Ling 001

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Ling 001

• Word Structure, Part II

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Outline

• In looking at morphology we are examining the
  relationships that words have to one another, and
  to the morphemes that are assembled into complex
  structures
• Two further themes
• Different kinds of morphology inflection vs.
  derivation
• What is a word? What can go into a word?
• Well see along the way how languages differ in
  terms of the distinctions weve introduced
• Conclude with questions about morphology and
  syntax

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I. Inflection and Derivation

• Inflection Creates new forms of the same word
  in a way that introduces or expresses different
  grammatical properties, while retaining some core
  notions of meaning (and category)
• Example
• Play and Played describe the same action, but
  situate it differently in time.

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Inflectional categories

• Languages differ with respect to which categories
  are expressed inflectionally on e.g. verbs.
  English, for instance, expresses Person (1st
  person, 2nd person, 3rd) in a limited way, as
  well as tense
• Present Past
• 1s praise prais-ed
• 2s praise prais-ed
• 3s praise-s prais-ed
• 1p praise prais-ed
• 2p praise prais-ed
• 3p praise prais-ed
• (s singular, p plural)
• Notice that marking for Person is not found in
  Past

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Comparison

• The expression of such inflectional categories is
  limited in English. Compare Latin (laudare
  praise)
• Present Past (imperfect)
• 1s laud-o lauda-ba-m
• 2s lauda-s lauda-ba-s
• 3s lauda-t lauda-ba-t
• 1p lauda-mus lauda-ba-mus
• 2p lauda-tis lauda-ba-tis
• 3p lauda-nt lauda-ba-nt

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Comparison, cont.

• In the English and Latin comparison, we are
  talking about the same abstract categories in
  some sense Tense and Person/Number
• Languages express different notions in verbal
  marking
• Classical Greek Dual as well
• Lu-ei he/she/it looses
• Lue-ton they-2 loose
• Luo-usi they loose

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Another example

• Example 2 (Some) verbs in Tepetotula Chinantec
  differ for whether the object is animate or
  inanimate
• The verb here is abandon
• Inanimate Animate
• 1s tíLM téNLM
• 1p tíLM téNLM
• 2(s/p) tíLM? téNLM?
• 3(s/p) tíM téNM
• So, if you want to say I abandoned my friend
  versus I abandoned the house, you have to use
  different verb forms

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Synopsis

• Languages differ in terms of
• What type of information is expressed in
  different categories of words and
• How many distinct means of marking such
  differences there are
• A further point of cross-linguistic difference
  concerns how much can fit into a single word, and
  how we are going to define word for different
  languages in the first place (see below)

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Inflection, cont.

• Some general properties associated with
  inflection, generalizations which hold for the
  most part
• Inflection does not change syntactic categories.
  E.g. kick-s is still a verb, even with its
  inflectional suffix
• Inflection expresses grammatically required
  features or relations (e.g. agreement, tense,
  etc.)
• Inflectional morphemes occur outside of
  derivational (see below) morphemes
  ration-al-iz-ation-s
• As a general way of thinking of this, inflection
  creates new forms of the same word derivation is
  thought to create a different (but related)
  word
• Some inflectional morphemes in English
• --ed (past tense), -s (plural), etc.

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Derivation

• As a basic working definition, derivational
  morphology creates new words from existing ones.
  Basic properties
• Change of category or part of speech (noun, verb,
  adjective) is possible pay, pay-ment
• New meaning added e.g. re-do means to do
  again
• Inflection often has syntactic connections
  outside of the word, (e.g. agreement relates a
  subject to a verb). This is not so if we have
  e.g. kind/unkind the change doesnt relate to
  anything external
• Sometimes not productive (it sometimes doesnt
  attach to some words) or unpredictable meanings
• Destroy/destruction employ/empluction/employment
  
• Transmit send transmis-sion sending car
  part

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Derivation Examples

• Morpheme Function
• -(a)tion verb --gt noun
• deviate, devia-tion
• -al noun --gt adjective
• institution, institution-al
• -ize noun --gt verb
• color, color-ize
• -like noun--gt adjective
• dog, dog-like
• un-Karl Farbman-like

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Further aspects of derivation

• Derivation is not necessarily category-changing
  sometimes it creates a new word with the same
  category as the root/stem, but with a different
  meaning
• king, king-dom
• star, star-dom
• But nounhood is a property of -dom in this case,
  as is clear from instances in which it attaches
  to other categories
• free, free-dom

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Some unpredictability

• In many cases, the same kind of derivational
  pattern shows differences in form take e.g. verb
  --gt noun
• 1) -al refuse refus-al
• arrive arriv-al
• 2) -ion confuse confus-ion
• extend extens-ion
• 3) -ation derive derivation
• confirm confirm-ation
• 4) -ment confine confine-ment
• treat treat-ment
• This is in a sense allomorphy the form of the
  nominalizing affix is something that depends on
  what host the affix is attached to (put
  differently, the different affixes only attach to
  certain hosts)

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Additional Interactions

• Often the distinction between derivation and
  inflection is used as a helpful tool, not an
  absolute distinction
• Consider some additional cases in terms of our
  criteria above
• Formation of gerunds in -ing
• John destroyed the house.
• Johns destroying the house (upset me).

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Gerunds, cont.

• Formation of the nominalization in -ing is
• General we can take whatever verbs we think of
  and form such nominals
• Shows no allomorphy all such nominals show
  -ing. Sometimes there is more than one denominal
  verb
• Johns destroying the city
• Johns destruction of the city
• There is a sense in which the second is more
  nounlike than the first
• General point This type of case meets some of
  the criteria for both inflection (regularity,
  productivity) and for derivation (category change)

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II. Whats in a word?

• Recall our division of morphemes along two lines
  free vs. bound and content vs. function
• Content Function
• Bound cran- -ed
• Free dog the
• Languages differ in terms of how they divide up
  this cross-classification many languages have
  more morphological (bound) marking than e.g.
  English
• Relatedly, languages differ in terms of what can
  go in a word (we can try to define word below)

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Words

• One way to think of this is in terms of some
  counting exercises how many words in
• John ate the apple
• How about
• Ill eat the apples later.
• I will eat the apples later.
• I didnt eat any apples yesterday

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Distinctions

• Phonological Words An object that forms a single
  unit for the purpose of phonology
• (Syntactic) Word A single object for the
  purposes of the syntax
• Example
• Ill eat the apples later.
• Here Ill is a single phonological word. But if
  we think that this sentence has the same syntax
  as I will eat the apples later, this single
  phonological word is composed of two syntactic
  words

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Complex words

• Languages differ greatly in terms of what they
  package into their words (relatedly, in terms of
  what is expressed as bound or free)
• Some languages pack a great deal into single
  (phonological) words
• English
• They treated us in that way
• Hupa (California, Athabascan)
• ayanohchilah

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Analysis

• The Hupa example
• ayanohchilah
• a- ya- noh- chi- lah
• thus PL 1Pl-Obj 3rdPl-Subj treat
• In this language and many others, what is
  expressed in English with many free morphemes is
  expressed in a single phonological word, with
  many bound morphemes

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Incorporation

• Noun Incorporation
• Mapudungun
• Ni chao kintu-waka-le-y
• my father seek-cow-TNS-3s
• my father is looking for the cows
• Here, the meaning of the phrase look for cows
  is expressed in a single word (they can express
  it with a separate noun as well).
• This is similar in many ways to what happens in
  compounding in English remember truck driver. In
  English, though we cant use this as a verb I
  truck-drive.
• But, in Mapudungun (and many other languages!)
  these strutures are not restricted to nouns they
  happen with verbs as well.

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How much Morphology

• Languages are often described in terms of whether
  they have little (English, Chinese) or rich (e.g.
  Hupa, Latin) morphological systems
• Further distinctions whether meanings are
  combined in morphemes, or separated into
  different morphemes
• English from our islands
• Latin insul-is nostr-is
• island-ABL.PL. our-ABL.PL
• Turkish ada-lar-ImIz-dan
• island-PL-OUR-ABL

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Syntax/Morphology

• What do the examples on the last slide show? At
  some level of description, languages express the
  same meanings in different ways, ranging from
  more syntactic (English) to more
  morphological (Turkish)
• This suggests that there is no sharp dividing
  line between a word system (morphology) and a
  system for assembling words into phrases etc.
  (syntax)
• Some more thoughts along these lines

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Morphology and Syntax, cont.

• With morphology we refer to the study of words
  and their structure, while with syntax we refer
  to the structure of larger objects (phrases,
  clauses)
• Examples
• The black board (phrase syntax)
• The blackboard (2nd part is a wordmorphology)
• In some cases, the distinction between these two
  domains of study is blurred as well

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Interactions between syntax and morphology

• Consider how comparatives and superlatives work
  in English
• Comparative tall, tall-er
• In cases of this type, the comparative seems to
  be a kind of (inflectional?) morpheme, creating a
  comparative adjective from an adjective
• But
• Think of more adjectives
• smart, smart-er intelligent, intelligenter
• Note that the comparative of intelligent requires
  a phrase
• more intelligent

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More examples

• A more difficult case occurs with English in the
  phenomenon called do-support
• Consider a normal past tense sentence
• John play-ed football yesterday.
• Notice that the (bold-faced) past tense morpheme
  -ed appears on the verb play
• Now the negative equivalent
• John di-d not play football yesterday.
• Here we see past on do, in did, which is the past
  tense of that verb. The past tense, which appears
  as part of the word in the first example, occurs
  in a different word in the second example
• A consistent treatment of these facts involves a
  structure in which the tense morpheme -ed
  occupies a different syntactic position from that
  occupied by the verb