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Sept. 8

- Academic writing, examples of citations

- Review of morphology, as presented in LING 220 (Introduction to Linguistics)

- typology

- issues for a case study report

 

Ahead

- overviews of English and Cree

 

- send Dr. Mellow your choices for case study languages

 

Announcements:

- the class website has links to library pages with information about researching your papers

- addition to syllabus: If the research paper is late, 3 points will be deducted for each day the assignment is late.

 

- Languages selected in a recent class:  Basque, Dutch, German, Finnish, French, Hawaiian, Icelandic, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Maori, Mohawk, Nahuatl, Palauan, Persian, Philipino/ Tagalog; Polish, Russian, Samoan, Sesotho, Spanish, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish,

  - Languages listed but not selected: Amerindian (category), Ayacucho Quechua, Estonian, Gaelic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Wolof;, Swedish, Tamil, Yawelmani


- examples of citations

Original (Wolfart, 1973, p. 15):

The personal prefixes ki-, ni-, and O mark the basic person categories in the possessive paradigm of nouns and in the independent order of verbs.

 

Plagiarism:

Cree has the personal prefixes ki-, ni-, and O that mark the basic person categories in the possessive paradigm of nouns and in the independent order of verbs.

 

Not plagiarism, but not your words:

Wolfart (1973, p. 15) has provided the following summary of these inflectional suffixes: “[T]he personal prefixes ki-, ni-, and O mark the basic person categories in the possessive paradigm of nouns and in the independent order of verbs.”

 

Better:

Wolfart (1973, p. 15) reports that Cree has three inflectional prefixes that express subject agreement with respect to person.  These three prefixes are ki-, ni-, and O.  These prefixes are used for possessed nouns (equivalent to my N or his N in English) and for a particular configurational meaning of verbs, the “independent order.”  The independent order is…..


Schedule of 220 Review

1. units of analysis:

        word

        morpheme

2.  Meanings expressed by morphemes

- reference/lexical categories

- grammatical meanings

3.  Types of morphological structures

- affixation (bound, free, prefix, suffix, root, base)

- compounding

- cliticization

- internal change

- suppletion

- aditional types: stress and tone placement, conversion; clipping; blends; backformation; acronyms; onomatopoeia; coinage

4.  Two types of word formation: Inflection vs. Derivation

5.  Allomorphs

6. Problem-solving

 

-  Page references are to the standard textbook used at SFU for LING 220:  O’Grady, W., and Archibald, J.  (Eds.).  (2000).  Contemporary linguistic analysis: An introduction. Toronto: Addison Wesley Longman.

  - Katamba pp. 3-5, 17-64 generally provides a review of the introductory concepts that you were introduced to in LING 220 

- Some of the material in K may be new.  For today, we will focus on the concepts from 220

- ‘morph’ (a manifestation of a morpheme; cf. phone/phoneme, see K 24-27)


word --  a somewhat imprecise unit:

 

I’m – one word or two words?

The queen of England’s castle - what is the status of the -s ?

greenhouse – one or two words?

wet suit – one words or two words?

 

Qasu-iir-sar-vig-ssar-si-ngit-luinar-nar-puq

‘Someone did not find a completely suitable resting place’ - Inuktitut (p. 325) – one word or ten?

 

 

Therefore:

morpheme – the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function

 

book – one morpheme

 

book-s – two morphemes

 

happi-ness – two morphemes (don’t be confused by spelling)

 

re-act-iv-ate – four morphemes


2. Some of the meanings expressed by morphemes:

 

Reference/ Lexical Categories  (pp. 169-170)

- naming entities, including individuals and objects = nouns or N

- designating actions, sensations and states = verbs or V

- designating properties and attributes of entities = adjectives or A

- denoting properties and attributes of actions, sensations and states = adverbs or Adv

 

Grammatical Meanings  (pp. 144, 147-153)

- plural number (books, feet, children)

        vs. singular, *dual

- case – nominative/subject – she, he; accusative / object – her, him; genitive / possession – her, his; Noam’s idea)

- past tense (walked, sang, was (vs. be))

- comparative (smaller, harder)

- superlative (smallest, hardest)

- person (I – speaker/first; you – listener/second; he/she/it - non-speaker/listener/ third; *fourth person – He (3) saw him (4) at school.  He (?) was wearing a hat.)

- noun class – masculine/he; feminine/she; neuter/it (vs. *animate/inanimate, Siswati classes, p. 148)


3.  Types of morphological structures:

a.  Affixation:

Free morpheme – can be a word by itself:    book, happy, act

Bound morpheme – must be attached to another element (i.e. a base): -s, -ness, re-, -ive, -ate

Root morpheme – the core of a complex word.  It carries the major component of word meaning.  It belongs to a lexical category (N, V, A, Adv). In English, the root morpheme is generally a free morpheme.

Affixes - bound morphemes that do not belong to a lexical category: prefix (attached to the front of a base), suffix (attached to the end of a base), infix (an affix that occurs within a base – non-existent in English).  A dash attached to the end of the morpheme indicates prefix (pre-, re-).  A dash attached to the beginning of the morpheme indicates suffix (-s, -ness, -ed). 

Examples of these structures (affixation):

 

                N                                                     A

 

   N                  Af                                    Af            A

book                -s                                     un-          kind

root/                                                                        root/ base

base

 

 

         

                V                                                     V

 

V                     Af                            V                     Af

jump                -ed                           teach                    -es

root/ base                                                root/ base


Some affixes can change the lexical category of the complex word:

 

        N

 

   V                  Af

teach               -er

root/ base

 

3 morphemes in a word:

 

                          V

 

        V                             Af

 

A                     Af

 

black               -en           -ed

 

root/

base for –en

 

blacken is the base for –ed


Types of morphological structures:

 

 b.  Compounding:   The combination of two or more existing words (usually roots/free morphemes) to create a new word:

 

street light         blue bird                  washcloth

bookcase                 in-group

 

 (don’t be confused by spelling)

 

c.  Cliticization:   Clitics – morphemes that are bound for phonological reasons (are not a syllable by themselves)

 

I’m leaving

Mary’s going to succeed.

They’re here now.

 

d.  internal change (128-9)   a process that substitutes one non-morphemic segment for another to mark a grammatical contrast:

 

sing          sang

drive        drove

goose        geese

 

The vowels in these words are not morphemes: [I æ aj ow uw ij] are not morphemes

e.   suppletion (129)  a morphological process that replaces a morpheme with an entirely different morpheme in order to mark a grammatical contrast:

 

go  - went

be – am, are, is, was, were

 

Partial suppletion (or an extreme form of internal change):

think        thought

seek        sought

have has

leave        left

 

Other types of morphological structures:

(f)  stress and tone placement

 (g)  conversion / zero derivation

 (h)  clipping

 (i)  blends

 (j)  backformation

 (k)  acronyms

 (l)  onomatopoeia

 (m)  coinage


4.  Two types of word formation:  Inflection vs. Derivation

Inflection – the modification of a word’s form to indicate the grammatical subclass to which it belongs; expression of a grammatical meaning

- English has only 8 inflectional affixes and all are suffixes (p. 144), other languages have thousands and they may be prefixes as well

 

Table 4.25

 

Other ways to show grammatical subclass:  suppletion, internal change

 

 

Derivation – a process (affixation, stress placement, conversion) that forms a word with a meaning or syntactic category distinct from that of its base.

 

Suffixes change syntactic category:

 

Table 4.13

 

Prefixes add additional meaning, especially with respect to negation or repetition

 

Table 4.13


5.  Allomorphs  Variants of a morpheme that are a combination of differing phonemes:

 

a pear,   an apple

 

cats [kæt   s]

dogs [dαg  z]

dishes [dI∫ ∂z]

 

walked [wαk   t]

jogged [dЗαg  d]

handed [hænd   d]

 

sign  [sajn]

signature  [sIgn   ∂t∫∂r]

 

muscle [mΛsl]

muscular [mΛskjuwl    r]

 

 

-  Allomorphs help explain certain aspects of English spelling:

 

Meaning is conveyed more easily by spelling allomorphs the same way, even though they are pronounced differently.  Thus, English spelling is not just an alphabet, with symbols corresponding to phonemes (or phones).  English spelling corresponds to morphemes as well (i.e. logographic).


6.  Problem solving –

- discovery procedures (K 23-29)

- Identify recurring strings of sounds and match them to recurring meanings

- Use the principle of contrast (K23): a morpheme is a phonological sequence (or shape) that can indicate a contrast in meaning

 

Finding English morphemes that indicate past time:

Verb -  present            Verb - past               Morph/ structure

walk                        walked                    /t/

talk                          talked                      /t/

flip                           flipped                    /t/

wish                         wished                    /t/

 jog                          jogged                    /d/

stab                          stabbed                  /d/

thaw                                thawed                    /d/

 hand                       handed                    /d/                 

start                                 started                    /d/

 

sing                          sang                         Internal change

drive                        drove                      Internal change

 

think                        thought                   Partial suppletion

leave                        left                           Partial suppletion

 

hit                            hit                            no change

 

I am                         I was                  suppletion

you are                    you were                        suppletion

she is                       she was                  suppletion


How to solve identify morphemes in unfamiliar languages (O pp. 160-161)

1.  Identify recurring strings of sounds and match them to recurring meanings.

2.  Do not assume that the morpheme order in the language you are analyzing is the same as English.

3.  Do not assume that every semantic contrast expressed in English will also be manifested in the language you are analyzing.

4.  Do not assume that every semantic contrast expressed in the language you are analyzing will also be manifested in English.

5.  Remember that a morpheme can have more than one form (or allomorph).

6.  Some allomorphs vary occurring to the phonetic properties of the base to which they are attached.  e.g. English plural and past time morphemes

7.  Some allomorphs vary according to subcategories of words to which they belong.  Just as past time in English is expressed by affixation, internal change, or suppletion, depending upon the word, some languages will have different allomorphs for certain sub-classes of words.


Analysis of morphemes in Turkish (from problem 3, page 161)

 Consider the following Turkish words which have been paired with their English translations (or glosses).

 

1.  lokanta  ‘a restaurant’               8.  lokantada  ‘in/at a restaurant’

2.  kapi  ‘a door’                   9.  kapida  ‘in/at a door’

3.  randevu                           10.  randevuda

  ‘an appointment’                     ‘in/at an appointment’

4.  ba  ‘a head’                       11.  bata  ‘in/at a head’

5.  kitap  ‘a book’                   12.  kitapta  ‘in/at a book’

6.  koltuk  ‘an armchair’         13.  koltukta  ‘in/at an armchair’

7.  taraf  ‘a side’                    14.  tarafta  ‘in/at a side’

 

1. Identify recurring strings of sounds and match them to recurring meanings.

2. Remember that a morpheme can have more than one form (or allomorph).   

 

a.  List the morphemes corresponding to the following English meanings: 

        a restaurant                        a door                 a book

 

lokanta                           kapi                         kitap

 

b.  List the allomorphs for the suffix present in words 8 to 14:   -da   -ta

c.  Describe the context in which each allomorph is found

 -da occurs when the base ends in a vowel

 -ta occurs when the base ends in a voiceless consonant

 

d. Describe the function of the suffix: The morpheme means ‘in or at’ 



Morphological typology:

From:  Whaley, Lindsay.  (1997).  Introduction to typology: The unity and diversity of language.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 128-139.

 

The word systems of a language can be categorized in reference to two parameters

 

1.  Index of synthesis

- Isolating language - every word has only one morpheme in it.

- Synthetic language - a complete utterance (perhaps a sentence, by English standards) is / can be formed by combining morphemes into a single word.

 

ISOLATING<--X---Y------------------Z-----> SYNTHETIC

 

x = Mandarin; y = English; z = Cree

 

2.  Index of fusion

- Agglutinative - each (?bound/grammatical) morpheme has one meaning / it is clear where one morpheme ends and another begins / the morphemes are easily segmentable (cf. English plural -s)

- Fusional - a (?bound/grammatical) morpheme encodes many meanings/ the boundaries between morphemes are hard to determine (cf. suppletion) (cf. English third person singular non-past -s)

 

AGGLUTINATIVE<--- x--------------- y---> FUSIONAL

 

x = Turkish; y = Russian


When asked to report a case study of the morphology of a language, what are some of the issues that you could report?

 

1.0  Position in relation to typological indices

2.0   Detailed information about structures and meanings, providing both an overview and specific examples, organized structurally or functionally

3.0  Examples of allomorphs, discussed with respect to specific types of morphemes

4.0  Information about combinatorial possibilities, discussed with respect to specific types of morphemes 

 

Structural organization:

1.0  Introduction

2.0  Affixation

2.1  Prefixes

2.1.1  Prefixes attached to nouns (derivational only) 

2.1.1.1  Prefixes with fixed phonological forms

2.1.1.2  Reduplicative prefixes

2.1.2  Prefixes attached to verbs

2.1.2.1  The sequencing of inflectional prefixes

        2.2  Suffixes

                2.2.1  Derivational suffixes

2.2.1.1  Allomorphs of bases, when combined

with specific suffixes

                2.2.2  Inflectional suffixes

                        2.2.2.1  Allomorphs of suffixes

        2.3  Infixes

3.0  Compounding

4.0  Noun Incorporation

5.0 Conclusion


Functional organization:

1.0  Introduction

2.0  Grammatical Meanings

        2.1  Person and Number

2.1.1  Suffixes attached to nouns

2.1.2 Suffixes attached to verbs

        2.2  Tense and aspect

2.2.1 Circumfixes attached to verbs

3.0 Lexical category change

        3.1  Derviational suffixes that derive nouns

        3.2  Derviational suffixes that derive verbs

4.0  Referential combination

        4.1 Compounding

        4.2  Clitics

        4.3  Noun incorporation

5.0 Conclusion