The diachronic stability of complex verbal morphology

Introduction

Rik van Gijn (University of Zürich)

SLE 2014 Poznań, September 12th 2014

Balthasar Bickel, Johanna Nichols. 2013. Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language

Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/22, Accessed on 2014-08-15.)

Introduction

Especially outside Africa and Australia, the distribution is geographically very uneven. In particular, Eurasia is dominated by low-synthesis languages and the Americas (especially North America) by high-synthesis languages.

Balthasar Bickel, Johanna Nichols. 2013. Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language

Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/22, Accessed on 2014-08-15.)

Introduction

Why does the distribution of morphological patterns tend to show areally skewed patterns?

Can contact-induced diffusion explain the distributional pattern of morphological profiles?

Diffusion

A number of languages show signs of movement between morphological types.

Yaron Matras. 2007. The borrowability of structural categories. In: Yaron Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds.) Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective.

Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 40

Number of open questions

- decreased synthesis - de-morphologization - morphologization (concatenation)

Event-based processes Events that are caused by a single historical event (one-off, idiosyncratic changes)

Functional processes Events that are grounded in the biological/cognitive or social/ communicative conditions of language (e.g. processing preferences)

Diffusion

Bickel, Balthasar (forthc.): Areas and Universals. Ms.

Event-based processes Events that are caused by a single historical event (one-off, idiosyncratic changes)

Functional processes Events that are grounded in the biological/cognitive or social/ communicative conditions of language (e.g. processing preferences)

Diffusion

Event-based explanations are unlikely in general terms because the patterns are too pervasive, but it is unclear what the functional pressure would be to promote the spread of particular morphological profile.

Bickel, Balthasar (forthc.): Areas and Universals. Ms.

Contact is often said to lead to simplification (Kusters 2003, Trudgill 2004).

Diffusion

Unclear how this can be reconciled with (poly-)synthetic areas

The role of the degree of bilingualism / imperfect language learning

Kusters, Wouter. 2003. Linguistic complexity: the influence of social change on verbal inflection. Utrecht: LOT.

Trudgill, Peter. 2004. Linguistic and social typology: the Austronesian migrations and phoneme inventories. Linguistic Typology 8:305-320.

Central in most theories of contact-related change, especially in contact-induced change without any phonetic transfer is the idea of identification.

Diffusion

Language B

Language A

Morpheme A

Form A Function A

Morpheme A’

Form A’ Function A’

Morpheme B’

Form B Function A’

Morpheme C

Form B Function C

Morpheme C

Function C

Morpheme A Form A Function A

Form A

Diffusion

Language B

Language A

Morpheme A

Form A Function A

Morpheme A’

Form A’ Function A’

Morpheme B’

Form B Function A’

Morpheme C

Form B Function C

Morpheme C

Function C

Morpheme A Form A Function A

Form A

Diffusion

Central in most theories of contact-related change, especially in contact-induced change without any phonetic transfer is the idea of identification.

Diffusion

Is there any correlation between formal and semantic aspects of morphology across languages within a contact area? At what level of granularity should we look at semantics? To what extent should we expect functional isomorphism? (See e.g. Wiemer & Wälchli 2012) Are certain functions of morphemes potentially more indicative of contact-induced change than others?

Wiemer, Björn & Bernhard Wälchli. 2012. Contact-induced grammatical change: diverse phenomena, diverse perspectives. In: B. Wiemer et al. (eds.) Grammatical

replication and borrowability in language contact. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 3-64.

Formal properties Content-related properties

bondedness form variance Use Function Meaning

Tight Reduced Flexive Obligatory Grammatical Non-affective

Free Robust Nonflexive Optional lexical affective

-

+

Likelihood of transfer

Diffusion

Wilkins, David P. (1996) Morphology. In: Hans Goeble et al. (eds.) Kontaktlinguistik: ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung, Vol. 1. Berlin:

Walter de Gruyter, pp. 109-117.

Weinreich’s transfer likelihood (Wilkins 1996)

Can long-term retention explain the distributional pattern of morphological profiles? - Areal skewing as epiphenomenon.

Dunn et al. 2005 have suggested that comparing language structure of different languages can give us signals that may go well beyond the ca. 8000 years time depth associated with lexical comparison.

Retention

Michael Dunn, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language

history. Science 309, 2072-2075.

Retention

The structural features of a language, like the lexicon, are subject to processes of decay over time and can also be borrowed or exchanged across languages. However, such exchange usually only occurs under special conditions of prolonged and intensive contact, and it is at least plausible that where the lexical signal has been lost, a faint structural signal might still be discernible.

Michael Dunn, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language

history. Science 309, 2072-2075.

For lexical comparison we have a (often criticized) list of stable lexemes (Swadesh list). There is no equivalent of that for language structure, but it may be that future research uncovers relative genealogical stability of different structural features.

Retention

Retention

For our topic, it may be the case that whether a language is morphologically complex or not turns out to be way on top of a structural Swadesh feature list. And that the areal patterns are in fact older genealogical signals.

However: Families (established by comparative method) with a lot of diversity in their morphological profiles, e.g. Tupian (Rodrigues & Cabral 2012) Tibeto-Burman (DeLancey 2012)

DeLancey 2012. On the origins of Bodo-Garo. In: G. Hyslop et. al., eds., Northeast Indian Linguistics IV, 3-20. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Rodrigues, A. & A. S. Cabral. 2012. Tupían. In: L. Campbell & V. Grondona (eds.) The indigenous languages of South America: a comprehensive guide. Berlin:

Walter de Gruyter, pp. 495-574.

Because these languages may have been contiguous in the past [they are not now - RG] regional diffusion may also account for the phylogenetic signal observed, a possibility we cannot test without more detailed archaeological information.

Retention

Michael Dunn, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language

history. Science 309, 2072-2075.

Stability measure on the basis of WALS

S = (R – U)/(1 – U)

Retention

Wichmann, S., & Holman, E. W. (2009). Temporal Stability of Linguistic Typological Features. Munich: LINCOM Europa

Proportion of unrelated languages that have an identical value for a feature X

Proportion of related languages that have an identical value for a feature X

WALS feature S value Interpretation

Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives 32.9 unstable

Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives 55.1 very stable

Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb 12.1 very unstable

Locus of Marking in the Clause 27.5 Unstable

Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology 36.6 Stable

Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology 41.5 stable

Retention

Wichmann, S., & Holman, E. W. (2009). Temporal Stability of Linguistic Typological Features. Munich: LINCOM Europa

A third possible answer to our general question is that it is simply to early to tell because we lack unified and rigorous methods, as well as access to relevant data to establish morphological properties of individual morphemes, let alone establish types.

Haspelmath (2011) on the morphosyntactic word: I conclude from the arguments presented in this paper that there is no definition of 'word' that can be applied to any language and that would yield consistent results that are in accord with our writing habits

Schiering et al. (2010) on the phonological word: (...) the prosodic word is a language-particular category which emerges through frequent reference of phonological patterns to a given morphological construction type.

Analytical problems

Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica 45,1: 31-80.

Schiering, R; Bickel, B; Hildebrandt, K (2010). The prosodic word is not universal, but emergent. Journal of Linguistics, 46:657-709

Spencer & Luís (2012) on clitics

Pinning down the notion of clitic is a little like trying to catch minnows with your bare hands.

Failure to establish clear criteria has sometimes led to genuine confusion.

Analytical problems

Spencer, Andrew & Ana Luís. 2012. Clitics: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bickel & Nichols (2007) on synthesis

The relevant notion of word here is the GRAMMATICAL WORD, not the phonological word.

Lai Chin (Tibeto-Burman; W. Burma) Tsew Máŋ niɁ Ɂa-ka-th̪oɁŋ T. ERG 3SG.A-1SG.P-hit ‘Tsew Mang hit me.’

Kwakw’ala (Wakashan; NW America) nep’id=i=da gәnanәm=x̣a gukw=sa t’isәm throw=SUBJ=DET child=OBJ house=INSTR rock ‘The child threw a rock at the house.’

Analytical problems

Bickel, Balthasar & Johanna Nichols. 2007. Inflectional morphology. In: T. Shopen (ed.) Language typology and syntactic description. Volume III: Grammatical

categories and the lexicon, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 169-240.

Noun stem incorporation.

A large inventory of bound morphemes, limited number of stems.

The verbal word forms a minimal clause.

Pronominal markers on verbs (subject/object) and nouns (possessor).

Adverbial elements (e.g. location, instrument) integrated into verbs.

Many morphological ‘slots’.

Productive morphophonemics resulting in complex allomorphy of bound and free morphemes.

Non-configurational syntax.

Head-marking (or double marking) type of inflection.

Despite its long history (...) definitions of the term [polysynthesis -RG] in the late twentieth century are still diffuse.

Analytical problems

Fortescue, Michael (1994), “Polysynthetic Morphology”, in: Asher, R. E. et al. (chief editor) (1994), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Oxford: Pergamon

Press, pp. 2601-2602.

Why does the distribution of morphological types show areally skewed patterns?

How does morphology develop in different contexts?

11:30–12:00 Van Gijn, Rik (University of Zürich): (Poly-)synthetic verb morphology in the Guaporé-Mamoré: a contact feature?

12:00–12:30 Mithun, Marianne (University of California, Santa Barbara): Morphological complexity and language contact

12:30–13:00 Zúñiga, Fernando (University of Bern): The case for contact-induced grammatical restructuring in Quechuan

14:30–15:00 Pache, Matthias (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics): Diachronic stability of verbal morphology in Chibchan languages

15:00–15:30 Gildea, Spike; Meira, Sérgio (University of Oregon): Increasing morphological complexity without contact: Verbs in the Cariban family

15:30–16:00 Bakker, Peter; Ariza, Andrea (Aarhus University): Synchrony and diachrony in Algic, Kutenai and Salish

16:30–17:00 De Lancey, Scott (University of Oregon): The fall and rise of morphological complexity in Tibeto-Burman

17:00–17:30 Bernander, Rasmus (Göteborgs universitet): The evolution of future markers in Bena (Bantu G63)

17:30–18:00 Plungian, Vladimir (Institute of Linguistics (RAS) / Moscow State Lomonosov University): Evolution of verbal inflexional system in Armenian: On “temporal mobility” feature

18:00–18:30 Discussion

The diachronic stability of complex verbal morphology

Thank you for your attention!