Noun Suffix Research Articles

The Morphological Analysis of Inflectional Plural Noun Suffixes Found in Catharsis Novel by Anastasia Aemelia

Novel is a long narrative story that describes the specific human experiences in their life as depicted by the portrait of the characters. A novel that is written by Anastasia Aemilia entitled Catharsis talks about the story of a troubled young woman with special gifts and heavy burdens. Observing inflectional suffix aims to enrich the language learners’ vocabulary especially noun in plural forms. This qualitative research focuses on the analysis of inflectional plural noun suffixes that are found in the novel entitled Catharsis. This study is also analyzed based on the theory that proposed by Katamba (1993) regarding to the research problem which about the types of inflectional plural noun suffix. The results that are found 681 data that contain inflectional suffixes. Those data are divided into 3 categories namely 646 data (95%) of plural noun suffix (-s), 28 data (4%) of plural noun suffix (-es), and 7 data (1%) of plural suffix (-ies).

Tocharian B agent nouns in -ntsa and their origin

Abstract The agent noun suffix in -ntsa belongs to a complex of Tocharian B agent noun formations, similar in form, function, and inflection. Of these, two suffixes are widely believed to be related to -ntsa: the productive agent noun in -ñca and the lexicalised agent noun in -nta. The suffix -ntsa forms occupational titles to eleven verbs in Tocharian B and can be reconstructed for Proto-Tocharian through comparison with Tocharian A. In this paper, it is argued that the suffix originated in the feminine of the PIE active participle in *-nt. This is substantiated by the fact that several ntsa-nouns refer to primarily female professions, as well as the existence of the relic forms Bpreṃtsa ‘pregnant’ and Blāntsa ‘queen’. Furthermore, it is proposed that the masculine is reflected in the suffixes -ñca and -nta and that the disintegration of gendered inflection in the participle led to its development into several agent noun formations.

Zamucoan Person Marking as a Perturbed System*

AbstractThis paper analyzes the Zamucoan system of Person markers: personal pronouns, verbal and possessive inflection. Comparing the three documented languages (Ayoreo and Chamacoco, currently spoken, and extinct Old Zamuco), one can reconstruct for a very ancient stage of this language family an agglutinating structure for both personal pronouns and verbal inflection, with Person and Number dealt with by, respectively, prefixes and suffixes. However, possessive inflection could not be accommodated within this system, since the noun suffix can only expresspossessumNumber, while possessor Number has to be expressed by a dedicated prefix. This structural conflict forced the Zamucoan languages to attempt various solutions, departing from the original agglutinating logic.

Grammatical Gender in Specific Language Impairment: Evidence from Determiner-Noun Contexts in Greek

Τhe present study investigates whether Greek-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) face difficulties in the acquisition of gender in determiner-noun contexts, as expressed via agreement οn the determiner. The results of an elicitation task with real and novel nouns showed that children with SLI (a) show difficulties primarily with masculine and feminine gender marking, and do not use prototypicality of the noun suffix, as typically developing children do, to mark the gender on the determiner in conditions with real nouns, and (b) do not use, with the same consistency as typically developing children do, the noun ending as a cue to mark the gender value on the determiner in conditions with novel nouns. It is argued that although grammatical gender is considered an intrinsic lexical property of the noun, it is not learned by children with SLI along with other lexical features of the noun. Moreover, when lexical information is not provided in the nouns, children with SLI cannot process morphology cues, such as the inflectional suffixes on the nouns, as consistently as typically developing children do.

Production of noun suffixes by Turkish-speaking children with developmental language disorder and their typically developing peers.

Turkish has a rich system of noun suffixes, and although its complex suffixation system may seem daunting, it can actually present a learning opportunity for children. Despite its unique features, Turkish has not been studied extensively, especially in the case of children with language deficits, such as developmental language disorder (DLD). Most of the extant studies are focused on bilingual children, and the results are somewhat mixed. To focus on the noun morphology system of Turkish-speaking preschoolers with DLD and compare their use with that of two groups of typically developing (TD) children. Moreover, to investigate the nature of their noun suffix errors in detail. We report data from a total of 80 monolingual children, 40 children with DLD (age range = 4;0-7;10), 20 TD age-matched children (4;0-7;3) and 20 younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children (2;0-4;3). The data for this study came from language samples obtained from children in individual clinical assessment sessions. The children with DLD made less use of noun suffixes than both the younger and the age-matched TD children. The use of the unmarked (nominative case) form in place of an overt suffix was the most likely error by all groups. Suffix-change alternations required beyond vowel harmony seemed to pose real problems for these children. These results suggest that even when a language appears to provide significant advantages for the learning of noun morphology, children with DLD do not succeed in closing the gap. Certain factors such as morphophonological changes beyond vowel harmony, multiple allomorphs for the same suffix type and accusative suffixes that are not uniformly applied in the adult input were found to be significant predictors of the DLD group's difficulty with noun suffixes. Because these same factors can serve as characteristics of other languages, a child's difficulties might seem to be language specific (e.g., a particular allomorph in the language), but may actually be based on a broader difficulty (e.g., dealing with multiple allomorphs for the same suffix). Accordingly, factors that transcend a single language should be considered during clinical assessment and therapy. What this paper adds? What is already known on this subject? The current literature on the use of noun suffixes by Turkish-speaking children with DLD is very limited. Although Turkish is often described as a learner-friendly language, the degree to which children with DLD enjoy these learning benefits is unknown. What does this paper add to existing knowledge? Turkish children with DLD are less accurate in noun suffixes than both age-matched and younger control groups. For this group, the central problem seems to be increased complexity in morphophonology rather than difficulty with suffixation more generally. What are some of the clinical applications of this study? For clinicians who work with Turkish-speaking children with DLD, priority should be given to morphophonology. These children would benefit from treatment that focuses on how to attach different allomorphs to different open-class words. Because factors such as morphophonological complexity operate in other languages, the findings have broader clinical implications. In particular, regardless of the target language, clinicians should consider the possibility that these broader factors, rather than language-specific details, are the basis for a child's difficulty.

Indo-European syntax in disguise

Abstract The Greek noun suffix -ευς is analyzed as a hypostatic u-stem formation based on an instrumental in *-eh₁- with close cognates in Lithuanian -ius and Armenian -oyt‘ < *-eh1u-ti-. Thus the type reflects the inherited predicative use of the instrumental case also known from the Old Indic cvi-constructions and the Latin type rubefaciō.

Lexicalized Diminutives in the Transylvanian Hungarian Historical Dictionary

Abstract The analysis of nouns which take a -ka morpheme but their meaning has nothing to do with the idea of smallness, not even from a historical perspective, can be problematic, and that is why one is faced with the possibility that this formant (due to the influence of a foreign language) is simply a noun suffix and is in no connection with the diminutive – it is only its homonym. The present paper deals with those entry words of the Transylvanian Hungarian Historical Dictionary which have a diminutive suffix in their structure; however, the meaning of the derivative does not include the element ‘small/little’.

СЕМАНТИКА СУФФИКСА -БЭ ИМЕН СУЩЕСТВИТЕЛЬНЫХ В ЯЗЫКЕ ЛЕСНЫХ ЮКАГИРОВ

The article is devoted to analyzing the noun suffix -бэ in the Forest Yukaghir language. The author identifies three basic lexico-semantic groups of nouns with -бэ suffix the majority of which have a generalized meaning “place”. Using linguistic material the author shows that semantics of -бэ suffix with the meaning “place” has undergone diachronic changes manifesting themselves in the acquisition of new word-formative meanings, transformation of the semantic structure of a word.

ORDER OF MORPHEMES ACQUIRED BY THE FIRST SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT THE FACULTY OF EDUCATION

This research is pertinent to the morphemes made in the writing examination by the first semester students or freshman of English Department of Faculty of Education Catholic University of Saint Thomas in the academic year 2012/2013. There are two classes of the first semester students in English Department, and one class with 34 students is taken out as a sample to represent the whole first semester students in the academic year 2012/2013. The research data is taken from the result of the first semester writing examination, especially paragraph writing. Thus, there are 34 paragraphs thoroughly examined one by one to obtain morphemes both inflectional and derivational morphemes, including compounding words. The result of data analysis shows that the students produce 550 morphemes comprising 450 inflectional morphemes, 100 derivational morphemes, and 20 compounding words. Of the inflectional morphemes, irregular past morpheme amounts to 169, and that of regular one amounts to 101. But if it is seen from the verb form without the frequencies, the regular verb form amounts to 59 verbs, while the irregular amounts to 36 verbs only. In other words, the irregular verb form has much more frequencies than that of the regular one. Then, this number is followed by the plural morpheme which amounts to 77 frequencies. Meanwhile, of the derivational morphemes, noun suffix {-ing} has the highest position, namely 57 frequencies, then followed by adjective with 28 frequencies, adverb with15 frequencies and verb with 1 frequency. Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that the easiest morphemes are the most produced by the students, and then followed by the most difficult morphemes. This is in line with the language learning theory which says that the learners will grasp the easiest parts first, then gradually move to the more difficult.

The “Possessed Noun Suffix” and Possession in Two Northern Dene (Athabaskan) Languages

This paper documents and analyzes the possessive construction in the Northern Dene (Athabaskan) languages Dënesųłıné and Tłı̨chǫ. The construction occurs not only when one noun is related to another (whether the relation is one of literal possession or not) but also with subsets of relative clauses and compounds, and when a numeral precedes a unit noun. We give a syntactic account of the possessive construction which addresses its diverse uses while maintaining a single core function and configuration. At the heart of our analysis is the proposal that the hallmark of the construction, the “possessed noun suffix,” is an overt manifestation of the functional head n.

On Forming Deverbal Nouns and Adjectives in Russian

Some deverbal nouns and adjectives govern their complements as nouns and adjectives. In vladelec jazykov ‘polyglot’ genitive case is assigned by the Adnominal Genitive Rule, and in zabyvčiva na imena ‘forgetful of names’ na is required similarly as in the gloss. With other deverbal nouns and adjectives, e.g., vladenie jazykami ‘a command of languages’ and zabyvajuščaja imena ‘who forgets names’, the form of the complement is governed by the embedded verb; compare vladeet jazykami and zabyvaet imena . To capture this affinity, the noun phrase is represented as a noun headed by the noun suffix /-ij/ and containing a verb phrase corresponding to vladeet jazykami , and the adjective phrase is represented as an adjective headed by the adjective suffix /-ušč/ and containing a verb phrase corresponding to zabyvaet imena . These underlying representations give syntax the task of uniting /vlad/ with /-ij/ and /zaby/ with /-ušč/, matters traditionally relegated to a morphology component of the grammar. To relegate them to syntax is to enter uncharted territory.

It’s all about gender: Hebrew speakers’ judgment of adjective plural agreement

The current study investigated the role of morpho-phonological and syntactic factors in judging the marking of Hebrew adjectives in agreement with plural nouns of differing categories of regularity. Participants were 36 literate adult speakers of Hebrew, who were administered a judgment test of 144 sentences (half grammatical and half ungrammatical), each containing a plural adjective in agreement with a nominal head. The task sentences were divided into three different syntactic configurations of the adjective in relation to the noun—predicative adjectives, attributive adjectives in sentence-initial NPs and attributive adjectives in sentence-final NPs. The agreement-assigning nouns were classified according to three morphological criteria: Noun gender (masculine and feminine), Noun suffix (regular, irregular, and ambiguous), and noun stem (changing and non-changing stems). Results showed that gender was the most important factor affecting agreement judgment: adjectives agreeing with ambiguous and opaque feminine nouns taking irregular suffixes yielded the lowest accuracy scores and the longest reaction times. Syntactic position affected judgment scores as well, with predicative and attributive-initial adjectives being more difficult to process than attributive-final adjectives. These results support the view that categories of number and gender emerge from the morpho-phonological properties of words learned in their syntactic and semantic contexts.

The Pronunciation of Noun Suffix “子” in <i>Pinghua</i> Dialect Used by Miao and Yao Autonomous in Southwest Hunan of China

In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan of China, Beijing dialect’s noun suffix “子” has different literary and colloquial forms such as the pronunciation and many other unique colloquial pronunciations that each pronounced as a syllable. By synthetically analyzing many pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, this paper gives an investigation on the phonetic change and historical levels.

Meaning of noun suffix "-дал 4 " and its equivalence in German language

Meaning of noun suffix "-дал 4 " and its equivalence in German language

Caregivers' suffix frequencies and suffix acquisition by language impaired, late talking, and typically developing children

Acquisition of regular inflectional suffixes is an integral part of grammatical development in English and delayed acquisition of certain inflectional suffixes is a hallmark of language impairment. We investigate the relationship between input frequency and grammatical suffix acquisition, analyzing 217 transcripts of mother-child (ages 1 ; 11-6 ; 9) conversations from the CHILDES database. Maternal suffix frequency correlates with previously reported rank orders of acquisition and with child suffix frequency. Percentages of children using a suffix are consistent with frequencies in caregiver speech. Although late talkers acquire suffixes later than typically developing children, order of acquisition is similar across populations. Furthermore, the third person singular and past tense verb suffixes, weaknesses for children with language impairment, are less frequent in caregiver speech than the plural noun suffix, a relative strength in language impairment. Similar findings hold across typical, SLI and late talker populations, suggesting that frequency plays a role in suffix acquisition.

New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion (review)

Victoria Hasko and Renee Perelmutter, eds. New approaches to Slavic of motion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. [Studies in Language companion series, 115.] A Slavist seeing Slavic of thinks immediately of the dozen or so imperfective verb pairs like Ru. idti-xodit, bezat'-begat', and nesti-nosit, and a third of the 15 papers in this heterogeneous collection deal with them. (1) But New approaches predominate. As the first editor observes, During the last several decades the field of linguistics has witnessed the emergence of a rich body of typological studies investigating the domain of motion (197). She is referring chiefly to the work of Leonard Talmy (2007, first published 1985), who has classified the languages of the world into those in which expressions are satellite-framed and those in which they are verb-framed. In the former, the verb expresses the manner of and a satellite the path of motion, e.g., run (manner) down the stairs (path); in the latter it's the other way around: descendre (path) l'escalier en courant (manner). Ten of the papers take Talmy's typology as their point of departure, several of them arguing that although the Slavic languages are satellite-framed like English, there are intratypological differences between the two that call for study. Another new feature is that nine of the papers draw data from web corpora and subject them to statistical analysis. (2) I discuss the papers in their published order (with one exception). The title of Joanna Nichols's article (47-65) asserts: Indeterminate are denominal. I don't think so. A denominal verb is a verb that has a noun as its root. Clearly denominal is zeniti with its noun root, likewise dariti, the root of which is headed by a noun suffix. But I see no basis for claiming that the root of vodit[??] is the nominalization of /ved/, as in vozdb, rather than /ved/, as in vedet[??],. According to Kurylowicz (1928: 197; 1964: 87), there are three syntactic environments for o-grade ablaut: iterative, primarily with transitive (neset[??], vedet[??], vezet[??] ~ nosit[??], vodit[??], vozit[??]), causative, with intransitive (lezet[??], sedet[??], tecet[??] ~ lozit[??], sadit[??], tocit[??]), and nominalization (prinos[??], voz[??], zalog[??], sad[??], otok[??]). Nichols downplays the iterative function, subsuming it under causative, to bolster her claim that vodit[??] contains the nominalization of /ved/. (She concentrates on determinate / nondeterminate vedet[??] / vodit[??], ignoring perfective / imperfective privedet[??] / privodit[??].) We should not let morphology dictate our analyses. Iteratives may share o-grade with nominalizations but they are not more closely related to them than they are to the e-grade base. Vodit[??] may appear 'derived from' (or 'motivated by') the root of vozdb, but consider the meaning: a vozdb is one who vedet[??] people toward a goal, not someone who vodit[??] them here and there. Likewise for /nes/, as in Ru. neset, nosit, and nosa; the noun denotes a burden, typically heavy, which one neset from point A to point B, not something light like an item of clothing which one nosit. Nichols goes on to discuss deverbal nouns, deadjectival verbs, and the accentuation of -it' (giving percentages for fixed and mobile stress in Russian). I don't see how any of this supports her claim that (pri)voditi, (pro)xoditi, (ob)nositi, etc. are denominal (which would make them suppletive with regard to (pri)vesti, (pro)jti, (ob)nesti). Stephen M. Dickey's Common Slavic 'indeterminate' of were really manner-of-motion verbs (67-109) argues that the determinate / nondeterminate distinction is a North Slavic innovation which is not reflected in the earliest texts. In ORu. Jaroslav[??] xodi na jatvjaze 'Jaroslav marched against the Jatvjags', it is wrong to read aorist xodi like the nondeterminate xodil of Vcera ja xodil v kino. It does not denote 'went and came back' but rather the manner of motion, campaigning on foot. …

The Role of Suffixes in Grammatical Gender Assignment in Modern Greek: A Psycholinguistic Study

Tlie aim of this study is to investigate how native speakers of Greek assign gender to nouns. The main question concerns the role that the morphophonological information encoded on noun suffixes plays in the assignment of gender values by native speakers. To that end, novel nouns were created combined with the different nominal suffixes so that the role of the suffix could be investigated independently of any lexical and/or semantic effects. Monolingual, native speakers of Greek were asked to use these novel nouns by providing an agreeing definite article thus indicating the corresponding gender value. Tlie experiment was conducted both orally and in written form, so that potential effects of phonological as opposed to orthographic information could be examined. Following the experiment, probability values (predictive values) were calculated for each noun suffix based on the participants’ interpretations, which were then compared to counts of frequency co-occurrence of each suffix with each gender value in the language. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical models of gender assignment and lexical access, while lexicalist approaches to morphology are also addressed.

The noun suffixes -ter/-der, -(y)ans and -neth in Cornish

Whereas the abstract noun suffix -ter/-der is very common in all three Brittonic languages, the usage of the abstract noun suffixes -(y)ans and -neth has been greater in Cornish than that of their counterparts in Breton or in Welsh. The activity of all three Cornish suffixes is examined.

The Verbal Suffix -ettan in Old English

Jespersen has pointed out that 'English is very poor in frequentative verbs, especially in such as have corresponding non-frequentative verbs. He is referring, of course, to Modern English, and goes on to say that there are various other, somewhat more analytic means of expressing the plural of the verbal idea. In Old English, on the contrary, iteration or repetition was much more frequently expressed by means of formal devices. A formation with -1is found in a number of verbs, such as br.Tclian 'to cackle', citelian 'to tickle', brastlian 'to rustle', whereas many others, including floterian, flicerian, and tealtrian 'to totter', employ an -rstem. For the most part, however, such verbs are formed either from nouns or from adjectives and, as Jespersen indicates, corresponding non-frequentative verbs are not to be found. There does exist in Old English, however, one group of verbal derivatives which may be characterized in part, at least, as frequentative. These are the verbs with the suffix -ettan. This suffix developed from Gmc. -atjan, possibly cognate with Gk. -arw, based upon the IE noun suffix -d-.2 The relatively infrequent occurrence of these verbs in Indo-European branches other than the Germanic need not concern us here. Gothic, too, has few instances of such verbs, but in OHG this group, with the suffix -azzen, later -ezzen, became very widespread, particularly in the upper dialects.3 In general it may be said that the -ettan verbs in Old English have never been subjected to an exhaustive analysis. Schuldt, in his treatment of the weak verb in Old English, collected about fifty of them (a few of dubious authenticity), quoted Wilmanns to the effect that they were often intensive or iterative, and there let the matter drop.4 They were mentioned again by Brilioth in an article on intensive and iterative verbs in the English language as a whole, but the scope of his work was so broad that he could not afford to give them much attention.5 Today, when they are treated at all in the current grammars of Old English, they are labelled merely as intensives and passed over with little consideration.6