LIGN 120 MORPHOLOGY Review

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN

Join up into groups of 2-3 (move if you have to!), look

over the data, discuss, and answer the questions

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN

student

studenti

i mir

i mir

a good male student

the good male student

good male students

the good male students

a good female student

the good female student

good female students

the good female students

student t mir

studentt e mir

studente e mir

studentja e mir

studente t mira

studentet e mira

*the particles of concord i, t and e have no concrete meaning.

student- student

mir- good

Based on the given data, what inflectional dimensions does Albanian have?

What are the feature values for each inflectional dimension?

What values do the particles of concord i, t and e express? What values do the

adjectives mir and mira express?

FREQUENT INFLECTIONAL DIMENSIONS

Gender

Number (singular, plural, dual, paucal, etc.)

Person (first, second, third)

Others:

Case (nominative, accusative, genitive, etc.)

Definiteness

Tense (present, past, future, etc.)

Aspect (perfective, imperfective, habitual, etc.)

Mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, etc.)

Polarity (negative or positive verbs)

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN

The issue: In Albanian, the forms do not seem to make a full set

of oppositions. For the particles of concord, gender is obviously marked in the singular,

but not in the plural.

There is contrastive marking for definiteness in the plural, but not in the

singular.

So what features are expressed?

Basic principle: for a language with a given set of

inflectional categories for a given lexical category, there is

a value for each category.

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Contextual inflection: involves features determined by the syntactic

context in which they occur.

Structural cases (those required by syntactic agreement or government, e.g.,

nominative, accusative, genitive and dative).

Number for verbs.

Q: Does English have any overt realizations of inflectional case

morphology?

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Inherent inflection: involves features that are relevant to the syntax,

but convey a certain amount of independent information.

Tense and aspect values for verbs.

Number for nouns.

English inherent vs. contextual inflection:

Contextual inflection Inherent inflection

sing/sings (person/number agreement) sing/sang (past tense)

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Two types of dependency in contextual inflection: government and agreement.

Government: a constituent imposes requirements on a related constituent.

One hand washes the other

Latin example: the verb requires specific case markings on its subject and object; the verb itself does not have any casemarking.

Agreement: the constituents involved in agreement are all marked for the relevant inflectional properties: (e.g. singular number)

der Vater putz-t

the.MASC.SG.NOM father(M).SG.NOM brush-PRES.3SG

Manu-s manu-m lava-t

hand-NOM.SG hand-ACC.SG wash-3SG

SOME DERIVATIONAL DIMENSIONSA much more diverse range of meanings found in derivation than

in inflection.

Both common cross-linguistic meanings (agent noun or agentive(paintV -> paint-erN), quality or abstract noun (kindA -> kind-nessN) as well as highly idiosyncratic meanings.

Instrumental prefixes in Uto-Aztecan

with heat or fire

with the teeth or mouth

Form

*kuh

*ki

Gloss

fire

bite

with the hand

with the nose

*maa

*mu-pi

hand

nose

(with or pertaining to) water

with the butt or behind with or

from cold

*paa

*pih

*sp

water

back

cold

with the mind, by feeling or sensation with

the foot

*suuna

*tannah

heart

foot

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR

words: lexeme, word-forms

affixes, bases and roots

morphemes and allomorphs

inflection and derivation

WHAT IS WORD?

Lexeme: word in an ABSTRACT sense

Q. Is [lv] a lexeme?

A. Yes B. No

WHAT IS WORD? Lexeme: word in an ABSTRACT sense

word-formo sequence of sounds that express

lexeme + grammatical meanings

LIVE lives

live

lived

living

/lvz/ = LIVE + 3SG.PRS.

WHAT IS WORD? word-family (lexeme family)

o a set of related lexemes

READ

read

reads

reading

READABLE READER

readers

REREAD

Q. Which one is

illustrating word-family?

A or B

B

A

MORPHOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS

morphological relationships

word formation

compounding derivation

inflection

word

morpheme

root affix

base/stem

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful part of a linguistic expression that can be identified by segmentation

Free (lexical) morpheme

Bound morpheme

Q. How many morphemes are there in

unfriendliness?A. 1 B. 2 C. 3 D. 4

word

morpheme

root affix

base/stem

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

root

a base that cannot be analyzed any further into constituent morphemes

base

the part of the word that an affix is attached to

stem

base of the inflectional affixes

ROOT VS. BASE/STEM

readability

Q. readable is the ROOT of readability

A. yes B. no

word

morpheme

root affix

base/stem

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

prefix

infix

suffix

circumfix

ALLOMORPHY

Two roots or affixes are allomorphs of the same morpheme if they

1) express the same meaning AND

2) occur in complementary distribution

KOREAN

John-i Tom-ul manna-ss-e.

John-NOM Mary-ACC meet-pst-DECL

John met Tom.

*John-i-ul, *John-ul-i

Q. -i and -ul in Korean

are allomorphs.

A. true B. false

ALLOMORPHS

ton money ton-ul money-ACC

tali leg tali-lul leg-ACC

chayk book chayk-ul book-ACC

sakwa apple sakwa-lul apple-ACC

KOREAN

Q. What is the right form of the accusative case

marker following Mary?

A. -ul B. -lul

ALLOMORPHY

Alternation Type

Conditioning Factor

Phonological

allomorphy

Suppletive

allomorphy

Phonological

conditioning

Lexical and morphological

conditioning

Q. phonological allomorphy?

A. The alternation is general. There is a single underlying representation;

allomorphs are derived via morphophonological rules.

B. The alternation is idiosyncratic (item-specific). The allomorphs cannot be

derived from a single underlying representation.

ALLOMORPHYWESTERN ARMENIAN

da boy da-n the boy

gadu cat gadu-n the boy

kirk book kirk- the book

madid pencil madid- the pencil

Q. What type of allomorphy

does this example illustrate?

Alternation Type

Conditioning Factor

Phonological

allomorphy

Suppletive

allomorphy

Phonological

conditioningA B

Lexical and morphological

conditioningC D

INFLECTION VS. DERIVATION

o Inflection

- formation of grammatical forms

- depends on the grammatical context

o Derivation

- creation of one lexeme from another

- generally results in a change in lexical meaning or lexical category

o Compounding

- formation of a complex lexeme that is made up of more than one lexeme stem

Q. thick-thicken, dark-darken, short-shorten

A. Inflection B. derivation C. compounding

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