--- # Common Morphological Patterns ### Dr. Will Styler - LIGN 120 --- ### Today's Plan - How do we gloss sentences? - How do languages vary in how they use morphology? - What kinds of morphological machinery are common around the world? --- # Glossing Conventions --- ### Translations often don't give us enough detail --- ### Soy de Denver (Spanish) - 'I'm from Denver' --- ### Ngelay chadi (Mapuche) - 'There is no salt' -
Baker, M. (2002). On category asymmetries in derivational morphology. In Morphology 2000. John Benjamins Publishing.
--- ### Ka:háskiyakíre:réʔeriwa:ha. (Wichita) - ‘Once upon a time they say there was a big village.’ - 😮 -
Rood, D. S. (2002). Polysynthetic word formation. In Morphology 2000. John Benjamins Publishing.
--- ### We can do better! - We can provide detailed glosses which relate the language forms to the translated meaning - These are called **interlinear glosses**, and (often) follow the Leipzig Glossing Conventions - [The rules are defined here](https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php) --- ### Rough outline of the Leipzig Conventions - 1) Word-to-word correspondence - Textual alignment from line to line - 2) Set grammatical value abbreviations - Your book has a great list of them at the beginning - 3) Separate morphemes within words using hyphens where possible - 4) Use periods to mark non-separable morphological constituents within a word (when not segmentable) --- ### Soy de Denver (Spanish) - be.1SG.PRES from Denver - 'I'm from Denver' --- ### Ngelay chadi (Mapuche)
--- ### Ka:háskiyakíre:réʔeriwa:ha. (Wichita)
--- ### Interlinear Glossing makes things *much* easier for linguists - It allows quicker understanding of the components and elements of the sentence - With just translations, understanding requires analysis - We see the morphology front-and-center - This is a bit tricky in typesetting, but it works! - *Interlinear glossing is a great tool to use in describing data and words!* --- ### One specific element we *need* to see for LIGN 120 - Separate morphemes using '-' - Separate within-morpheme meanings using '.' - This is subtle, but *crucial* -
--- ### Mind you, some languages do more within-word morphology than others... - Wait, hold on, that feels like a segue! ---
--- # Do languages differ in how they use morphology? --- (Yes.) --- ## Morphological Type A means of categorizing how languages put words together - This is useful for comparing word-building strategies *across languages* * ***Do words have lots of morphemes or few?*** --- ### Do words have lots of morphemes or few? * If words have few morphemes (like English or Chinese), they're "isolating" or "analytic" * If they have many (like Spanish or German), they're "synthetic" * Languages where whole sentences are single words are sometimes called "polysynthetic" ---
English
IE:Germanic - All over
I did see the cat on the street, he's cute. I did see DEF cat on DEF street he-be.3sg cute. * Only one morpheme in most words! ***This is Isolating!*** ---
Spanish
IE:Italic - All over
*Esta escribiéndomelo* be.3sg write-GER-1sg.DAT-3sg.MASC 'He/she is writing it to me.' * Lots of morphemes per word! ***This is Synthetic!*** ---
Wichita
Caddoan - Oklahoma
Kiyakiicíwa:cé:hirʔasʔirhawi ‘There was the big buffalo lying there.’ * Uh... yeah. ***This is polysynthetic!*** --- ## We also care about how easy the morphemes are to pick apart --- ### In a synthetic language, do the morphemes blend together, or are they easy to pick apart? * If the meanings have individual, easily separable forms, it's "agglutinating" * If the meanings merge inseparably into opaque forms, it's "fusional". ---
Turkish
Turkic - Turkey
* Those add together cleanly, and pick back apart. We're ***agglutinating***! ---
German
IE:Germanic - Germany
*Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft* Donau-dampf-schiff-fahrts-elektrizitäten-haupt-betriebs-werk-bau-unter-beamten-gesellschaft Danube-steam-ship-transport's-electricities-head-operation's-work-building-under-officials-association * Look at those clean lines! ***Agglutinative!*** ---
Russian
IE:Slavic - Russian
Ti uhodila so mnoi Ti u-hodi-la so mnoi 2sg.NOM away-go.IMPERF-past.FEM with 1sg.INST "You left with me" * Uh-oh! Those morphemes mean lots of things! This is ***Fusional!*** ---
Spanish
IE:Italic - All over
Durmiéramos Durmiéramos Sleep.2pl.SUBJ.PAST.IMPERFECT * Whoa. All that is one morpheme? No easy lines? ***Fusion*** drives engaged! --- ### It's always a continuum * English is isolating, but Mandarin is *more* isolating * Same with Synthetic: Nobody's besting Wichita, but we don't hold it against them. * Most languages do *some* fusion and *some* agglutination * We call a language fusional or agglutinating when it becomes a habit --- ### Morphological Type - Review! * If a language has few morphemes per word, it's *isolating* * If the language has multiple morphemes per word, it's *synthetic* * If a synthetic language generally has easy-to-pick-apart morphemes, it's *agglutinating* * If a synthetic language generally has blended or combined morphemes, it's *fusional* --- ... Which gets us into our next question --- # How are languages marking meaning, anyways? --- ### Two main methods of doing meaning - Concatenation - Non-Concatentative Processes --- ## Concatenative Morphology --- ## Concatenation Combining elements in a strictly linear order, end-to-end - So, *concatenative morphology* adds morpemes one-after-the-other - fish-ing - in-conceiv-able --- ### Common Methods of Concatentative Morphology - Prefixes - Suffixes - Circumfixes - Infixes --- ### Prefixes - Precedes the base - in-conceivable - u-hodi-t (away-go.IMPERF-INF) 'To go Away' (Russian) --- ### Suffixes - Follows the base - cat-s - u-hodi-la (away-go.IMPERF-PAST.FEM) 'She went away' (Russian) --- ### Infixes - Placed inside the base - abso-f\*\*\*ing-lutely - Alabama Passive infix -l- -
--- ### Circumfixes - Occur on both sides of the base, but not independently - For an affix to be a circumfix, *both sides must be obligatory!* - German ge-X-t past participle (ge-spiel-t, from spielen) - This Papuan Malay circumix ke-X-ang which nominalizes verbs -
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### In the Chukchi example below, Comitative forms are marked with a ...
A) Prefix B) Suffix C) Infix D) Circumfix --- ### Remember, it's not always so easy to pull things apart! --- ### Phonology makes things less clear, sometimes! - This Begak (Austronesian, Malaysia) infix -i- marking completive aspect -
- The infix is added, then the stem vowel is removed - Can also neutralize contrasts --- ### Sequences of affixes can make some of them feel infixy - Un-thought-ful-ness - How do we know '-ful' isn't an infix? --- ## Aside: Ordering of affixation --- ### Recovering ordering of operation (and thus, meaning) is always tricky! - Incorrect understanding of the ordering can lead to *morphological ambiguity* - This appears well handled by hierarchy - This is why some people create morphological trees, showing the components being modified ---
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--- ... but are we always adding something on? --- ## Non-Concatenative Morphology --- ### Sometimes, morphological operations *change* words without adding new chunks - You can't readily disassemble the pieces - The meaning change is carried by modifications to the other morphemes - ... or nothing appears to change at all! --- ### Common non-concatenative ways of adding chunks of meaning to words - Conversion - Stem Modification - Reduplication --- ### Conversion - 'Just change the usage to change the type' - Sometimes, there are changes with stress shift - re'peat (V) -> 'repeat (N) - con'vict (V) -> 'convict (N) - Sometimes, there are no changes - ticket (N, V) - drink (N, V) - I computered all day yesterday. --- ### Stem Modification - *Modify* the stem to indicate a shift in morphological category or meaning - This can take many forms --- ### Stem Modification - Tone
- What's the passive morpheme in Dinka? --- ### Stem Modification - Vowel Modification ('Ablaut')
- What's the 2SGF morpheme in Zway? - Also, sing/sang --- ### Stem Modification - Consonant Changes
- What's the 2SGF morpheme in Zway? --- ### Stem Modification - Other Processes - Labialization - Vowel Fronting/Backing/Rounding/ATR Changes - Voicing Changes - Lenition or Fortition - Gemination or Lengthening - Shortening - Segment deletion - Metathesis (swapping segments around) --- ### Reduplication - Copying all or part of the base -
- A big, BIG problem if you're expecting different segments --- ### ... but in all of these cases, nothing's added, just changed! --- ### Wrapping Up - Using reasonable glossing conventions makes life easier for everybody - Languages have more or fewer morphemes per word, and meanings separate more or less cleanly - Meaning can be expressed by concatening chunks of form in various ways - ... or by modifying the base in predictable and detectable ways - Be prepared for all kinds of craziness when dealing with actual language data! --- ## For Next Time - We'll have more data to work with! ---
Thank you!