Inflectional Prefixes Research Articles

The Addition of Indonesian Prefixes meN- and di- to English Bases: A Corpus-based Study

This paper serves as an initial identification of the addition of Indonesian inflectional prefixes meN- and di- to English bases of any word class through a corpus-based study. With the prevalence of English influence in Indonesian native speakers’ linguistic repertoire, particularly within the scientific and computational domain, there emerges a tendency to resort to the original terms in English than those of the Indonesian equivalences. This phenomenon, addressed as leksikalisasi timpang or unequal lexicalization, refers to the use of words in source language to make up for the lack of corresponding lexicalization in target language. This leads to a linguistic innovation to ‘localize’ English words by adding Indonesian inflectional prefixes such as meN- and di-. Out of 1 million sentence size Web corpus obtained from The Leipzig Corpora Collection, this paper is able to yield approximately 489 (0,21%) combinations of meN- + English bases with 2,813 (0,018%) word tokens and 475 (0,20%) combinations of di- + English bases with 2,377 (0,015%) word tokens. Six allomorphs of meN- are also attested, namely meng-, men-, mem-, me-, menge-, and meny-, with meng-, men-, and mem- as the most used allomorphs by word frequency and type. This investigation backs up the hypothesis that the process of word assimilation leads to nasal sound changes. This paper also observes that there are 13 most used typographic forms shared between the combinations of meN- and di- + English bases, and 7 other forms on a very low frequency. The words observed in this paper’s database are then grouped into three semantic clusters based on their use in context: computer-related (CR), non-computer-related (NCR), and both (NCR/CR), where computer-related words are observed to dominate the database. The findings indicate that this linguistic creativity is the outcome of how familiar Indonesians are with English terms than the official equivalences, especially towards technology and computational vocabulary.

Betrayal through obedience: on the history of the unusual inflectional chain in Siyuewu Khroskyabs

AbstractThis paper focuses on the verbal inflection chain of Siyuewu Khroskyabs, a Gyalrongic language (Trans-Himalayan). Siyuewu Khroskyabs goes against two general typological tendencies: first, as an SOV language, it shows an overwhelming preference for prefixes, which is rarely reported typologically; second, the inflectional prefixes in the outer slots are older than those in the inner slots, which is the reverse case of most languages. In this paper, I will first identify distinct historical layers within the inflectional prefixes, and then focus on two of the prefixes,də-‘even’ andɕə-‘q’ whose evolutionary pathways are relatively clear. The essential part of the hypotheses is that the prefixes originate from enclitics which could be attached to the end of a preverbal chain, originally loosely attached to the verb stem. The preverbal chain later became tightly attached to the verbal stem and eventually became a part of it as a chain of prefixes. As a result, the original enclitics are reanalysed as prefixes. The integration of preverbal morphemes is responsible for the prefixing preference in Modern Siyuewu Khroskyabs. However, despite this superficial prefixing preference, Siyuewu Khroskyabs underlyingly favours postposed morphemes. By following the general suffixing tendency, this language finally managed to create a typologically rare, overwhelmingly prefixing verbal template.

Auxiliary vs INFL in Bantu

A distinctive property of Bantu verbs is the division into two domains: a cluster of inflectional prefixes (infl) and a lexical verb stem. This claim has been supported by a range of multidomain effects which single out infl as an independent constituent. Such effects led to the hypothesis that infl in Bantu is of the same category as auxiliary verbs found in auxiliary–participle constructions. This paper investigates syntactic, morphological and phonological complexity effects in Northern Ndebele verbs and concludes that infl in this language cannot be treated as a type of auxiliary. This conclusion is reached through a detailed comparison of infl and verbal auxiliaries, revealing striking asymmetries, syntactic and phonological, between the two. The autonomy of infl is argued to be a reflex of how verbal morphology is organized into complex heads in Bantu languages.

DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES IN BATUSESA DIALECT OF BALINESE: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

This study was designed in the form of descriptive qualitative study with the aim at describing the prefixes and suffixes in Batusesa Dialect of Balinese which belong to derivational and inflectional morpheme. The techniques used to collect the data were observation, recording and interview technique. In this study, there were three informants chosen. The results of this study show that there are four kinds of prefixes found in Batusesa Dialect, namely {n-}, {me-}, {pe-}, and {a-} and five kinds of suffixes namely {-ang}, {-nә}, {-in}, {-an} and {-ә}. There are three kinds of prefixes and one kind of suffixes which belong to derivational morpheme, namely {n-}, {me-}, {pe-}, and {-ang}. Moreover there are three kinds of inflectional prefixes namely {n-}, {me-}, and {a-} and four kinds of suffixes which belong to inflectional morpheme, namely {-nә}, {-in}, {-an} and {-ә}. There were some grammatical functions of prefixes and suffixes in Batusesa dialect of Balinese, namely affix forming verbal, affix forming nominal, affix forming numeral, affix forming adjective, and affix forming adverb, activizer and passivizer.

Locating affixes on the lexicon-grammar continuum

This study seeks to determine the relative position of derivational affixes on the lexicon-grammar continuum in English. Its major claim is that the set of prefixes is rather more lexical and the set of suffixes rather more grammatical in nature. This hypothesis is supported by a battery of ten tests (nine linguistic and one psycholinguistic). All tests converge to the point where we can raise the possibility of a unified explanation. A theoretical account is offered which is grounded in both language structure and processing. It is erected on a temporal asymmetry between prefixes and suffixes and a logical (relational) asymmetry between stems and affixes. In conjunction with the immediacy-of-processing assumption, these asymmetries lead to a temporal precedence of (more) lexical over (more) grammatical material, hence the higher lexicalness of prefixes and the higher grammaticalness of suffixes. An extended focus on inflectional morphology locates inflectional suffixes at the grammatical end of the spectrum. Inflectional prefixes in languages other than English may find a place either between derivational prefixes and derivational suffixes or between derivational and inflectional suffixes.

ZeroMarking in French Impersonal Verbs: A Counter Trend to Clitic Morphologization?

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The acquisition of inflectional prefixes in Nairobi Swahili

This study investigates the acquisition of inflectional prefixes in Swahili, an eastern Bantu language. The order of morphemes in adult Swahili is: Subject Agreement – Tense – (Object Agreement) –Verb Root – (derivational suffixes) –Mood Vowel. I present data from an original corpus of 4 Swahili-speaking children (ages 1;8-3;0) who were recorded in Nairobi, Kenya. An analysis of the children’s verbal utterances reveals that four clause types occur in the speech of all four children: a. Agr–T–Verb StemFull Clause b. Ø–T–Verb Stem[-SA] Clause c. Agr–Ø–Verb Stem[-T] Clause d. ؖؖVerb StemBare Verb Stem Of these four, only full clauses and [-SA] clauses are permitted by adults in this non-standard dialect of Swahili. A review of five influential theories on the acquisition of morphosyntax (the Metrical Omission Model, Gerken, 1991; the Truncation Hypothesis, Rizzi, 1994; the Underspecification of T, Wexler, 1994; the underspecification of Agr, Clahsen et al. , 1996; and the underspecification of Agr and T, Schütze & Wexler, 1996) shows that the data support the Agr-Tense Omission Model (Schütze & Wexler, 1996) in showing that agreement and tense may be optionally and independently underspecified.