Download Morphology review

Morphology
Morphology is the study of shapes. Morphology in linguistics has to do with the shapes
of words. How are words formed in a certain language? What rules determine when and
how they may adjust their shapes?
some terminology:
morpheme: a minimal formal shape that expresses meaning (this can be quite tricky to
determine)
bound morpheme: a morpheme that must be attached to some other morpheme
e.g. affix, bound root, clitic
free morpheme: a morpheme that does not have to attach to some other form
allomorph: a variant pronunciation of a morpheme
morphophonemic rules: phonological rules that are restricted to certain morphological
contexts
root: an unanalyzable form that expresses the basic lexical content of the word
derivation: an operation that changes the grammatical category of a root or that changes
the valence of a verb (e.g. causative)
inflection: an operation required by the syntactic environment of a root
e.g. person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mode
morphological typology:
isolating: every word consists of one morpheme (e.g. Vietnamese)
polysynthetic: words tend to consist of several morphemes (e.g. Inuit)
fusional: one form can simultaneously express several meanings (e.g. Spanish verb
endings)
agglutinating: each component of meaning is expressed by a separate morpheme (e.g.
Turkish)
Questions for the field worker:
Is the language dominantly isolating or polysynthetic?
If the language is at all polysynthetic, is it dominantly agglutinative or fusional?
Give examples of its dominant pattern and any secondary patterns.
morphological processes:
prefixation
suffixation
infixation
stem modification (e.g. sing vs sang)
reduplication: part or all of root is repeated
suprafixation: tone or stress pattern signals a morphological operation
suppletion: replacement of one stem by another (e.g. go vs went)
head/dependent marking: where the relationship between a head and its dependent is
marked (e.g. possession is marked on the dependent in English (‘s), but on the
head in Farsi)
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Questions for the field worker:
If the language is at all agglutinative, is it dominantly prefixing, suffixing or neither?
Illustrate the major and secondary patterns (including examples from all morphological
processes if possible).
If the language is at all polysynthetic, is it dominantly “head-marking” or “dependentmarking”, or mixed?
Give examples of each type of marking the language exhibits.
Grammatical categories
In traditional grammar, grammatical categories are called “parts of speech”. Sometimes,
they are called “lexical categories”.
• noun, verb
• adjective, adverb
• conjunction, particle, adposition
distributional properties: how words are distributed in phrases, clauses and texts
structural properties: internal structure (e.g. case, number on nouns)
properties of nouns: can appear in subject, object position; can take descriptive modifiers,
genitive pronouns; pluralization; determiners
classification of nouns: proper names, types of possession (e.g. possessable vs.
unpossessable; alienably possessed vs. inalienably possessed), count vs. mass nouns,
pronouns vs. clitics
Questions for the field worker:
What are the distributional properties of nouns?
What are the structural properties of nouns?
What are the major formally distinct subcategories of nouns?
What is the basic structure of the noun word (for polysynthetic languages) and/or noun
phrase (for more isolating languages)?
Does the language have free pronouns and/or anaphoric clitics?
Give a chart of the free pronouns and/or anaphoric clitics.
verb classes: weather verbs, states, involuntary processes, bodily function, motion,
position, action, action-processes, cognition, sensation, emotion, utterance, manipulation
also consider argument structure and semantic roles (thematic roles)
Questions for the field worker:
What are the distributional properties of verbs?
What are the structural properties of verbs?
What are the major formally distinct subcategories of verbs?
Describe the order of various verbal operators within the verbal word or verb phrase.
Give charts of the various paradigms, e.g. tense/aspect/mode etc. Indicate major
allomorphic variants.
Are directional and/or location notions expressed in the verb or verb phrase at all?
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Questions to answer for all verbal operations:
Is this operation obligatory?
Is it productive?
Is this operation primarily coded morphologically, analytically, or lexically? Are
there any exceptions to the general case?
Where in the verb phrase or verbal word is this operation likely to appear? Can it
occur in more than one place?
adjectives: age, dimension, value, colour, shape, non-numeral quantifiers, numerals
Questions for the field worker:
If you posit a morphosyntactic category of adjectives, give evidence for not grouping
these forms with the verbs or nouns. What characterizes a form as being an adjective in
this language?
How can you characterize semantically the class of concepts coded by this formal
category?
Do adjectives agree with their heads?
What kind of system does the language employ for counting?
How high can a native fluent speaker count without resorting to either to words from
another language or to a generic word like many? Exemplify the system.
Do numerals agree with their head nouns?
adverbs: manner, time, direction/location, evidential (source of information), epistemic
(degree to which the speaker is committed to the truth of the clause)
Questions for the field worker:
If you posit a morphosyntactic category of adverbs, give evidence for not grouping these
forms with the verbs, nouns or adjectives. What characterizes a form as being an adverb
in this language?
List some members of different types of adverbs and specify whether there are any
restrictions relative to that type.
Are any of these classes of adverbs related to older complement-taking verbs?
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