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Typology
Morphological typology
Introduction
• See «the big picture»
• How does word formation work overall in specific languages?
• How can the morphological systems of particular languages
vary from one another?
• (the subject of linguistic typology)
• We will begin by describing the morphological systems of
five very different languages, looking at the kinds of lexeme
formation and inflection that they display.
• Then we will discuss both traditional ways of classifying the
morphology of languages and more contemporary ways of
doing so.
• Finally, we will look at how both the family a language
belongs to and the geographic area in which it is spoken can
influence its typological classification.
Universals and particulars: a bit of
linguistic history
• Do we know anything about morphological universals?
• There is a range of word formation strategies that appear in
the languages of the world.
• What are possible forms of reduplication or infixing and what
is impossible?
The genius of languages: what’s in
your toolkit?
• There are unique ways inwhich the morphology of languages
can package different concepts in different forms.
• We will look at five very different languages-Turkish, Mandarin
Chinese, Samoan, Latin, and Nishnaabemwin -- to try to see
something of this unique combination of morphological
processes that constitutes at least one part of the genius of
each language.
• All of these languages use morphology in one way or another,
but each makes different choices from the universal toolbag of
rule types.
Nishnaabemwin
Turkish
Latin
mandarin
Samoan
Turkish
• Turkish has a phonological rule called ‘vowel harmony’
• Although the predominant way of forming words in Turkish
is through suffixation, it also has a process of compounding
• Turkish uses suffixation for both derivation and inflection.
• Turkish verbs are inflected for person and number, and can
appear in a number of different tenses, including present,
past, future, and conditional.
• All of these inflections are suffixes; verb forms can be quite
long and complex.
• no processes of prefixation on word-formation
• It marks case (Ev, evi, evin, eve, evde, evden)
Turkish
• Turkish is a language that delights in suffixation
Turkish has a process of
compounding, it also marks case
Mandarin chinese (SinoTibetan)
• no processes of prefixation
• tiny handful of suffixes
• Mandarin has not only compound nouns and compound
adjectives, also all sorts of compound verbs
• Mandarin does have a system of noun classifiers that are used
when counting or otherwise quantifying nouns
Mandarin chinese (Sino-Tibetan)
N-xue>N
Personal N-jia>N
N-hua>V
Mandarin is poor in affixation and
reduplication but rich in compounding
Mandarin have a system of noun
classifiers that are used when counting or
otherwise quantifying nouns
Samoan (Austronesian)
• prefixation, suffixation, and circumfixation, both partial and
full reduplication, and also to some extent compounding.
• relations like case, tense, aspect, and mood are expressed by
independent particles, rather than by prefixes, suffixes, or
reduplication, in this language
Samoan (Austronesian)
suffixation
reduplication
compounding
Latin (Indo-European)
• Heavily inflected language, almost entirely suffixal
• often several meanings are combined into a single
inflectional morpheme in Latin
• Latin nouns are inflected for case, number, and gender, and
adjectives are inflected to agree with them
• Verbs have a number of different stems which form the
basis of inflectional paradigms that show aspect (imperfect
vs. perfect) and voice (active vs. passive), as well as person
and number
• different person and number affixes are used in the past
than in other tenses
• Latin has both derivational suffixes and prefixes
Nishnaabemwin (Algonquian)
• heavy use of affixation, especially suffixation, and has an
extremely rich system of inflection
• there are prefixes and suffixes that indicate possession of a
noun
• Verb inflection is even more complex than noun inflection
• various bound morphemes are joined together to form
words. Eg. Intransitive verbs frequently consist of two or
three pieces. The pieces are
• ‘initial’, expresses something that modifies the verbal concept
(such as adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions),
• ‘medial’ expresses nominal concept,
• ‘final’ expresses various inflectional elements.
• Nouns can be made up of several bound morphemes as well
Nishnaabemwin (Algonquian)
summary
• Each language has a different combination of word formation
processes that gives the language its unique character
• We should always be on the lookout for the commonalities or
universals that mark all these languages as human languages.