Download 4.1 Inflection

4.1
Inflection
Within a lexeme-based theory of morphology, the difference between
derivation and inflection is very simple. Derivation gives you new lexemes, and
inflection gives you the forms of a lexeme that are determined by syntactic
environment (cf. 2.1.2). But what exactly does this mean? Is there really a need for
such a distinction? This section explores the answers to these questions, and in the
process, goes deeper into the relation between morphology and syntax.
4.1.1
Inflection vs. derivation
The first question we can ask about the distinction between inflection and
derivation is whether there is any formal basis for distinguishing the two: can we tell
them apart because they do different things to words? One generalization that has
been made is that derivational affixes tend to occur closer to the root or stem than
inflectional affixes. For example, (1) shows that the English third person singular
present inflectional suffix -s occurs outside of derivational suffixes like the
deadjectival -ize, and the plural ending -s follows derivational affixes including the
deverbal -al:
(1)
a.
popular-ize-s
commercial-ize-s
b.
upheav-al-s
arriv-al-s
Similarly, Japanese derivational suffixes like passive -rare or causative -sase precede
inflectional suffixes marking tense and aspect:1
(2)
a.
tabe-ru
tabe-ta
eat-
eat-
IMP
PERF
INFLECTION
b.
c.
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‘eats’
‘ate’
tabe-rare- ru
tabe-rare- ta
eat - PASS-IMP
eat-
‘is eaten’
‘was eaten’
tabe-sase- ru
tabe-sase- ta
eat-
CAUS-IMP
‘makes eat’
eat-
PASS-PERF
CAUS-PERF
‘made eat’
It is also the case that inflectional morphology does not change the meaning or
grammatical category of the word that it applies to. A noun with a plural suffix
attached to it is still a noun; slurp means the same thing whether it is past or present;
and so on. Derivational morphology may or may not affect the grammatical category
of a word it applies to, and it typically changes its meaning. Glory is a noun, and
glorious is an adjective. And while their meanings are related, they cannot be said to
mean the same thing.
A final generalization we can make is that inflectional morphology tends to be
more productive than derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology can apply to
words of a given category with relative freedom. Virtually any noun in English can be
made plural with the addition of [z] or one of its two allomorphs. The only exceptions
are those that have irregular plurals, such as children or phenomena, and those that
logically do not allow a plural form: mass nouns like rice and abstract nouns like
intelligence generally fall into this category.
Despite these three generalizations, it turns out that in terms of actual morphs,
it is hard to see what difference, if any, there is between inflection and derivation.
Crosslinguistically, the forms of inflectional morphology and the forms of
derivational morphology are usually not very different from one another. Both can be
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expressed through prefixal, suffixal, or non-segmental means. For this reason, the
difference between inflection and derivation is not so much a difference in form as a
difference in function — what they do and what they tell us.
The word inflection comes from traditional Latin grammar. It represents the
idea that speakers bend the shape of a word so it will fit in a particular position within
a sentence. Its root flect-, which we see in the English word flex, means ‘bend’. We
really like to think of it in this way: every sentence is a syntactic frame with positions
for a series of lexemes. In order to fill one of those positions, you take a lexeme and
bend it to fit.
What are the ways in which speakers can bend lexemes to make them fit into a
certain syntactic slot? In languages like English or German, ‘bending’ generally
means adding affixes, although in some cases affixation is supplemented or replaced
by apophony, or vowel alternations, as shown below for English (3) and the Bernese
dialect of Swiss German (4):
(3)
(4)
a.
sing, sang, sung
b.
drive, drove, driven
a.
suuffe [su…f´]
‘drink (inf.)’
gsoffe [g(sOf…´]
‘drunk (past part.)’
schwimme [S√Im…´]
‘swim (inf.)’
gschwomme [g(S√Um…´]
‘swum’
pfyffe [pfi…f´]
‘whistle (inf.)’
pfiffe [pfIf…´]
‘whistled (past part.)’
b.
c.
Another term for apophony is internal change.
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When referring to English and other Germanic languages, the terms ablaut
and umlaut often arise. These terms describe particular types of internal change that
must be understood in a historical context. We use the term ablaut for apophony in
verb paradigms, as in (3) and (4). Umlaut, on the other hand, is used to describe the
apophony found in pairs like goose~geese or foot~feet. Umlaut differs from ablaut in
that at one time it was a phonologically-conditioned alternation, with the high vowel
in geese or feet resulting from vowel harmony with a high vowel in the plural suffix,
which has since disappeared.
In the Semitic language family, ‘bending’ often involves internal variations in
a vocalic pattern, while the consonantal frame stays fairly stable. This is illustrated in
(5) for the expression of number in certain Arabic nouns (examples from McCarthy
and Prince 1990: 212, 217). The inclusion of the loanwords ‘film’ and ‘bank’ is to
show that this particular way of forming the plural (referred to as the ‘broken plural’)
is robust and productive. What all of the plural forms in (5) have in common is that
they begin with the pattern CVCVV+:
(5)
Root
Singular
Plural
Gloss
jndb
jundub
janaadib
‘locust’
slt¢n
sult¤aan
salaa?iin
‘sultan’
?nb
?inab
?anaab
‘grape’
flm
film
/aflaam
‘film’
nfs
nafs
nufuus
‘soul’
bnk
bank
bunuuk
‘bank’
The last type of ‘bending’ that we will mention here is suppletion. Suppletion
is the morphological process that replaces one form with a completely different one in
order to signal a grammatical contrast. In English, the paradigm for the verb be is
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characterized by suppletion. Am, are, is, was, were, and be have completely different
phonological shapes. We also find suppletion with pronouns; compare I and me or she
and her. Suppletion is most likely to be found in the paradigms of high-frequency
words, as seen in the following table:
(6)
Suppletion in some languages of Europe
Language
French
aller ‘to go’, être ‘to be’
vais ‘go (1sg)’, suis ‘am (1sg)’
Spanish
ir ‘to go’, ser ‘to be’
fue ‘went (1sg)’, fue ‘was (1sg)’
Finnish
hyvä ‘good (nom. sg.)’
parempi ‘better’, paras ‘best’
Greek
[Enas] ‘a, one (m.nom.sg.)
[mja] ‘a, one (f.nom.sg.)’
Swedish
ett ‘one’, två ‘two’
första ‘first’, andra ‘second’
We can look to historical linguistics for an explanation of why suppletive forms arise.
Take, for example, the paradigm of the verb ‘to go’ in French. It comes from three
different Latin sources. The infinitive, aller, and the first person and second person
plural forms in the present, allons ‘we go’ and allez ‘you (pl.) go’, come from Latin
ambular¤ e ‘to walk, to walk along’. The stem of future and conditional forms, such as
irai ‘will go (1sg.)’, has evolved from the Latin verb ire ‘to go’. Finally, forms like
vais ‘go (1sg.)’ or vont ‘go (3pl.)’ come from Latin vadere ‘to go, to walk’. Thus we
see that the idiosyncracies of languages today can often be explained by looking at the
languages of yesterday.
In certain cases, such as with catch~caught or think~thought and other verbs
like them in English, it is most convenient to use the term partial suppletion. In these
cases, the initial phoneme or phonemes of the word remain the same, but there is both
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internal change and change to the end of the word (loss of segments and addition of a
past tense indicator [t]).
To summarize this section, ‘bending’ a lexeme here simply means ‘changing
shape’. That’s all it means. Any change in form will count as inflection, whether it
involves affixation or not.
4.1.2
Morphological vs. syntactic inflection
The presence of inflectional morphology in a language depends on the
existence of multiple forms of a lexeme. From a morphological point of view, if a
lexeme has only one form, then you can’t get inflection. Take Chinese, a famous case
of an uninflected language. Chinese lexemes have only one form, abstracting away
from phonologically determined alternations (mostly changes in tone). While Chinese
has a few clitics or particles, including one that expresses past tense, these are
generally not considered to be affixes. The same is true of Vietnamese, though the
two languages are unrelated. For the morphologist, therefore, these two languages
have no inflection. Traditionally, they are described as isolating.
From a syntactician’s point of view, whether or not Chinese and Vietnamese
have inflection is an entirely different matter. Even if a language does not express a
particular notion such as number or case, it is typically assumed to be present in the
syntax. So a syntactician may argue that noun phrases in a particular language raise to
check nominative case features, even though nominative case is not realized overtly.
But from a morphologist’s point of view, if a particular notion is never realized
overtly in a given language, then it cannot be called inflection in that language.
A second condition for inflection is that the realization of a given category
must be obligatory. What do we mean by that? Let’s look at a language that seems to
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pay attention to a particular category but does not inflect for it. Indonesian expresses
plural by reduplication, as shown in (7) (examples from Sneddon 1996:16). It
certainly appears as if this language has an inflectional plural for nouns:
(7)
kuda-kuda
rumah-rumah
‘horses’
‘houses’
singkatan-singkatan
perubahan - perubahan
‘abbreviations’
‘changes’
There is a catch: The forms in (7) are not obligatory. Speakers of Indonesian have the
option of using the unreduplicated form to refer to either singular or plural. So kuda
not only means ‘horse’, but also ‘horses’; rumah can refer to one house or more than
one, and so on. The reduplicated plural is most likely to be used when the number of
the noun is not clear from the context, as in the examples below (Sneddon 1996:17):2
(8)
a.
Rumah-nya
dekat pohon-pohon mangga itu
house- 3SG.POSS near tree-
REDUP
mango that
‘His house is near those mango trees’
b.
Pada pinggang-nya
LOC
waist-
terikat
bumbung-
bumbung kosong
3SG.POSS PASS.tie water.container-REDUP
empty
‘At his waist are tied empty bamboo water containers’
Without reduplication of pohon, (8a) would be ambiguous between ‘His house is near
that mango tree’ and ‘His house is near those mango trees’; likewise, if bumbung
were not reduplicated in (8b), the sentence could have the interpretation, ‘At his waist
is tied an empty bamboo water container’, as well as the one given above.3
It is possible to say that Indonesian has the category plural in the syntax, but
because speakers are under no obligation to express it morphologically, it is not an
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inflectional feature of the language. We only talk about inflection when speakers of a
language are obliged to express that category morphologically. In English, plural is an
inflectional category because its expression is obligatory. Even when it is obvious that
a noun is plural, such as when it is preceded by a plural word, the noun must have a
plural form. We must say I own two dogs, never *I own two dog.
So far we have argued that for something to be classified as morphological
inflection, it has to be overt and obligatory. There is a third condition. Since we have
characterized inflection as bending the shape of a single lexeme, we talk about
inflection only when dealing with bound forms. Let’s go back to English. English has
a syntactic category of modals like can, may, must, so called because they express
moods. Should we consider these modals to be inflection? The answer is no. In order
to be classified as morphological inflection, a syntactic category must be expressed
through bound forms. In the case of the English modals, we are not dealing with
bound forms, but rather with separate words. Again, syntacticians differ from
morphologists on this point. Many treat auxiliaries as part of the inflectional system
of a language.
4.1.3
A Disease Model of morphology
It is reasonable to look at morphology as a disease. A few languages escape it
entirely; some languages have minor cases of the disease; in others it is pervasive. It’s
when dealing with the third group that we can talk of languages ‘living with
morphology’. For example, it turns out that the languages of the Athapaskan family,
such as Navajo, Apache, Hupa, Chipewyan, or Sarcee, have been living with very bad
cases of morphology for thousands of years. Yet somehow they’ve managed to
survive.
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So what do we mean by some languages having morphology worse than
others? Let’s look at English inflection. And let’s ask how much inflection English
really has. Nouns have only two forms. They have a bare form, like umbrella, and a
suffixed form, like umbrellas. Some people will tell you that English nouns have three
forms, singular, plural, and possessive, but don’t be fooled: the plural, the possessive,
and the plural possessive are identical in speech (though in writing, we use an
apostrophe, which is an innovation dating from Shakespeare’s time, to distinguish the
possessive form). We call this lack of morphological distinction among syntactically
differentiated forms inflectional homophony. Almost every English verb has four
forms: X, X-s, X-ed, and X-ing. A few, like break, have five forms because the
preterite (in this case, non-affixal) and the past participle have distinct forms (broke,
broken). A few very common verbs have an irregular third person singular present
tense form (has, does, says).4 And one, be, has eight (be, am, is, are, was, were, been,
being). English pronouns have four forms, for example, I, me, my, mine. All in all,
English has a fairly trivial case of inflection.
An intermediate case might be German. An average German noun has from
two to four forms, while adjectives have a few more. German verbs may have up to
about fifteen forms. Latin has a much worse case of morphology, with rich
inflectional paradigms for nouns, pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, and verbs. A
typical Latin verb, depending on how you count, might have about 125 forms. Your
average Navajo verb, with inflectional marking for subject, object, as well as tense,
mood, or aspect, has approximately 4,000 forms. All that we are trying to point out is
that some languages have rich inflection, and others, like English, have rather poor
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inflection, from a morphologist’s point of view. Again, from a syntactic point of
view, it’s a whole different story.
Recall that we said that lexemes bend to fit syntactic frames. What kinds of
things do they express? In general we speak of lexemes expressing morphosyntactic
information. This includes the abstract syntactic categories of tense, aspect, number,
and case. Specific values for these categories, such as past, imperfective, plural, or
genitive, are generally referred to as morphosyntactic features or morphosyntactic
properties, the latter a term from Matthews (1991). Syntacticians sometimes call
these things morphemes, even when not overtly realized. For example, a syntactician
might refer to the present morpheme in Chinese. Here, however, we will stick to our
terminology and call them properties or features. Inflection expresses these properties
or features by changing the shape of the lexeme.
4.1.4
Inflection as morphological realization
Linguists often talk about inflection as the phonological realization of
morphosyntactic properties. In some sense, inflection makes these properties
detectable by giving them a physical manifestation — it turns them into actual
acoustic signals.
To return to English, mood — expressed by modals like can, may, and must
— is an abstract syntactic category all right; it is being realized, and it is obligatory.
So we are not talking about Chinese here, or Indonesian. But note that it is not being
realized morphologically, through the bending of a lexeme. From the morphology’s
point of view, this is not inflection. From the syntax’s point of view, it is.
We will just mention in passing some interesting problem cases. One involves
languages where inflection is obligatory in some contexts, but impossible in others. In
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Jóola we will see (cf. 4.2.2) that subject agreement is obligatorily expressed, except in
the past subordinate and positive imperative forms of the verb. In some related
languages, like Balanta, however, verbs agree with their subject in some contexts, but
not in all. In Balanta, verbs may be marked for subject agreement, but generally only
in the absence of a subject noun phrase (9a). When a subject noun phrase is
expressed, a subject prefix on the verb indicates that the subject is focused (9b) (data
from N’Diaye-Corréard 1970: 30):
(9)
a.
b´- ≠a¤aN be¤nte
CL2-people
come
‘The people came’
b.
b´- ≠a¤aN b´- do¤olo! b´- beeTa ma
CL2-people CL2-few
CL2-see
3SG.OBJ
‘A FEW PEOPLE saw him.’
Another interesting case is the Central Khoisan language //Ani, which displays an
interesting system of object agreement (Vossen 1985).5 Finite verbs (except in the
imperative) bear affixes that agree with a pronominal object in person, gender, and
number (10a) or with a nominal object for number and gender (10b):
(10)
a.
ti$ tsa! mu)-tiŸ- teŸ
me you see-1SG-PRES
‘You see me’
b.
gúénì=kÓòè-//ùà
hunter-
M.PL
?xóà-
mà-
/à !xòè-!xòè - `m-
elephant-M.SG-OBJ run-
‘The hunters make the elephant run’
tè
REDUP -M.SG.OBJ-PRES
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The catch is this: if a nominal object is not marked for gender and number, object
agreement does not appear on the verb:
(11)
gúénì=kÓòè-//ùà
hunter-
M.PL
?xóà
!xòè-!xòè-
elephant run-
tè
REDUP -PRES
‘The hunters make the elephant run’
Here, in contrast to (10b), ‘elephant’ does not bear a gender-number suffix, and object
agreement morphology fails to appear on the verb.
Finally, a well-known case is that of Arabic. Here the basic generalization is
that marking for subject agreement appears on the verb when the word order is SV
(subject-verb) (12a) but not when it is VS (12b) (data from Ouhalla 1994: 43):
(12)
a.
l-
tullaab- u
wasal- uu
the-students-NOM arrived-3PL
‘The students have arrived’
b.
wasal- a
l- tullaab- u
arrived-3SG the-students-NOM
‘The students have arrived’
In (12b) third plural subject agreement is blocked, and instead we get default third
person singular agreement.
How should we deal with cases like these? It would be misleading to call
Balanta or Arabic subject agreement and //Ani object agreement ‘optional’ as we did
for the expression of plural in Indonesian, since here realization of agreement is either
obligatorily present or obligatorily absent, depending on context. Because there are a
number of possible analyses of cases like these, we will not propose solutions here.
We simply acknowledge that tricky cases like these exist.
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One question we can ask is whether inflectional categories are universal. For
syntacticians working in the Chomskian framework, all languages are theorized to be
identical at some level of analysis, and so the push is for inflectional categories to be
seen as universal. At some abstract level, then, all languages have tense (the same
tenses) and all languages have aspects (the same aspects). Only the realization differs.
This is stated explicitly by Chomsky (1995: 169-70), who conjectures that “beyond
PF options and lexical arbitrariness . . . [linguistic] variation is limited to
nonsubstantive parts of the lexicon and general properties of lexical items.” This is
an extreme hypothesis, as Chomsky himself acknowledges (p. 170), and it probably
does not work.
Let’s take case. Do all languages have case? Abstract Case, maybe. But how
about morphological case? Let’s look at Jóola. Have we seen any case markers
running around? No — there are none. We might infer one of two things from this:
(13)
a.
Kujamaat Jóola has no case.
b.
Kujamaat Jóola has case, but only secretly.
(In other words, (13b) suggests that case is present, but somehow it is not realized
morphologically.)
Now let’s compare Kujamaat Jóola to English. Does your average English
noun have case forms? We might distinguish between a possessive case (e.g.,
linguist’s) and a default case (e.g., linguist). But it turns out that English pronouns
give evidence for one more case, which is the object case:
(14)
nominative:
I
possessive:
my
object:
me
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The point here is that because English pronouns inflect for case, you can plausibly
argue that nouns are also marked for nominative or objective case underlyingly,
although the surface realization is the same for both. In Kujamaat Jóola, however,
such an analysis could only be justified on theory-internal grounds, since there is
never any morphological evidence in the language for it. How could a child learning
Kujamaat Jóola learn the case distinctions in the absence of evidence?
Maintaining the view that all languages are the same underlyingly gets more
complicated if we look beyond English. Some languages, like German, have the
dative case. Do we want to say that English does, too? We could say that English has
the dative case, but that it is always equivalent to the object case. Their homonymy is
an accident in English. Let’s look beyond German, at the Slavic languages. The
Slavic languages have an instrumental case. Does English have an instrumental case?
“Well, yes,” we might say. It’s just that the instrumental case is equivalent to the
dative case which is equivalent to the object case. Well, what about the ablative case,
which we find in Latin? And what about the inessive case, or any one of the
(depending on who you talk to) twenty-three to twenty-seven cases in Finnish? Do
we want to say that all languages have all of the case forms we find in Finnish — we
just don’t see them?
The same is true with tenses and aspects. Morphologically, English has two
tenses, which we might loosely refer to as the present and the past: break(s), broke.
We will see in 4.2 that Jóola, on the other hand, has five morphologically
distinguishable tenses: the aorist (recent past or present), future, simple past, remote
past, and past hypothetical. Do we want to say that English has all of these, too, but
only at some abstract level?
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For now we are going to put this question aside. From a purely selfish
morphological point of view, the only abstract syntactic categories that matter are
those that are realized morphologically. So we can assume that English verbs may be
inflected for only two tenses.
We would like to return to a topic we discussed earlier, one that is highly
problematic from a universalist point of view — gender (cf. 2.2). We will see in the
second half of this chapter that gender is manifested in agreement classes for nouns
and therefore that the gender specification of the noun itself is an abstract notion. We
might refer to a Kujamaat Jóola noun as belonging to class 5, although in reality,
people almost certainly don’t run around with little numbers in their heads.
Let’s look at a language that has three genders, masculine, feminine, and
neuter. German is such a language. Examples of nouns belonging to each gender are
given in (15):
(15)
Masculine
Feminine
Neuter
Mensch ‘man’
Frau ‘woman’
Parlament ‘parliament’
Tag ‘day’
Lüge ‘lie’
Messer ‘knife’
Zuschlag ‘surcharge’
Erde ‘earth’
Mädchen ‘girl’
Masculine, feminine, and neuter are obligatory inflectional categories of German.
What does that mean? It means that every noun in the language, including
borrowings like Parlament ‘parliament’, must belong to a gender. A noun cannot be
genderless. Furthermore, gender is obligatory in that a noun cannot simply carry it
around: its gender category must be expressed through agreement.
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Now let’s compare German to Ojibwa, an Algonquian language discussed by
Corbett (1991: 20-22). Ojibwa has two genders, animate and inanimate (but note that
some inanimate objects have grammatically animate forms):
(16)
Animate
Inanimate
enini
‘man’
essin
‘stone’
enim
‘dog’
peka…n
‘nut’
mettikumi…šš ‘oak’
pekkwe…šekan ‘bread’
a…kim
‘snowshoe’
wa…wan
a…sso…kka…n
‘sacred story’
meskomin
‘raspberry’
‘egg’
These function in the same way as the German genders in that they are obligatory and
must be expressed. Let’s compare German and Ojibwa to Kujamaat Jóola. Kujamaat
Jóola has nineteen noun classes. Every noun must belong to a noun class in all of its
occurrences, and this class must be expressed. (The noun class system of Kujamaat
Jóola was presented in detail in chapter 2.)
The question we should now ask is how the noun classification systems of
German, Ojibwa, and Kujamaat Jóola are related to one another. The obvious answer
is that they are not related at all. The only thing they have in common is that for all of
them gender is an obligatory inflectional category. Every noun must have a gender,
and that gender must be expressed in the morphology.
The lack of correspondence between many of the world’s gender systems
poses a problem for universal syntax. But if gender categories are not universal, what
can we do with them? Under the disease model of morphology, we can look at them
as a kind of cancer that grows on otherwise “normal” languages.6 This gives a bleak
picture because it seems to say that there is no hope of ever relating inflection types in
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one language to those of others. But there is hope. If you look at lots and lots of
languages, you discover that certain types of inflectional categories keep appearing
over and over again. For example, when you look at nouns and ask what nouns may
be inflected for, the answer is case, number, and gender. This is pretty much all you
will find. Nouns in different languages will not necessarily inflect for the same cases
— some languages will have two and others twenty; nor will they inflect for the same
genders. For verbs, the picture is similarly limited. Verbs might inflect for tense,
aspect, mood, voice, or agreement (subject-object or ergative-absolutive), but you
generally will not find languages where verbs inflect for other categories. Whether
these categories are rooted in a universalist-type grammar or whether they derive
from functional notions is an interesting question, but one that we will not speculate
about here. Our point is clear: the same, or very similar, categories pop up over and
over again in many of the world’s languages, just as the same diseases do in various
groups of people. We will focus on questions like the following: Are these categories
realized in the morphology of a given language? Are they systematic? Are they
obligatory?
4.1.5
The mechanism of inflection
Let’s step back for a moment and situate inflection in the grammar. Assuming
that the syntax provides some sort of abstract morphosyntactic representation, the job
of the morphology is to get from there to the actual phonological realization:
(17)
Morphosyntactic
representation
Morphology
Phonological
representation
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This diagram portrays the relationship between the syntax, morphology, and
phonology as derivational, but it is equally possible to model a non-derivational,
parallel relationship. Either way, however, a diagram like (17) is bound to be
deceptively simple. We are still left asking precisely how words become inflected. A
lot of work in morphology and syntax has been devoted to this question. Here we are
going to give a very simple but useful typology. Traditionally people talk about two
different reasons for inflection: government and concord.
First we want to distinguish between inherent and assigned inflection. Let’s
take gender. For nouns, gender is inherent. That means that nouns are marked as
having a particular gender in the speaker’s mental lexicon. For any other lexical
category (e.g., adjectives, verbs) that happens to agree with nouns for gender, gender
cannot be inherent. It must be assigned. What about number? Is it is generally not
inherent, although there exist some words, like scissors, with inherent number. In
some languages, there are even verbs that occur only in the singular or in the plural.
An example of assigned inflection is case. Nouns in the lexicon do not have case.
They obtain case by virtue of their position in the sentence: for example, nouns in
object position will surface with an objective case.
Once we talk about the difference between inherent and assigned, we can
address the question of how categories may be assigned, which is generally in one of
two ways: government or concord. What’s the difference? Concord occurs when a
particular word in a sentence says to another, “Hey, why not be like me?” Another
word for concord is agreement. Kujamaat Jóola nouns trigger concord — they each
‘tell’ adjectives that modify them to be like them in gender or noun class. We
therefore describe adjectives as agreeing with nouns for gender. Similarly, verbs in
Kujamaat Jóola agree with their subject. In formal theories, concord or agreement is
130
CHAPTER FOUR
sometimes attributed to feature percolation or feature inheritance (see, e.g.,
Anderson 1992: 106-11). One element has a particular feature, which then percolates
through the structure of the sentence to other elements that stand in a certain relation
to the first element; these other elements thereby acquire the feature.
The other way in which a word can acquire a category is government, which is
more or less what it sounds like: one word tells another how to behave. (The
traditional notion of government gave rise to the Chomskian notion of government,
but the two are somewhat distinct.) Case assignment by verbs is usually thought of in
this way. It cannot be described as agreement because verbs themselves don’t have
case. The same holds for prepositions. Instead, verbs and prepositions “tell” their
objects to surface bearing a certain type of case-marking.
Note that we cannot talk about the morphosyntactic features themselves as
being ‘government features’ or ‘concord features’. It might seem, for instance, that
case should be described as a ‘government feature’ because nouns receive case under
government by a verb or preposition. In (18), the noun object of the verb is in the
accusative case, because the verb sehen demands that its direct object be accusative:
(18)
Wir haben [NPden
jungen
Piloten
gesehen (German)
we have [NPthe.M.ACC
young.ACC pilot.ACC] seen
Accusative
‘We saw the young pilot’
The problem is that the definite article den and the adjective jungen are usually
thought to acquire this same case via concord with the noun. If this is the case, then
the mechanism of inflection is independent of inflectional features.7
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131
We should briefly point out that there are other ways of assigning inflectional
features besides concord and government. For example, let’s look at tense. How does
a verb get tense? The simple answer in formal syntax is that it is governed by the
tense phrase (TP), or something like that. But if we look at actual languages, this
answer is not so satisfying because, from a morphological point of view, TP is just an
abstract notion. Tense seems to be something that verbs sometimes just have; it is not
assigned to them by either government or concord, by some other concrete element.
4.1.6 Exponence
Exponence, a term coined by Peter Matthews, refers to morphosyntactic
realization. In the word seas, [z] is the exponent of plural, and in sailed, [d] is the
exponent of past tense or past participle (Matthews 1991:175). In both cases there is a
one-to-one relationship between form and meaning, a situation that Matthews calls
simple exponence.
When we go beyond simple exponence, we get into some very interesting data
that has been central to modern theories of morphology. One type is what Matthews
first called cumulative exponence. These are cases where more than one
morphosyntactic feature maps onto a single formative. The most famous case of this
is one of Matthews’ original examples, Latin verbal inflections. In the Latin first
person singular present indicative active form, five features (person, number, tense,
mood, voice) are spelled out with a single morph, -o@:
(19)
cant-o@
sing-1SG.PRES.IND.ACT
‘I sing’
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CHAPTER FOUR
Another example is subject-object agreement in Cherokee, an Iroquoian language.
Verbs in Cherokee bear prefixes that agree with their subject and object in person,
number, and animacy. What is most interesting in the present context is that some
prefixes, including those listed in (20), indicate both subject and object (Scancarelli
1987: 71):
(20)
ski-, skw-
2SG.SUB/1SG.OBJ
sti…
2DU.SUB/3SG.INAN.OBJ
kaci…y
1SG.SUB/3PL.AN.OBJ
ci…y
1SG.SUB/3SG.AN.OBJ
Examples of subject/object prefixes in context are given below (tones are not marked;
/v/ is a nasalized central vowel). Following Scancarelli, verbs are given in both their
surface and phonemic forms, with the phonemic forms aligned with the glosses:
(21)
a.
(Scancarelli 1987: 68)
sv…kthv kaci…ne…lv…/i
/kaci…yapple
/ne…lv…/i/
1SG.SUB/3PL.AN.OBJ-give.PERF
‘I gave them an apple’
b.
(Scancarelli 1987: 74)
ci…ko…wthiha
/ci…y-
ko…/wthiha/
1SG.SUB/3SG.AN.OBJ-see.PRES
‘I see him’
Lastly, inflection for case, number, and gender in many Indo-European languages
involves cumulative exponence. The -os ending of the Modern Greek adjective kalós
‘good’ indicates that it is masculine, nominative, and singular. The -á of Russian stolá
‘table’ denotes both genitive and singular.
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133
Related to cumulative exponence is the notion of a portmanteau (a term
coined by Lewis Carroll). In a portmanteau, what were historically two or more
distinct markers (and what may still be, in some contexts) are fused together. The
most famous case is in French. The French definite determiner occurs in two forms, le
(masculine) and la (feminine). The feminine form can be preceded by the prepositions
à ‘in, to’ or de ‘of, from’, as shown below:
(22)
à la plage
‘to/at the beach’
de la plage
‘from/of the beach’
The masculine form, however, may not follow either of these prepositions. Instead,
we get a portmanteau:
(23)
au [o] marché
‘to/at the market’ (*à le marché)
du [dy] marché ‘from/of the market’ (*de le marché)
The existence of cumulative exponence is very important to a proper characterization
of the morphology-syntax interface. We see that fairly complex syntactic structures
may get reduced morphologically. Even more interesting, however, is that we also
find the opposite.
In extended exponence, a single morphological feature is realized
simultaneously on more than one form. Matthews’ most famous case is probably that
of the Ancient Greek perfective. The verb elely!kete ‘you had unfastened’ (stem -ly-) is
marked as perfective by reduplication (le-), -k- infixation, and the presence of a
special stem (-ly- versus -ly…-). We cannot single out any one of them — they mark the
perfect together. In Kujamaat Jóola, deverbal nouns can be formed from some
infinitives by changing the noun class and tensing the vowels (24). One or the other
isn’t sufficient. This is another example of extended exponence:
134
(24)
CHAPTER FOUR
a.
b.
c.
E-ka…y
‘to divorce’ (a man by a woman)
bu-k´…y
‘a divorce’ (man by woman)
ka-kO≠En
‘to send a message’
ku-kO≠En
‘a message’
E-lOk
‘to cry (of an animal), bark’
bu-lok
‘an animal cry, bark’
The most complicated cases are those where we get a combination of
cumulative and extended exponence. In Latin, the notion perfect is realized by having
a special verb stem in addition to a special set of suffixes that encode person, number,
and mood (we might also want to list voice, although the perfect is realized
periphrastically in the passive):
(25)
a.
re¤x-
ist¸¤
rule.PERF-2SG.ACT. PERF
‘you ruled’
b.
re¤x-
e¤runt
rule.PERF-3PL.ACT.PERF
‘they ruled’
Here we are getting simultaneous cumulative and extended exponence: the mapping
from the syntax to the phonology is both many-to-one and one-to-many.
4.1.7
Context-free vs. context-sensitive inflection
The last topic we are going to address in this chapter is the distinction between
context-free and context-sensitive inflection. We refer to context-free inflection
when there is a simple directional mapping between a morphosyntactic feature and a
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135
particular phonological string. Imagine that English has a feature [PRESENT
PARTICIPLE]
or [PROGRESSIVE]. Because this feature is always realized as /-ing/, we
refer to context-free inflection: all present participles in English bear the same
suffix.8 In context-sensitive inflection, the realization of a morphosyntactic feature
varies. For example, the feature [PAST] in English corresponds to several possible
phonological realizations:
(26)
a.
Ablaut:
ran, sat, won, drank, shone . . .
b.
Suppletion
was, went, thought . . .
c.
Ø
hit, cut, put . . .
d.
/-t/
sent, lent . . .
e.
/-d/
helped [-t], shrugged [-d], wanted [-´d]. . .
We even find combinations of the mechanisms in (26). Slept involves both ablaut
(26a) and /-d/ suffixation (26e). So inflection for past tense in English is contextsensitive in the sense that the feature [PAST] is realized as many things depending on
the lexeme it attaches to, with /-d/ suffixation being the default case, or the elsewhere
rule. As you continue to look at morphological data from a variety of languages, you
will discover that context-sensitive inflection is much more common than context-free
inflection.
4.2
Agreement in Kujamaat Jóola
It is virtually impossible to discuss noun class without also discussing agreement.
While noun class, or gender, is a property of nouns, it can be reliably detected only by
looking at those words with which the noun enters into an agreement relation. We got a
hint of this in 2.2 where we learned that certain Kujamaat Jóola words, such as mbur
‘bread’ and dakar ‘Dakar’, bear no noun class prefix, and others, such as (e)jimukor
‘lion’ and (E)bEkan ‘bicycle’, bear one only optionally. Yet these nouns always have
gender.
The set of words with which a noun enters into an agreement relation varies from
language to language. In Kujamaat Jóola this set includes the categories in (1):
(1)
a.
Definite articles
b.
Pronouns
c.
Nominal modifiers (demonstratives, cardinal and ordinal numbers,
particularizers, adjectives)
d.
Verbs
e.
Relative pronouns
f.
Genitive markers
In this section we present some of the forms that agreement in Kujamaat Jóola may take.
Definite article
The Kujamaat Jóola definite article has the form -aC, where C is identical to the
consonant of the class prefix. Three noun classes have prefixes that consist of a single
INFLECTION
137
vowel: class 1 (a-), class 3 (E-) and class 8 (u-). For these, the definite article has the
form -aw, -Ey, and -aw, respectively. Examples from Sapir (1965: 68) are given in (2):
(2)
Cl. 1
a-≠il-aw
'the child'
Cl. 2
ku-≠il-ak
'the children'
Cl. 3
E-yEn-Ey
'the dog'
Cl. 4
si-yEn-as
'the dogs'
Cl. 5
fu-ti…k-af
'the war'
Cl. 6
ku-ti…k-ak
'the wars'
Cl. 7
ka-si…n-ak
'the horn'
Cl. 8
u-si…n-aw
'the horns'
Cl. 9
bu-b´…r-´b
'the tree'
Cl. 10
ji-sEk-aj
'the small woman'
Cl. 11
mu-sEk-am
'the small women'
Cl. 12
≠i-sEk-a≠
'the large women'
Cl. 13
ba-≠il-ab
'the many small children'
Cl. 14
fa-kOr-af
'the smoke'
Cl. 15
ma-kuk-am
'the brains'
Pronouns
The form of first and second person pronouns obviously do not depend on noun
class. Third person pronouns do, however. Both subject and object pronouns have the
shape CO when free (as opposed to bound), with C corresponding to the consonant of the
noun class prefix. The forms of third person pronouns for classes 1-15 are listed in (3):
138
(3)
CHAPTER FOUR
Cl. 1:
O-
Cl. 8:
wO-
Cl. 2:
kO-
Cl. 9:
bO-
Cl. 3:
yO-
Cl. 10:
jO-
Cl. 4:
sO-
Cl. 11:
mO-
Cl. 5:
fO-
Cl. 12:
≠O-
Cl. 6:
kO-
Cl. 13:
bO-
Cl. 7:
kO-
Cl. 14:
fO-
Cl. 15:
mO-
Nominal modifiers
While Kujamaat Jóola has a variety of nominal modifiers, including
demonstratives, numbers, and particularizers (Sapir 1965: 27-8), there is no well-defined
category that corresponds to Indo-European adjectives. This is not unusual among the
world’s languages. In fact, throughout Africa, what might be considered canonical
adjectives by speakers of Indo-European languages are rare (Welmers 1973). Instead,
adjectival concepts like ‘small’, ‘beautiful’, or ‘angry’ are generally expressed by a
verbal element. In Kujamaat Jóola, what at first glance appear to be adjectives are often
formed with a verbal stem prefixed with a relativizer that agrees in noun class with the
head noun:
(4)
a.
E-
yEn- Ey
ya-
gOn-
3CL- dog- DEF3 3REL- be.mad-
O-
E
STAT-
HAB
‘the mad dog’ (lit. ‘the dog which is mad’)
INFLECTION
b.
si- b´…- s
sa-
4CL- cow- DEF4
139
jak-
as
4REL-
be.good-
DEF4
‘the good cows’ (lit. the cows which are good’)
The relativizer takes the form Ca- when modifying a subject, and Can- when modifying
an object. We see it again in the forms in (5), where the nature of the verb makes it more
obvious that we are dealing with relative clauses. Note in (5b) that the object relativizer
may stand on its own:
(5)
a.
ku- ≠il-
ak
ka-
ri≠-
ulOm
2CL- child- DEF2 2REL- arrive.from-SUBORD
‘the children who arrive’
b.
E-
lO…l-
Ey
yan ndaw a-
sEk-
O
´-
pur- en
3CL- chicken- DEF3 3REL Ndaw 1CL- woman- POSS 1CL- leave-CAUS
‘The chicken that Ndaw’s wife brought out’
A second way to form what appear to be adjectives is to attach a prefix of the
form (C)V- to what Sapir calls a ‘neutral theme’ — that is, a stem that can be used as a
noun, verb, adjective, or adverb depending on context. Again, the initial consonant of the
prefix corresponds to the consonant of the noun class prefix. We see examples of neutral
themes being used as adjectives in (6).
(6)
a.
si-
jamEn- as
4CL- goat-
si-
DEF4
'the European goats'
lulum-
´s
4CL- European-
DEF4
140
CHAPTER FOUR
b.
E-
yEn e-
lulum
3CL- dog 3CL- European
'a European dog'
c.
e-
be
E- narE
3CL- cow 3CL-woman
‘a female cow’
Prefixes of the form Ca- (7 ka-; 13 ba-; 14 fa-; 15 ma-) take the form Cu- in this
construction, perhaps to avoid confusion with the relative pronoun presented immediately
above.
Demonstratives, which have the form uC(E), and particularizers, which have the
forms CV-kE(n) (indefinite) and CV-kila (definite), are illustrated in (7a-c). As we saw
with neutral themes, prefixes of the form Ca- surface as Cu-:
(7)
a.
si- jamEn- as
4CL- goat-
use
DEF4
4DEM
‘these goats’
b.
ka-
rEg
ku-
7CL-
story 7CL-
‘a certain story’
kEn
PARTIC
INFLECTION
c.
e-
b´- y
E-
3CL- cow- DEF3
141
kila
3CL-
PARTIC
‘the cow (of which I am talking)’
Cardinal numbers up to ‘four’ and ordinals up to ‘fifth’ also agree with a head
noun (8-9):
(8)
a.
E-
yEn
y´-
kon
3CL-
dog
3CL-
one
‘one dog’
b.
u-
b´…r
u-
ba…kir
8CL-
tree
8CL-
four
‘four trees’
(9)
a.
E-
yEn-
Ey
E-
tONOndEy
3CL-
dog-
DEF3
3CL-
first
‘the first dog’
b.
si-
≠ara…-
s
si- tOkEn- as
4CL-
monkey- DEF4 4CL-fifth-
DEF4
‘the fifth monkeys’
Higher numbers do not agree with a head noun (examples from Sapir 1970):
(10)
butinken ‘fifteen’ (class 9 invariable)
kabanan ‘twenty’ (class 7 invariable)
ceme ‘one hundred’ (invariable) < Mdk. keme
In languages where numerals agree with a head noun, it is typical for agreement marking
to be limited to the lower numerals.
142
CHAPTER FOUR
Verb Agreement
The last type of agreement we present here is that which holds between a verb and
its subject. As we saw with neutral themes, numerals, and particularizers, class prefixes
of the form Ca- surface as Cu-:
(11)
a.
e-
munguno E-
3CL- hyena
jum
bo
3AGR- stop
there
‘a hyena stopped there’
b.
fu- gOl- af
5CL- stick-
fu-
DEF5
lOlO tentam
5AGR- fall
ground
‘a stick fell to the ground’
c.
ba-
suwa…-b
13CL- bird-
DEF13
bu13AGR-
iit
fly
‘the birds flew off’
A subject noun phrase does not have to be present in order for an agreement prefix to
appear on the verb. Verbs may agree with implied subjects, as the sentences in (11)
illustrate. In (12a), the verb jOl ‘come’ agrees with the class 4 subject si-jamEn-as ‘the
goats’, as shown by the si- prefix. The verb appears with this prefix even when the
implied subject ‘goats’ is left unstated:
(12)
a.
si-jamEn-as si-jOl
‘the goats came’
b.
si-gaba si-jOl
‘two came’
c.
s-O si-jOl
‘they came’
INFLECTION
143
d.
si-nifan-as si-jOl
‘the old ones came’
e.
s-Eti alasan si-jOl
‘Alasanne’s came’
Even this brief sketch of agreement in Kujamaat Jóola makes it clear that
agreement is a pervasive part of its grammar. It is impossible to ignore. As the sentences
in (13) illustrate, the repetition of agreement markers gives the impression of alliteration:
(13)
a.
fu- gOl- af
f-
umb´ f-
5CL- stick-DEF5
O-
f-
5AGR- 1POSS
E
5CL- here-
DEF5- EMPH
‘my stick is here ~ this is my stick’
b.
si- jamEn- as
4CL- goat-
s-
DEF4
umb´
s-
O-
s-
4AGR- 1POSS
E
4CL- here-
‘these are my goats’
c.
bu- b´…r- ´b
9CL- tree-
b´- m´k- ´b
DEF9
‘the big tree fell’
bu-
lOlO
9REL- be.big- DEF9
9AGR- fall
DEF4- EMPH
CHAPTER FOUR: EXERCISES
1.
Identify the morphological process at work in each set of words, and think of at
least one more English example to add to each set.
a) report/reported, grovel/groveled, purr/purred, saddle/saddled
b) goose/geese, foot/feet, louse/lice, eat/ate, run/ran
c) go/went, good/better, I/me, am/was
2.
Using an etymological dictionary, investigate the reasons for the following
suppletive pairs in English: (a) go/went; (b) good/better.
3.
The following words do not have plurals or, if they do, their plurals have a special
meaning. Describe the meaning of the plural forms of each word, if it exists. Then try to
come up with an account of the behavior of these nouns as a group.
a) water
b) rice
c) fish
d) air
e) laughter
f) courage
g) hate
INFLECTION
145
h) heat (i.e., hot temperature)
i) humidity
j) intelligence
10.
Examine the following data from Tzeltal, a language of Mexico (Nida 1965: 100).
For each pair, indicate whether the formation is derivational or inflectional. Then list the
characteristics that form the basis of your decision.
a. h-čamel
‘sick person’
čamel
‘illness’
b. šiwel
‘fright’
šiw
‘to be afraid’
c. lumal
‘land’
lum
‘earth’
d. mahk’il
‘lid’
mahk’
‘to close’
e. awinam
‘your wife’
/inam
‘wife’
čenk’ul
‘bean patch’
f. čenk’ultik ‘bean patches’
5.
g. h-/u/el
‘influencial person’ /u/el
‘power’
h. č’uunel
‘offering’
č’uun
‘to believe, obey’
i. k’abal
‘custody’
k’ab
‘hand’
Italian verbs
First, analyze the following data and identify all of the morphemes. Group
suffixes denoting person into one set. Then determine whether each suffix or set of
suffixes exemplifies simple or cumulative exponence.
146
6.
CHAPTER FOUR
parlo
‘I speak’
parlavo
‘I spoke’
parli
‘you (sg) speak’
parlavi
‘you (sg) spoke’
parla
‘he speaks’
parlava
‘he spoke’
parliamo
‘we speak’
parlavamo
‘we spoke’
parlate
‘you (pl) speak’
parlavate
‘you (pl) spoke’
parlano
‘they speak’
parlavano
‘they spoke’
French adjectives
The adjectives in the first column are masculine, while those in the second are
feminine. How are masculine and feminine adjectives differentiated in French? (You may
ignore changes in vowel quality.) Outline a possible analysis.
a) mauvais [movE]
mauvaise [movEz]
‘bad’
b) bon [bo‡]
bonne [bOn]
‘good’
c) grand [gÂA‡]
grande [gÂA‡d]
‘big’
d) froid [fÂwa]
froide [fÂwad]
‘cold’
e) petit [p´ti]
petite [p´tit]
‘small’
f) gros [gÂo]
grosse [gÂos]
‘fat’
g) sot [so]
sotte [sOt]
‘foolish’
h) premier [pÂ{mje]
première [pÂ{mjEÂ]
‘first’
i) entier [A‡tje]
entière [A‡tjEÂ]
‘entire’
j) frais [fÂE]
fraîche [fÂES]
‘fresh’
INFLECTION
7.
147
k) long [lo‡]
longue [lo‡g]
‘long’
l) heureux [PÂP]
heureuse [PÂPz]
‘happy’
m) gentil [ZA‡ti]
gentille [ZA‡tij]
‘kind’
n) soûl [su]
soûle [sul]
‘drunk’
Zapotec of the Isthmus (Mexico) (Nida 1965: 38)
Identify all the morphemes in the following set of data. List all morphemes that
have allomorphs. Describe the distribution of all allomorphs having phonologically
definable positions of occurrence. Finally, discuss the data in terms of exponence
(simple, cumulative, or extended).
a) geta
‘corncake’
sketabe
‘his corncake’
sketalu/
‘your corncake’
b) bere
‘chicken’
sperebe
‘his chicken’
sperelu/
‘your chicken’
c) do/o
‘rope’
sto/obe
‘his rope’
sto/olu/
‘your rope’
d) yaga
‘wood’
syagabe
‘his wood’
syagalu/
‘your wood’
e) di/idZa
‘word’
sti/idZabe ‘his word’
sti/idZalu/ ‘your word’
f) palu
‘stick’
spalube
‘his stick’
spalulu/
‘your stick’
g) kuba
‘dough’
skubabe
‘his dough’
skubalu/
‘your dough’
h) tapa
‘four’
stapabe
‘his four’
stapalu/
‘your four’
148
8.
CHAPTER FOUR
Spanish (adapted from Nida 1965: 124-5)
Describe how the third person singular present indicative of –er verbs in Spanish
is formed from the basic stem on the basis of the following forms. You should describe
the types of allomorphy that you encounter.
3sg present indicative
Basic stem
a) pide
/pide/
‘asks for’
ped-
/ped-/
b) sirve
/sirbe/
‘serves’
serv-
/serv-/
c) vende
/bende/
‘sells’
vend-
/bend-/
d) barre
/bare/
‘sweeps’
barr-
/bar-/
e) come
/kome/
‘eats’
com-
/kom-/
f) aprende /ap|ende/ ‘learns’
aprend- /aprend-/
g) decide
/deside/
‘decides’
decid-
/desid-/
h) siente
/siente/
‘feels’
sent-
/sent-/
i) miente
/miente/
‘lies’
ment-
/ment-/
j) duerme
/due|me/ ‘sleeps’
dorm-
/dorm-/
k) pierde
/pie|de/
‘loses’
perd-
/perd-/
l) vuelve
/buelbe/
‘returns’
volv-
/bolb-/
m) mueve
/muebe/
‘moves’
mov-
/mob-/
INFLECTION
9.
149
Sudan Colloquial Arabic (Nida 1965: 41)
Identify as many morphs as the data indicate. List all morphs that have
allomorphs. Describe the distribution of all allomorphs that have phonologically
definable positions of occurrence. Although the nouns in the following problem consist
of a vocalic pattern superimposed on a template (as was illustrated in the chapter), you
should treat the stems as single morphemic units for the purposes of this problem.
a) kitabi
‘my book’
axuy
‘my brother’
b) kitabak
‘your (m.sg.) book’
axuk
‘your (m.sg.) brother’
c) kitabik
‘your (f.sg.) book’
axuki
‘your (f.sg.) brother’
d) kitabu
‘his book’
axuhu
‘his brother’
e) bitaba
‘her book’
axuha
‘her brother’
f) kitabna
‘our book’
axuna
‘our brother’
g) kitabkum ‘your (m.pl.) book’
axukum
‘your (m.pl.) brother’
h) kitabkan ‘your (f.pl.) book’
axukan
‘your (f.pl.) brother’
i) kitabum ‘their (m.) book’
axuhum
‘their (m.) brother’
j) kitabin
axuhin
‘their (f.) brother’
10.
‘their (f.) book’
Hebrew
Describe how the following paradigms are formed. Use CV notation, where C
stands for a consonant, and V for a vowel.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Past
a) yashavti
‘I sat’
katavti
‘I wrote’
b) yashavta
‘you (m.sg.) sat’
katavta
‘you (m.sg.) wrote’
c) yashavt
‘you (f.sg.) sat’
katavt
‘you (f.sg.) wrote’
d) yashav
‘he sat’
katav
‘he wrote’
e) yashva
‘she sat’
katva
‘she wrote’
f) yashavnu
‘we sat’
katavnu ‘we wrote’
g) yashavtem
‘you (m.pl.) sat’
katavtem ‘you (m.pl.) wrote’
h) yashavten
‘you (f.pl.) sat’
katavten ‘you (f.pl.) wrote’
i) yasvu
‘they sat’
katvu
‘they wrote’
a) yoshev
‘sit (m.sg.)’
kotev
‘write (m.sg.)’
b) yoshevet
‘sit (f.sg.)’
kotevet
‘write (f.sg.)’
c) yoshvim
‘sit (m.pl.)’
kotvim
‘write (m.pl.)’
d) yoshvot
‘sit (f.pl.)
kotvot
‘write (f.pl.)
Present
11.
Now add the following Hebrew data to those provided in (8). How can we express
the formation of the future? How does its formation differ from that of the past and
present? (Note that x alternates with k in Hebrew depending on position. You should
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151
assume that x in the forms below is the same underlying segment as k in the second
column of example (8), but you do not have to account for its distribution.)
a) /extov
‘I will write’
b) tixtov
‘you (m.sg.) will write’
c) tixtvi
‘you (f.sg.) will write’
d) yixtov
‘he will write’
e) tixtov
‘she will write’
f) nixtov
‘we will write’
g) tixtvu
‘you (m.pl.) will write’
h) tixtovna
‘you (f.pl.) will write’
i) yixtvu
‘they (m) will write’
j) tixtovna
‘they (f) will write’
12.
Chiluba, Luba-Lulua dialect (Congo) (Nida 1965: 39)
Identify all the morphemes in the following set of data. List all morphemes that have
allomorphs. Finally, describe the distribution of all allomorphs that have phonologically
defined positions of occurrence.
Supplementary information:
•
Forms (a-c) are participial forms.
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CHAPTER FOUR
•
The allomorphic form of the first person pronoun in the second word of item (h)
is not characteristic of prevowel position, but should be treated as such in terms of
these limited data.
•
The final –u of form (k) may be disregarded.
•
The second forms in items (l) and (m) are past participles. The prefix mú- is a
person indicator, employed with all singular persons.
•
The vowel /u/ can become [w] in certain situations, as in (i) and (j).
•
The tonal part of a morph can spread to some contiguous segments.
a) n`sùmá
‘I, biting’
b) úsùmá
‘you (sg), biting’
c) ùsùmá
‘he, biting’
d) n`dí n`sùmá
‘I am biting’
e) údí úsùmá
‘you (sg) are biting’
f) ùdí ùsùmá
‘he is biting’
g) n`tSìdí n`sùmá ‘I am now biting’
h) n`tú Násùmá ‘I am always biting’
i) útú wásùmá ‘you (sg) are always biting’
j) ùtú wàsùmá ‘he is always biting’
k) m`básùmú
‘I bit (indefinite past)’
l) n`dí músùmé ‘I have bitten’
m) údí músùmé ‘you (sg) have bitten’
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13.
153
Mongbandi (Congo) (Nida 1965: 63)
Determine the allomorphs of the morph that consists solely of
suprasegmental features. Note that all forms are in the completive aspect and that the
forms in the first column represent the basic forms of the roots. The tones on the forms in
the first column are a fundamental part of the root.
Forms with singular subjects
Forms with plural subjects
a) Ngbò
Ngbó
‘swam’
b) gwè
gwé
‘went’
c) ma¤
má
‘heard’
d) kpe¤
kpé
‘fled’
e) yó
yó
‘carried’
f) yé
yé
‘agreed’
g) bàtà
ba¤tá
‘guarded’
h) hùlù
hu¤lú
‘jumped’
i) ha¤kà
ha¤ká
‘taught’
j) d¸¤rì
d¸¤rí
‘answered’
k) ko¤ló
ko¤ló
‘pierced’
l) s¸¤gí
s¸¤gí
‘went out’
m) díkò
d¸¤kó
‘read’
n) gbíNgà
gb¸¤Ngá
‘translated’
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1
CHAPTER FOUR
Regarding the morphemic breakdowns of example sentences, we have consistently put
hyphens at the right edge of the leftmost element, rather than putting them at the right
edge of prefixes and left edge of suffixes. Therefore, hyphenation in this book is not
intended to provide information about direction of attachment of affixes.
2
Word-for-word glosses for Sneddon’s examples were provided by Niken Adisasmito-
Smith.
3
In Indonesian the picture is slightly more complicated. Expression of the category
plural is ungrammatical in contexts like the following where plurality of the noun is
explicit, in (i) because of the presence of the number tiga ‘three’, and in (ii) because
shoes typically come in pairs (Sneddon 1996:16-17):
(i)
Menteri mengunjungi tiga negeri (*-negeri) asing
minister visit.ACTIVE three country (*-REDUP) foreign
‘The minister visited three foreign countries’
(ii)
Saya harus membeli
I
sepatu (*-sepatu) baru
must buy.ACTIVE shoe
(*-REDUP) new
‘I must buy new shoes’
4
Says is spelled regularly, but the vowel represented by <ay> is pronounced differently
from the vowel in other forms of the same verb. Some British speakers do not have this
distinction.
5
// represents a lateral click, ! a palatal retroflex click, and ? an alveolar click.
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6
155
We should point out here that there are some languages — Navajo is one — that do not
make morphological gender distinctions at all. We might be tempted to say that English
is a language of this type, but it is not: it distinguishes three genders in the third person
singular pronouns (cf. he, she, it; him, her, it). Navajo does not even do this.
7
An alternative is to say that the entire DP receives accusative case under government
and that the accusative case feature is distributed over all of its members.
8
Note that the mapping is directional. We cannot work backwards and pair up every
instance of /-ing/ with the feature [PRESENT PARTICIPLE] or [PROGRESSIVE], because there
is more than one type of ‘-ing’ in English (e.g., babysitting can be a present participle or
a noun).