Lexical Morphemes Research Articles

Inflectional suppletion in Turkic languages

As a type of irregularity and anomaly, suppletion has been widely investigated in Indo-European languages. It is generally thought that Turkic languages, as they are very agglutinating, do not tolerate such irregularities. Though this is true to a certain extent, suppletion may be observed in any natural language as a universal linguistic phenomenon. Turkic languages contain a considerable number of radical and affixal suppletive pairs. In this article I deal with those suppletive pairs in historical and contemporary Turkic languages and comment on their rise and degradation through phonological and semantic shifts, language contact or analogy. I will revisit and reorganize certain pairs which have been falsely classified as suppletive. Since it is important to distinguish suppletive pairs from separate lexical and grammatical morphemes, I will also clarify some theoretical points regarding apophony, uniqueness, the productiveness of single paradigms, lexicalization, synonymy and antonymy.

Feature and conjunction effects in recognition memory: Toward specifying familiarity for compound words

In three experiments, we evaluated potential sources of familiarity in the production of feature and conjunction errors with both word (Experiments 1 and 3) and nonword (Experiment 2) stimuli and related this work to various dual-process models of memory. The contributions of letter, syllable, lexical morpheme, and conceptual information were considered. Lexical morpheme information was consistently more potent than syllable information in leading to feature and conjunction errors across Experiments 1 and 2, and a word length explanation did not account for this consistent finding. In addition, there was no impact of conceptual information on these errors (Experiments 1-3). The results support a familiarity-based interpretation of feature and conjunction errors and a lexical morpheme basis for the familiarity in compound words. In order to be more comprehensive, memory models may need to account for a lexical morpheme source of familiarity.

Kuki-Thaadow: An African Tone System in Southeast Asia

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2007) Kuki-Thaadow: An African Tone System in Southeast Asia Larry M. Hyman 1. Introduction Since the publication of Pike (1948), it has often been assumed that tone systems fall into two types: (i) Chinese, Vietnamese, and nearby languages of East and Southeast Asia are said to have “contour tone systems” in which the various combinations of rises and falls function as complex units. (ii) African and most other tone systems are said to have register tone systems, whose primary oppositions consist of level tones such as High (H) and Low (L). Hs and Ls may combine to form complex rising (LH) and falling (HL) sequences on single tone- bearing units, but these are not complex units like affricates or prenasalized consonants in segmental phonology, but are instead tonal sequences comparable to consonant clusters (Yip 1989). One additional striking observation about Southeast Asian-type languages is their tendency towards what Bickel (2003) terms TAUTOMORPHEMICITY : Each word is a single morpheme and single syllable. While Bickel excludes prosody from the definition, the tautomorphemic condition is met when each tone stays on its own syllable = morpheme (Schuh 1978; Chen 1992). In his comprehensive volume on the phonological structures of African languages, Creissels (1994:241) takes note of the Southeast Asian type and adds, “aucun systeme de ce type n’a ete signale en domaine negro-africain.” He goes on to explain that the contour tones which appear in register systems are almost always transparently segmentable into combinations of level tones in African languages. While a Southeast Asian-type tone system is yet to be unambiguously documented in Africa, the goal in the present paper is to show the reverse—that a bona fide African-type tone system is attested in Southeast Asia. The language I will describe in the following sections is Kuki-Thaadow [kuki tHa:dc& w], a member of the Kuki-Chin subgroup of Tibeto- Burman. Spoken in Northeast India and neighboring Myanmar, it will be seen that Kuki- Thaadow (henceforth, KT) is packed full of properties that we typically associate with African tone systems: two levels, H- and L-tone spreading, downstep, floating tones, polar tones—in short, the very phenomena which we know so well from the study of tone in African languages. 1 The paper is organized as follows. In §2 I present the isolation tones in KT. §3 presents the tonal alternations on lexical morphemes, while §4 considers grammatical tone. The consequences for typology of tone systems are considered in the conclusion in §5. 2. The KT Isolation Tones My investigations of KT began in 2001 with weekly consultant work over an 18 month period with Rev. Thien Haokip from Lamka district in Northeast India. In Fall 2003 I then taught the first half of a year-long field methods course at Berkeley with the assistance of Ms. Vei Ning, a speaker of KT from Myanmar. The phonetic differences between the two speakers are minimal, mostly concerning vowels: While Thien pronounces /ie/ and /uo/ as diphthongs, Ning pronounces these as [e] and [o]. Both pronounce /e/ and /o/ as [E] and [c] and have the same tone system reported in this study. I am extremely grateful to both of them for their dedication to our efforts and for their wisdom and patience.

Macedonian (review)

Reviewed by: Macedonian by Victor A Friedman Mark J. Elson Macedonian. By Victor A. Friedman. (Languages of the world/Materials 117.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2002. Pp. 60. ISBN 3895860751. $36.96. This book has four sections—sociolinguistic and geolinguistic situation (4–8), phonology (8–15), morphology (15–37), and syntax (37–52)—of Contemporary [End Page 344] Standard Macedonian, with occasional references to Macedonian dialects. A ‘revised, expanded, and updated’ (59) version of the author’s contribution to The Slavonic languages (ed. by Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, London: Routledge, 1993, 249–305), it concludes with sample texts (53–56) and references (57–58). Unlike the earlier description, however, it is not concerned with historical phenomena or lexis. The author adopts a traditional framework, with phonemes established on the basis of surface contrast and inflectional morphemes defined, following the Prague School, in terms of categories (e.g. tense) instantiated by binary features (e.g. [past]). The book makes available a substantial amount of information, offering nonspecialists a good overview of Macedonian structure, and offering specialists a convenient and easily accessible reference to parts of the system that do not fall within the purview of their expertise. The section on phonology includes— in addition to the inventory of phonemes, their allophones, and the details of phonotactics— treatment of the orthography and of morphophonemic alternations. For those with limited or no knowledge of Macedonian, this placement of morphophonemic phenomena may be troublesome because it makes necessary anticipatory references to relevant, but not yet discussed, parts of the morphology and associated grammatical categories and, later, in the discussion of morphology, retrospective references to relevant alternations. There may also be difficulties for the nonspecialist with the details of the orthography, which are not treated together but, for each letter requiring special mention, under the phoneme which it normally represents. It should be noted that the citation of structural units is not consistent. Word-level units are cited in transliteration, but morphemes are cited sometimes in transliteration, sometimes in transcription. Although the Macedonian adaptation of Cyrillic follows the phonemic principle, generally assigning one letter to one phoneme and vice versa, the pronunciation of transliterations and Cyrillic letters, when indicated, is in phonetic, rather than phonemic, transcription when Friedman wishes to emphasize phonetic, as opposed to structural, detail. The description of inflectional morphology and syntax is comprehensive. The former is organized by part of speech and subcategorized according to relevant grammatical categories and their morphological instantiations. Inflectional morphology is treated fully and accompanied, for each part of speech, by a useful survey of derivational morphology, giving readers a reasonable introduction to the inventory of stem-forming affixes although there is little attention to concomitant morphophonemic processes in either the affixes themselves or the lexical morphemes with which they occur. The section on syntax is organized by sentence type (i.e. declarative, nondeclarative, copular, negative, subordinating) and phenomena associated with smaller syntactic constituents (i.e. reflexivity, reciprocity, possession, quantification). This book is particularly valuable for the information it provides in areas not generally treated in surveys, for example, derivational morphology, syntax, and the grammatical meaning associated with inflectional categories. The information in question is, of necessity, presented very briefly, but nevertheless makes F’s contribution, especially in conjunction with the information on history and lexis available in his earlier formulation, a worthy companion to the only other comprehensive description of Macedonian in English, Horace G. Lunt’s Grammar of the Macedonian literary language (Skopje: Državno Knigoizdatelstvo, 1952), which remains an important reference of Macedonian structure. Mark J. Elson University of Virginia Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Morphological Analysis in Comparison (review)

Reviewed by: Morphological analysis in comparison ed. by Wolfgang U. Dressler, et al. Mike Maxwell Morphological analysis in comparison. Ed. By Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer, Markus Pöchtrager, and John R. Rennison. (Current issues in linguistic theory 201.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. ix, 253. ISBN 1556199791. $72(Hb). The papers here were presented at the Seventh International Morphology Meeting in Vienna in 1996. The editors briefly summarize the articles, which consist of analyses of various morphological phenomena in various languages from various theoretical viewpoints (hence the phrase ‘in comparison’ in the title). Pablo Albizu and Luis Eguren propose an optimality theoretic analysis of ‘ergative displacement’ in Basque, in which first and second person ergative agreement is marked with absolutive markers (reminiscent of 1/2 person object marking on Potawatomi verbs). Henry Davis asks whether causatives or inchoatives serve as lexical semantic representations (LSRs). Rejecting ‘on conceptual grounds’ the possibility that both might be available, Davis argues from language data (particularly St’át’imcets, a Salish language) that inchoative LSRs are universal—but not universally lexicalized, for pragmatic reasons and for uniformity within a language. Lluïsa Gràcia co-authors two articles: with Miren Azkarate on Basque, and with Olga Fullana on Catalan. The assumption in both is that head-complement order must be identical in syntax and morphology. Basque is a head-final language; thus any prefixes should be analyzable as modifiers, not heads. In general this is true, but in a few cases [End Page 797] the authors resort to a zero suffix (not just a zero affix). Similarly, Catalan is a VO language, but there are constructions in which what appears to be a possessed object is incorporated to the left of the verb. Resolution involves the assumption that the incorporated noun does not act as the head of the verbal complement but rather as a modifier of its possessor. But this leaves the possessor with two theta roles, an apparent Theta Criterion violation. The solution to this problem requires ‘blending’ lexical conceptual structures—perhaps gutting the Theta Criterion. Marianne Kilani-Schoch and Wolfgang U. Dressler study the substitution by children of prosodic ‘fillers’ (often an unstressed vowel) for function morphemes. They argue that fillers start out as purely phonological categories, with children gradually assigning them grammatical function. Mária Ladányi catches grammaticalization in process in Hungarian, where case-marked nouns are becoming verbal prefixes (or perhaps clitics). Morphological theories disagree as to whether affixes are Saussurean signs, and in particular whether they have significant semantics. Adrienne Lehrer takes the position that there is no sharp boundary between the semantics of affixes and that of lexical morphemes, basing her argument on English derivational affixes. Joyce McDonough disputes the need for position classes in Athabaskan morphology, claiming that Navajo verbal morphology is binary branching. A longer presentation would have helped motivate the particular lower level constituents. Vladimir A. Plungian investigates whether a particular affix in the Dogon language (of Mali) is inflectional or derivational; some of his criteria seem debatable. For example, optionality is taken to show that the affix cannot be inflectional. However, at least some inflectional affixes (the plural suffix in Tzeltal, for example) are optional. Andrew Spencer looks at Chukotkan verb morphology, in particular the obligatory use of inverse forms for certain person combinations. These inverse forms are homophonous with antipassives, which Spencer takes to be a syncretism, supporting the need for rules of referral. However, it seems possible that the grammar simply disallows the missing noninverse forms, leaving the antipassives as the only way to express the particular person combinations. Edwin Williams takes a bird’s-eye view of the relationship among the lexicon, morphology, and syntax, suggesting that minimalism is on the wrong track in seeking to explain morphology by reference to functional categories. Williams instead proposes something like a principles-and-parameters approach. While the price is rather hefty for a conference proceedings, all the articles can be read (and for a reasonable price, downloaded or printed) at...

The Semantics of the Positional Predicates liegen/legen, sitzen/setzen, and stehen/stellen

In a discussion of contrasts involving lexical morphemes in and English, Hawkins notes that German regularly forces a semantic distinction within a lexical field where English uses an undifferentiated and broader term (28).' For example, kennen, wissen, and k6nnen can all be rendered by English know, but the verbs are more restricted in their semantic coverage and cannot easily be substituted for one another. Hawkins does not discuss the rules that govern the use of these verbs or the others that he cites in his discussion of this particular German/English contrast. The differences between kennen, wissen, and k6nnen are well known and treated in virtually every textbook on German.2 However, the semantic peculiarities of other important lexical items have received little attention in the linguistic literature and often receive little or no attention in textbooks. In particular, the positional predicates liegen 'lie', sitzen 'sit', and stehen 'stand' are used with great frequency in German, yet the semantic restrictions on their use have received little attention.

Woordvormanalyse Door Kinderen

Early word form representations are assumed to be unanalyzed 'routines'. Around age 2 1/2, when the first 50 to 100 words have been acquired, the organization of the mental lexicon starts to change. Word form representations are segmented into their constituent linguistic substructures: syllable and phonemes. Gradually the network-like structure which is thought to capture the mature mental lexicon emerges. Peters (1983, 1985) has proposed two heuristics that may be employed by children for segmenting words, both during this 'reorganization' and afterwards, when new words are acquired and inserted into the rapidly expanding lexicon. The first employs word stress, the second is based on matches between a new form and lexical items that have already been acquired. This study investigates in an experimental fashion whether children use stress and formal similarities in segmentation. Children (4, 5 and 6 yrs. old) were asked to alter syllable onsets in trisyllabic words with stress on either of the three syllables, and in trisyllabic complex words in which at least one morpheme could be expected to be known by the subjects. It appeared that word-internal onsets of stressed syllables were more often altered than onsets of unstressed syllables. These results are supportive of the 'stress' heuristic. Also, syllable onsets which coincided with word-internal lexical morpheme boundaries (i.e., boundaries between known and unknown parts which can also occur independently) were more often altered than non-boundary onsets. However, syllable onsets at root-suffix boundaries were not altered more frequently than non-boundary onsets. This difference between lexical morpheme boundaries and suffix boundaries is not predicted by a segmenting heuristic based on formal match. It is therefore suggested that in fact prosodic characteristics of the final morphemes in the complex words factors could be responsible for the difference: all first (or only) syllables of the right-hand lexical morphemes were stressable, whereas the suffixes were not. This conjecture was tested in a second experiment in which 7 and 8 year old children were asked to alter syllable onsets in derivations consisting of a bisyllabic root and a monosyllabic suffix. Some suffixes were stressed, others were unstressed and still others caused stress in the stem morphemes to be shifted to the second syllabe. It was found that stressed suffixes yielded more alterations than unstressed suffixes. Second, stressed syllables, in general, yielded more onset alterations than unstressed syllables, regardless of whether stress was assigned by the stem morpheme or by derivation with a stress-shifting suffix. Finally, syllables which had 'lost' stress as a result of dervational stress shift produced more alterations than unstressed syllables that were not stressed, in the stem morpheme either. These results support the conjecture that the apparent effects of formal match on segmentation behavior in the first experiment can be explained by reference to stress. Consequently, it is concluded that stress is the primary cue in word segmentation. This conclusion is in accordance with 'prosodic bootstrapping' theory, which claims that children are 'programmed' to use prosodic features as clues to linguistic structure.

PARALLELS AND DIVERGENCES BETWEEN WARLPIRI SIGN LANGUAGE AND SPOKEN WARLPIRI: ANALYSES OF SIGNED AND SPOKEN DISCOURSES

Among the Warlpiri, as among other central Australian Aborigines, older women use a complex sign language as an alternative to speech when, for ritual reasons, as in mourning, silence must be observed. As part of a study of the relationship between this sign language and spoken Warlpiri, a comparison is undertaken between a signed version and a spoken version of two traditional narratives, each told by the same woman out recorded on separate occasions. It is found that signs are ordered in the same way within signed discourse as are words in spoken discourse and a comparison between discourse units in the two versions dealing with the same content shows a close correspondence between the words and signs used; complex lexical items, such as preverb‐verb formations in the spoken language are commonly matched by compound signs that correspond to the morphological structure of the spoken form. However, only lexical morphemes are represented in sign. Markers of case relations, tense, and cliticized pronouns are not signed. The findings are interpreted as supporting the view that these alternate sign languages, unlike sign language of the deaf, are not fully autonomous systems but are built up as gestural representations of the semantic units provided by the spoken language.

Analiza sposobu użycia wyrazów: etyka, moralność, obyczaj, zwyczaj w polskim języku potocznym

The article scrutinizes four groups of words based on common lexical morphemes. The material for the inquiry was gathered from large Polish dictionaries. Consequently, the construing procedure could evolve both synchronically and diachronically. The synchronic examination brought to light various emotional and semantic connections between the words in question, and indicated a field of the strongest links of synonymy. This field is constituted by the senses of the words: “etyka”, “moralnośc”, “obyczajność” and “obyczajowość”, which roughly correspond to the English “ethics”, “morals”, “decency” and “good manners”. Certain other semantic fields of looser integration have also been shown. The diachronic examination concerned language shifts. The words: “obyczaj” and “zwyczaj” (English counterparts: habit and custom) and all their derivatives had been in use before 16th century. The words “etyka” and “moralność” (English counterparts are obvious) came to use in the centuries 16th through 18th, and fully spread afterwards.

Case, category, and configuration

ABSTRACTRepresentation of syntactic relations by dependency trees with nodes labelled by categories of lexical morphemes and with branches effectively labelled by relational morphemes reveals the relationships of elements to which selectional restrictions apply more directly than do current phrase structure characterizations and avoids certain defects of a configurational definition of relationships. The relations are those of CASE as defined by Fillmore and more generally those of HEAD-OF and COMPLEMENT-OF. Adoption of the view that SUBJECT-OF is a surface rather than a deep structure relation eliminates the need to distinguish strict subcategorization rules from selectional rules.

Warao II: Nouns, Relationals, and Demonstratives

3.0. The following definitions are useful for the description of Warao morphology: A ROOT is a lexical morpheme non-committal as to morpheme class. A DEPENDENT ROOT is a root which obligatorily occurs with formative specifications, that is, in sequence with an affix which transforms the root into a stem. A FREE ROOT is a root which is a member of a morpheme class by virtue of its combinatorial possibilities with the affix divisive for that class, and without formative specification. A free root is a STEM. A THEME is composed of two or more morphemes which, as a unit, may replace a stem and thereby combine with the same set of affixes as a stem. The structure of themes for a given class is described in the sections treating that class below. Affixes which may combine with stems and themes are those which are highly recurrent. Affixes which occur as theme included are those less highly recurrent.