Nominal Morphology Research Articles

Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri

Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals—Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for both reflexive and reciprocal expression, while English and Kriol both use pronominal forms, and largely have separate forms for reflexives and reciprocals. English distinguishes person and number in reflexives, but not in reciprocals; the other source languages do not distinguish person or number. This study draws on naturalistic and elicited production data to examine how reflexive and reciprocal events are encoded in Light Warlpiri. The study finds that Light Warlpiri combines near-maximal distinctions from the source languages, but in a way that is not a mirror of any. It retains the person and number distinctions of English reflexives and extends them to reciprocals, using the same forms for reflexives and reciprocals (like Warlpiri). Reflexives and reciprocals occur within a verbal structure (perhaps under influence from Warlpiri). The results show that a mixed language can have discrete contributions from three languages, that the source languages can influence different subsystems to different extents, and that near-maximal distinctions from the source languages can be maintained.

Morfología y diccionario electrónico de nombres en Quechua

Presentamos aquí dos diccionarios electrónicos de nombres en quechua, uno con traducción al español y otro, al francés. Cada lexema incluye sus propiedades sintáctico-semánticas y su correspondiente paradigma flexional FLX. Después de hacer un inventario de los sufijos nominales, muestro la manera cómo hemos construido la matriz fundamental que rige la morfología nominal del quechua, comenzando por aglutinación binaria de estos sufijos. Luego presentamos el método para obtener las gramáticas racionales que nos permitan generar, automáticamente, usando la plataforma lingüística NooJ, todas las formas nominales conteniendo dos o más sufijos. Luego mostramos cómo, aplicando a un pequeño texto quechua, interrogaciones en formato NooJ se obtienen las correspondencias de las formas nominales reconocidas en ese texto, flexionadas o no, y cómo, enseguida se las puede visualizar gráficamente, en colores, sobre ese texto, obteniéndose un alto índice de reconocimiento (94%), que prueba el grado de precisión de nuestras gramáticas.

Variation in the nominal morphology of Northern Vlax Romani

The present paper discusses two particular instances of variation in the nominal morphology of Northern Vlax Romani varieties as spoken in Hungary: the masculine oblique base and the feminine plural oblique base. The discussion is conducted in an analogical framework, relying only on surface forms and their relationships, using the notion of schemas ( Booij 2010 ), and taking it one step further. When there is a ‘weak point’ in the grammar of a language, variation may emerge and pattern-seeking may begin; the pattern-seeking processes can be interpreted and explained with reference to possible analogical connections among surface forms.

Morphological Errors in Spanish-Speaking Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorders.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to find morphological markers with good diagnostic accuracy to identify developmental language disorders (DLD) in Spanish-English bilingual children. Method The participants in this study included 66 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 4;0 and 6;11 (years;months) with (n = 33) and without DLD (n = 33). We employed a comprehensive production task in Spanish to elicit morphological structures that have been previously found to be problematic for Spanish-speaking children with DLD. These structures included elements of nominal morphology (articles, direct object pronouns, adjectives, and plurals) and verbal morphology (verbs and the subjunctive mood). Logistic regression was used in this study to find a set of grammatical structures that most accurately predicted group membership. Results Spanish-English bilingual children with and without DLD significantly differed from each other in their accurate production of articles, clitics, adjectives, verbs, and the subjunctive mood. Clitics, verbs, and the subjunctive mood in isolation had adequate diagnostic accuracy. A combination of verb and subjective mood accuracy best predicted group membership in this study (sensitivity of 85% and specificity of 91%). Conclusion In addition to clitics, verbs, and the subjunctive mood, both elements of verbal morphology should be considered grammatical markers of DLD in Spanish-English bilingual children. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13641320.

Exploring source/goal asymmetries in spontaneous and caused motion expression in Yuhup

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the asymmetry in the expression of Goal and Source in spontaneous and caused motion events in Yuhup (Makú/Naduhup family). We examine the asymmetries at the semantic, morphological and syntactic levels. As this language does not have a specialized system of nominal morphology that distinguishes the ground constituents representing the Source or the Goal of a movement, an asymmetrical treatment of Source and Goal is not evident. However, verbal semantics make more distinctions for Goal than for Source, ground constituents are more frequent in the expression of motion to(wards) the Goal than the one (away) from the Source, and structural variety and complexity differentiate between Source and Goal expression. Also, the Goal bias is stronger in the descriptions of caused motion than in the ones of spontaneous motion. The data were collected using tools designed for elicitation of spontaneous and caused motion events.

Developments in English historical morpho-syntax ed. by Claudia Claridge and Birte Bös

Reviewed by: Developments in English historical morpho-syntax ed. by Claudia Claridge and Birte Bös Kristin Bech Developments in English historical morpho-syntax. Ed. by Claudia Claridge and Birte Bös. ( Current issues in linguistic theory 346.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2019. Pp. vi, 312. ISBN 9789027203236. $149 (Hb). This volume was published in the aftermath of the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, which took place in Essen in 2016. It thus represents a cross section of the research going on in the field of English historical morphosyntax. Since the book covers different topics, the introduction is not a state-of-the-art overview, but very briefly situates the contributions within the larger field of English historical linguistics. The thirteen contributions are grouped under three headings: nominal constructions, verbal constructions, and adverbs and adverbials, and the editors provide short summaries of each article. In the following I also summarize each article, but focus on providing some information about data, methods, and results as well. Obviously, the summaries do not do justice to the complexities of the research, but are meant as an aid to understanding how research is carried out in the field. At the end I provide some general comments. Elżbieta Adamczyk's contribution concerns changes in the nominal morphology of Old English. Old English nouns belonged to declensional classes that depended on the original stem type, but the system was unstable. Adamczyk proposes three factors that led to the restructuring of the nominal morphology. The first is frequency of occurrence, and a correlation is shown between the level of innovation in the Old English nominative and accusative plural and the proportion of plurals: the declensional classes that are less frequent in the plural show a high level of innovation in their plural paradigms. The second factor is morphophonological salience: the more salient inflectional markers resist analogical pressure. Salience is defined according to certain criteria such as zero marking, suffixation, and consonant and vocalic stem modulation. The third factor is the analogical pressure on neutral forms in the paradigms, analogy being triggered by cross-paradigmatic similarities: the higher the percentage of neutral forms in the paradigm, the higher the percentage of innovation. Adamczyk also considers how the interaction between frequency [End Page 414] and morphophonological salience shapes the system. Her approach is usage-based, so analogy is viewed as a functional mechanism resulting in functional forms being favored over less functional forms. Nouns and case are also the topic of Kirsten Middeke's chapter, in which she considers the instrumental case in Old English and the issue of whether it is a separate case or subsumed under the dative. After an initial discussion of 'vestigial' case, she provides a distributional analysis of frequencies and collexemes (e.g. Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003), comparing the dative and the instrumental cases. She looks at which nouns occur with the instrumental and dative determiners, and with instrumental-case adjectives. The finding is that the Old English instrumental expresses time in particular, but also manner and place, and importantly that it fulfills functions that are distinct from the dative. Middeke then moves on to a discussion about the productivity of the functional differences observed, in view of the fact that the instrumental on the one hand is never obligatory, and on the other hand is semantically restricted. Here she concludes that the instrumental is partially productive. The overall conclusion is that the opposition between the instrumental and the dative is 'vestigial', since the instrumental-dative opposition was optional. However, the instrumental contributes functions that are distinct from those of the dative, which means that the instrumental case is a separate category in the case system. Jerzy Nykiel studies the pronouns one and other with initial th- and t- in Middle English, that is, thone, thother, tone, tother. After presenting corpus data showing the distribution, Nykiel discusses the origin of the pronouns and the two possible ways in which they could have arisen, either by reduction of the definite article or by misanalysis due to incorrect syllable division. He finds that reduction was responsible for the formation of thone and thother, while the formation of...

Общие инновационные процессы в мансийских диалектах: именная морфология

Общие инновационные процессы в мансийских диалектах: именная морфология

A sketch of Akum (Southern Jukunoid)

This article presents data on the little researched Southern Jukunoid language Akum which is spoken in five villages of the Cameroon-Nigerian border area. Akum shows the typical Benue-Congo syllable structure (CV, CVC) as well as typical sounds of the Benue-Congo consonant inventory (double and secondary articulation). As is known from other Southern Jukunoid languages, only the consonants r, b, g, and nasals are permitted in word-final position and – because they are unreleased – the distinction voiced/voiceless is neutralized. The number and qualities of phonemically distinct vowels remains debatable. Concerning the nominal morphology, the Akum nominal prefix system is reduced in several aspects compared to its Southern Jukunoid relatives: it only has a set of 4 different nominal prefixes which are vocalic in form and it shows only marginal agreement on adjectives. The quinary numeral system and SVO basic word order are similar to its Southern Jukunoid relatives Bezen, Yukuben and Kuteb.

Dialect variation in Scottish Gaelic nominal morphology: A quantitative study

This paper presents a dialectometric analysis of Scottish Gaelic morphology, with a focus on the noun phrase, using previously unpublished data from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland. Fifty-five morphological features were extracted across 201 survey points, and the data subjected to a variety of analyses, including cluster analysis, regression, and correlation analysis. We establish that the Gaelic noun system shows robust diatopic (i.e. geographical) variation; this challenges previous assertions in the literature, which describe Gaelic morphosyntax as geographically uniform. In addition, we argue that our dialectometric results provide an insight into the grammatical structure of the language that is not easily achievable through the analysis of individual varieties. In particular, we argue that the results highlight a dissociation between morphological categories such as case and gender and their morphophonological exponents, which are particularly complex in Scottish Gaelic. The paper thus serves as a proof of concept for the use of dialectometric findings in a theoretical context.

Aspects of the phonology and morphosyntax of Kyak, an Adamawa language of Nigeria

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of a few aspects of the phonology and morphosyntax of Kyak [bka], a largely undocumented Adamawa language spoken in the northern part of Taraba State in Nigeria. The paper is divided into four main sections. The first section deals with the phonology, focusing on consonant and vowel inventories, some phonetic processes, and syllable structure. The second section looks at nominal morphology, particularly nominal modifiers and possessive constructions, which show a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession. The third section describes the verbal morphosyntax, identifying the various forms that encode the expression of tense-aspect and person-number. The fourth part looks at a couple of clause/sentence level features, namely the clitic -ŋ, which is associated with the marking of assertiveness, and the use of logophoric pronouns. This is the first description of the phonological and grammatical features of the language, and one of the first for the Jen cluster. It thus adds to the knowledge of the cluster and to the evaluation of genealogical and areal hypotheses which involve languages of this region.

The phonology and noun morphology of Yi Kitʊlɛ, an Adamawa language of East-Central Nigeria

The paper describes the phonology and nominal morphology of KItʊlε, an Adamawa language of the Tula-Waja group, spoken in East-Central Nigeria. KItʊlε has a restricted consonant inventory, marked by a loss of voicing contrast in most consonants. It has a system of ATR vowel harmony, which has begun to erode in many lexical items. There are three level tones plus rising and falling glides. The underlying system of nominal number marking is suffix alternation as with the other languages in the group, but this has undergone numerous alterations, in part due to the addition of prefix alterations, and fossilised suffixes which have been incorporated into the stem. Some of these then appear as infixes, although this is not the underlying system. A note on demonstratives is appended, which shows that these are not directly concordial, but which have a broad semantic logic.

Reduced forms in the nominal morphology of the Lindisfarne Gospel Gloss. A case of accusative/dative syncretism?

Abstract One of the most characteristic features of the grammar of the Lindisfarne Gospel gloss is the absence of the etymological -e inflection in the dative singular in the paradigm of the strong masculine and neuter declension (a-stems). Ross (1960: 38) already noted that endingless forms of the nominative/accusative cases were quite frequent in contexts where a dative singular in -e would be expected, to the extent that he labeled the forms in -e ‘rudimentary dative.’ The aim of this article is to assess to what extent the dative singular is still found as a separate case in the paradigms of the masculine and neuter a-stems and root nouns. To this end a quantitative/statistical analysis of nouns belonging to these classes has been carried out in contexts where the Latin lemma is either accusative or dative. We have tried to determine whether variables such as syntactic context, noun class, and frequency condition the presence or absence of the -e inflection, and whether the distribution of the inflected and uninflected forms is different in the various demarcations that have been identified in the gloss. The data have been retrieved using the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. All tokens have been checked against the facsimile edition and the digitised manuscript in order to detect possible errors.

Number-based noun classification

Nilo-Saharan languages are well-known for their complicated system of nominal number marking, which features a variety of singulative and plural affixes (Dimmendaal 2000). Even though these systems have received some attention in the typological literature, there has been limited theoretical work on their implications for the morphosyntax of number cross-linguistically. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap, by providing an analysis of nominal number morphology in Kipsigis (Nilotic, Kenya), based on data from original fieldwork. First, I show that singulatives in Kipsigis are true allomorphs of singular number, unlike singulatives with a classifier function in languages like Ojibwe (Mathieu 2012). The descriptive term ‘singulative’ is therefore misleading, as it corresponds to two very different types of morphemes. Second, I claim that the tripartite system of number marking of Kipsigis and other Nilo-Saharan languages is due to the classification of nouns into morphosyntactic classes defined by the presence of inherent number features on little n; the interaction of these features with interpretable number features on the functional projection Num (Ritter 1991 a.o.) in the post-syntactic component gives rise to the exponence pattern that we observe. Finally, my analysis corroborates the existence of noun classification based on number, which has only been argued for Kiowa-Tanoan before (Harbour 2007). The existence of three number classes in Kipsigis can only be explained by reference to bivalent number features; number-based noun classification systems thus strongly support the view that number features are bivalent and not privative, which is also argued by Harbour (2007, 2011) for Kiowa.

Temporal Concepts and Formulations of Time in Tibeto-Burman Languages

As a vast and diverse linguistic grouping, Tibeto-Burman languages vary in their usage of time constructs, both morphologically and semantically. Even between genetically related languages within the Tibeto-Burman language family, approaches to elements such as suffixation vary widely, while vocabulary from Indo-Aryan and distantly related Sinitic languages is differently incorporated and borrowed. In this article, we identify trends that only become apparent through the process of data collation and the careful comparison of numerous grammatical sketches and dictionaries. We further expand this rich, if understudied, area through the incorporation of original fieldwork data from the Thangmi/Thami-speaking communities of Nepal undertaken by one of the co-authors, and supplemented by the researcher’s residence in the Himalayan region from 1996 to 2009. The literature review and linguistic scope of this survey includes multiple grammars of languages spoken across the Greater Himalayan region, with specific emphasis on the Rāī-Kiranti sub-branch of languages autochthonous to eastern Nepal. In our comparative analysis, we focus on apparent cognates and shared paradigms with an emphasis on systems of segmental time measurement (e.g. ‘two days hence,’ ‘this year’) rather than on relative ones (e.g. ‘now,’ ‘then’). Through this compilation, the relationship between Tibeto-Burman languages and their often-dominant regional Indo-Aryan counterparts becomes more visible, mediated by a better understanding of the shared yet conflicting epistemological, astrological, and organizational views of time held by the communities who speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Features of note include the assimilation of Chinese and Indian religious and spiritual systems, as well as imported vocabulary that does not always replace—but is in fact sometimes incorporated into—the lexicon of a given language by the speech community. It is our observation that in Tibeto-Burman languages, Indigenous concepts, categories and classifications of time are usually grammatically encoded in adverbial forms, while the influential Indo-Aryan languages of the region mostly make use of nominal morphology in order to express temporal concepts. In addition, reflexes of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (hereafter PTB) nouns are still evident across the language family. To conclude, we position this survey as a comparative and analytical contribution which focuses attention on the region’s rich linguistic variation and the importance of rigorous documentation, conservation and revitalisation programs for Indigenous languages of the Tibeto-Burman family, as the communities who speak these languages continue to grapple with severe socio-political challenges and face the hegemonic pressures of linguistic assimilation.

Vowel deletion in two Aymara varieties

Aymara vowels delete under predictable phonotactic, syntactic, and mor-phophonemic conditions. We provide a detailed description of each of these processes, with special attention to morphophonemic vowel deletion. In this process, specific suffixes trigger the deletion of the preceding vowel, with no obvious phonological or semantic conditioning. This is both the most common type of vowel deletion in Aymara, and the most unusual one in cross-linguistic terms. We compare vowel deletion in Contemporary Aymara (Coler 2014) and Historical Aymara as attested in the 17th century (e.g. Bertonio 1612a) and reveal that both varieties delete vowels as a result of processes arising from phonotactic and morphophonemic motivation, though some processes of syn-tactic vowel deletion were not widespread in the historical variety. Notably, while morphophonemic vowel deletion was attested in both Contemporary and Historical Aymara, the suffixes which are lexically pre-specified to delete the preceding vowel are often different in the two varieties. Further, Historical Aymara lacks accusative inflection marking with subtractive disfixation, which is an important and typologically unusual aspect of Contemporary Aymara nomi-nal morphology. In light of the typological rarity of morphophonemic vowel deletion (and disfixation in particular), we expect this description to be of inter-est to typologists

К особенностям перевода «Закона Божия» (1912 г.) на удмуртский язык: именная морфология

К особенностям перевода «Закона Божия» (1912 г.) на удмуртский язык: именная морфология

Dụ̈ysenȧlị Ȧbdịlȧšịm: Eskị Ḳazaḳ Jazba t Ȁ ịlị [Дюйсенали Абдулашим: Староказахская письменность

The paper presents a review of Düysen ̣ ȧlị Ȧbdịlȧšịm’s monograph “The Old Kazakh Written Language” (“Eskị Ḳazaḳ J̌ azba Tịlị”), which is written in Kazakh and published in Beijing in 2014. The monograph is a linguistic description of the documents of the Kazakh Khanates written in the period from the first half of the 18th century until the early 19th century. The Old Kazakh documents were mostly written by Kazakh Khans and Sultans and sent to Chinese emperors of the Qing dynasty and to officials in charge of the border. Currently all the documents are preserved in the First Historical Archives of China in Beijing. The monograph is designed as a manual for university students studying Kazakh philology. The significance of the book lies in its being the first and only book providing a comprehensive linguistic description of the Old Kazakh historical documents. The monograph is divided into three chapters. The phonetics and writing system of the Old Kazakh documents are studied in the first chapter. Chapter 2 investigates the nominal morphology, in which five word classes: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, and function words have been discussed. The last chapter presents lexical terms for temporal units. The review provides a short description of all chapters and points out that the usage of the term “Turki” is more appropriate for defining the language of the presented documents than the term “Old Kazakh Written Language”, since it manifests prevalence of non-Kazakh features.

Nouns and noun phrase structure in Nubri

This paper is a preliminary investigation of the nominal morphology and noun phrase structures of Nubri, a Tibetan variety spoken in the northern Gorkha. Nubri shares a number of inflectional and derivational features with Tibetan languages, such as Kyirong Tibetan. Like its close Tibetan varieties, a number of modifiers such as, genitive-marked nouns, demonstratives, relative clauses etc. precede the head nouns, whereas some other modifiers, such as article, emphatic marker, numerals etc. follow them in the noun phrase.

Gli Erotemata di Manuele Moscopulo e i suoi precedenti

Abstract After displaying the theory of Theodosian nominal morphology, the paper offers an overview of the development of Greek grammar in Byzantium between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Starting from Theodoros Prodromos’ handbook it takes on the study of the Erotemata of Moschopoulos and examines their relationship with the erotematic genre.

Greek στωμύλος ‘chatty’

Abstract Gk. στωμύλος ‘chatty’ (Old Com.+) belongs with στόμα ‘mouth’; yet the serious formal problem with the -ω-, often acknowledged, remains without explanation. Part of the conundrum: despite the connection with στόμα (a synchronic n-stem and historically a men-stem), an n-stem or men-stem basis for στωμύλος is not workable. Two different solutions, however, can be proposed, on the basis of hitherto neglected Greek data; these point to the existence of forms that can support analyses in terms of vr̥ddhi (Solution #1) or in terms of a different type of morphological lengthened grade (Solution #2). These analyses, in turn, may shed light on the anomalous o-grade of Gk. στόμα itself, with broader implications for the study of PIE nominal morphology.