what the meaning of the new lexeme is, after the process finishes. Therefore, several subtypes of inflectional zero derivation in these two directions will be distinguished, and a metaphoric-cognitive transfer is used to illustrate not only the existence but, more importantly, the productivity of the process in Macedonian. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p545

Solving the bracketing paradox: an analysis of the morphology of German particle verbs

Inflectional affixes are sensitive to morphological properties of the stems of the verbs they attach to. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the inflectional material is combined with both the verbal stem of simplex verbs and the verbal stem of particle verbs. It has been argued that this leads to a bracketing paradox in the case of particle verbs since the semantic contribution of the inflectional information scopes over the complete particle verb. I will discuss nominalizations and adjective derivation, which are also problematic because of various bracketing paradoxes. I will suggest a solution to these paradoxes that assumes that inflectional and derivational prefixes and suffixes always attach to a form of a stem that already contains the information about a possible particle, but without containing a phonological realization of the particle. As is motivated by syntactic properties of particle verbs, the particle is treated as a dependent of the verb. The particle is combined with its head after inflection and derivation. With such an approach no special mechanisms for the analysis of particle verbs are necessary.

Verb movement and interrogatives

Verb movement is a phenomenon that has been studied extensively withintheframework of Chomskyan generative grammar. The pioneering work by Pollock(1989) has been followed by a number of studies involving various languages, whichhas provided an important insight both into the language-specific andlanguage-uni­versal properties of verb movement. In most general terms, verb movement canbedefined as movement of the verb from its base position in the (V)erb (P)hrase tosomeposition higher in the clausal structure. In Government & Binding theory verbmove­ment was motivated by the need of the bare lexical verb to associate with theinflec­tional affixes hosted by the functional heads (Pollock 1989, Belletti 1990). Bycontrast,the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995) claims that all types of movement aretrig­ gered by feature-checking requirements. In this system, items from lexical categories are fully inflected in the lexicon.Thus the verb is inserted into its base position with all its inflectional affixes and associated inflectional features. Functional heads donotcontain any inflectional material; they carry only abstract features, which arecheckedagainst the corresponding features on the lexical items. In order for feature-checkingto take place the lexical item (e.g. the verb) must raise to the relevantfunctionalhead(s).

Representation of inflected signs from American sign language in short-term memory.

In order to help illuminate general ways in which language users process inflected items, two groups of native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) were asked to recall lists of inflected and uninflected signs. Despite the simultaneous production of base and inflection in ASL, subjects transposed inflections across base forms, recalling the base forms in the correct serial positions, or transposed base forms, recalling the inflections in the correct serial positions. These rearrangements of morphological components within lists occurred significantly more often than did rearrangements of whole forms (base plus inflection). These and other patterns of errors converged to suggest that ASL signers remembered inflected signs componentially in terms of a base and an inflection, much as the available evidence suggests is true for users of spoken language. Componential processing of regularly inflected forms would thus seem to be independent of particular transmission systems and of particular mechanisms for combining lexical and inflectional material.

Communicative Use of Language and Syllabus Design*

ABSTRACT The ability of a learner to use the target language with relative fluency in simulated speech transactions is recognized as an important objective for today's American foreign language classroom. The adoption of that goal requires, in addition to modifications of classroom practices and the teaching environment, a thorough revision of present syllabus‐design practices. A teaching syllabus is defined as the selection and ordering of the subject matter to be taught. Current syllabuses are based on linguistic features that bear no direct relationship to either learner processes or units of which communicative transactions are composed. The optimal pedagogical syllabus should lead the learner to participate in the largest number of communicative transactions in the shortest period of time. In the absence of knowledge about psycholinguistic processes that guide foreign language learners and about the organization and structure of speech acts, it is difficult to abandon linguistic features in the design of syllabuses. Four new orientations may be followed that lead more directly to language use than do monolithic and paradigm‐oriented linguistic features: (1) frequency and utility indexes, (2) intralinguistic analysis, (3) language acquistion and processing universals, and (4) observation of second language learners. Syllabuses stressing the ability to use a language rather than knowledge of its structure should be guided also by the following principles: (1) drastic reduction of the number of features introduced, (2) the use of cyclical rather than linear ordering, (3) reduction of the complexity of the material presented (shorter utterances and use of analytical devices instead of inflectional material), (4) reduction of variants and alternants, and (5) tolerance of learner errors.