Li6 Phonology and Morphology

1
Li6 Phonology and Morphology

• inflection and derivation
• 12-3-2007

2
Todays topics

• inflection vs derivation
• why do linguists make this distinction?
• arguments and evidence for and against the
  distinction
• larger implications of the (non)distinction

3
Inflection vs Derivation
from Goldberg 2005

• inflection
• affixation
• morphological constructions derivation
• compounding

• Derivation relates lexemes to each other
  (category changing, argument-structure changing
  morphology)
• derive, derivation, derivational,
  derivationality, derivationally, derivable,
  derivability
• govern, government, governor
• social, socialist, socialism, socialize
• work, worker, workable
• sleep, sleepy, sleepiness
• Inflection outfits lexemes with the features
  they need to occupy their designated position in
  a syntactic construction (e.g. case, agreement
  features, tense, mood)
• derive, derives, deriving
• derivation, derivations
• Anderson 1982, 1992 Inflection is the morphology
  that is relevant to the syntax.
• relevant to the syntax things like structural
  syntactic case, or subject-verb agreement
• The boundary between these can be fuzzy
• Is sleepier (the comparative of sleep) an
  inflected form of sleep or a different lexeme?
• Is writing an inflected form of write (the one
  called for in the syntactic construction I am
  ___) or is it a separate lexeme?
• How about number of NPs in languages where there
  is no number agreement, e.g. English I opened the
  box/boxes?
• Yet the categories are still commonly invoked,
  because of some general correlations

4
Classic differences
from Goldberg 2005
inflection derivation
doesnt change word class changes WC
peripheral central
productive (but Chechen agr in only 30 of vbs) less productive frequent gaps in family
paradigmatic not paradigmatic
semantically transparent not semantically transparent
connected to syntax not connected to syntax
not replaceable by single word replaceable by single word
can be syncretic (3sg pres -s) generally not syncretic (un-talk-ative)

• Generalisations
• inflection adds information to a word derivation
  changes information.
• within any given part of speech, those properties
  required by syntax (case on nominals subject or
  object agreement on nominals and/or verbs tense
  on verbs) are always classified as inflection.

5
Possible I-D differences
6
Semantic transparency
from Goldberg 2005

• Inflection tends to be more semantically regular
  than derivation
• The meaning or function of e.g. dative case is
  consistent across all nouns it combines with.
• By contrast, derivational affixation is often
  subject to semantic irregularity.

dress dresser one who dresses, or specific type of furniture
poke poker one who pokes, or specific fireplace tool
discern discernment property of being discerning
deport deportment behavior, not property of being deported
govern government an institution that governs, not the property of being governing
7
Affix ordering

• In agglutinating languages, derivation is
  generally closer to the root than inflection
• dogg-ie-s, dog-s-ie
• Problem 1 depantsing, etc.
• Problem 2 Rice on Slave
• Problem 2 Yiddish and Itelmen (Perlmutter 1988,
  Bobaljik 2003, Lowenstamm 2006)
• xazeyr-im-l-?x little pigs demb-l-?x little
  oaks
• diminutive only follows plural when the pl is
  irregular
• Perlmutter 1988 irregular plurals stored in
  lexicon, so no ordering dilemma
• Bobaljik 2003 Itelmen shows same pattern, but
  with regular plurals
• Do we really need the ordering generalisation, or
  the I-D distinction for that matter?
• e.g. is the ordering generalisation just a
  product of history?
• potential problem Harris and Faarlund on
  inflection trapping

8
Acquisition

• Robust finding for many languages knowledge of
  inflectional morphology is acquired before
  knowledge of derivational morphology and the
  morphology of compounds
• Levin et al. 2001 on Hebrew
• 40 children tested twice (511 and 65) on two
  oral tasks inflecting nouns for possession and
  deriving denominal adjectives.
• D was found to be harder than I, both on the stem
  and the suffix level, attributable to its higher
  semantic opacity.
• Green et al. 2003 on English
• I and D forms within narratives written by 247
  3rd and 4th graders
• majority of such students use I consistently and
  accurately
• fewer used derived forms, and significantly more
  4th graders than 3rd graders used them accurately
• generalisation for both speaking and writing I
  mastered by 9-10, but D continues to develop into
  middle childhood

9
Aphasia

• evidence for I and D as autonomous subcomponents
  (Miceli and Caramazza 1988)
• Badecker and Caramazza 1989
• Marangolo et al. 2003
• much documentation of selective deficits in I
• no prior evidence for selective deficits in D
• Report on 2 patients with R-hemisphere lesions
  and selective D deficits
• Specific deficit producing nouns derived from
  verbs
• one produced past participles, the other gerunds
• spostato displaced instead of spostamento
  displacement
• digerendo digesting instead of digestione
  digestion
• Problem observed differences can be explained
  without recourse to differences within the
  grammar
• R brain accesses broader range of related meanings

10
Eye tracking

• Niswander, Pollatsek, and Rayner 2000
• encoding of suffixed words (both I and D)
  assessed by monitoring eye movements during
  reading English sentences
• scheme lower frequency, longer fixation
• root frequency (R) and whole-word frequency (W)
  independently manipulated in target words
• D words R affected processing earlier than W
• regular I words
• W affected processing beginning with first
  fixation
• R affected processing beginning with first
  fixation for plural nouns but not for inflected
  verbs
• Potentially interesting results
• evidence for morphological decomposition
• counter to prediction of theory that D stored,
  I rule-based
• Problem I and D stimuli not controlled for word
  length

11
Signed languages

• Aronoff, Meir, and Sandler 2005
• morphology is generally simultaneous
• the few cases of sequential morphology are all
  derivational

(rest state)
whq WHO
ARRIVE who
arrived?
from Conlin, Hagstrom, and Neidle 2003
12
Signed languages

• Arguments for suffixhood rather than wordhood
• it must occur after, never before, its stem. This
  is significant in light of the fact that word
  order in ASL is relatively free, and that the
  related independent word can indeed occur before
  or after verbs.
• Two of the five consultants who use the suffix
  attach it to a limited set of verbs (including
  SEE, HEAR, LEARN, FEEL, SAY, EAT, TOUCH, SMELL,
  UNDERSTAND, USE, SLEEP, TASTE). For these
  consultants, the verb and suffix tend to fuse
  phonologically in the following ways nonmanual
  markers such as facial expressions or head
  positions tend to span both the verb and the
  suffix the path movements of both the verb and
  the suffix either are shortened or coalesce,
  depending on the underlying form of the stem
  some of the meanings of the suffixed words are
  idiosyncratic. Examples of the last
  characteristic are SAME-ZERO cant find one like
  yours, SAY-ZERO not mention, and TOUCH-ZERO
  not use.
• There is a phonological constraint on the
  occurrence of the suffix it can occur only with
  one-handed stems.
• ASL words are either one-handed or two-handed
  throughout. The fewdisyllabic monomorphemicwords
  that exist in the language are two-handed in both
  syllables. Furthermore, lexicalized compounds
  tend to spread two-handedness from one member of
  the compound to the other (Liddell Johnson
  1986, Sandler 1989, 1993c, van der Hulst 1996).
  If there is a constraint on number of hands
  within a word, it is not surprising that the
  one-handed negative element under discussion
  occurs only with other one-handed forms it is a
  suffix, and the resulting word must satisfy the
  constraint on handedness, whose domain is the
  word. The way in which negative suffixed forms
  satisfy this constraint is different from the way
  compounds do. The suffix avoids two-handed stems,
  while the compounds involve spreading of
  two-handedness to the one-handed member.

13
Larger implications of the I-D (non-) distinction
14
Traditional approaches to I-D

• brute force
• morphemes pre-classified as D or I properties
  are predetermined
• stratification (e.g. Anderson, LPM)
• derivation done in the lexicon
• inflection done in the syntax
• syntactic (Lieber, Selkirk, Travis, DM)
• single domain of word-formation where both I and
  D apply
• properties of morphemes derived from structural
  configuration and relative position

15
Problems 1
I D
participles productive compositional class-changing when used as Adj (broken string) can be non-compositional (drunken)
diminutives Yiddish/Itelmen order R adds -ša (f declension) to stressed syll (Pável ? Paša, Natála ? Taša) change base meaning R adjectives agree with gender of base, not -ša (ruskij/ruskaja Saša Russian Alexander/Alexandra)
aspect R (im)perfective aspect marked by presence or absence of prefix for many verbs R same prefixes can change base meaning of verbs (pisat write spisat copy)
cpv suprlv E -er -est functionally inflectional can be suppletive (worse) Sp constructions are derivational or lexical
gender Sp gallo negro black rooster vs. gallina negra black hen Sp gallo negro black rooster vs. gallina negra black hen
16
Problems 2

• Raveh and Rueckl 2000
• Previous studies of long-term morphological
  priming have obtained a mixed pattern of results
  Although some studies have found larger effects
  of inflected primes than of derived primes,
  others have found that inflections and
  derivations have equivalent effects.
• We reexamined this issue in four experiments in
  which the inflected and derived primes were
  paired with the same target words (e.g., believe,
  believed, believer) and were equated in terms of
  their orthographic similarity to the targets.
  Across these experiments, inflections and
  derivations consistently produced equivalent
  levels of priming.

17
Larger implications of the I-D (non-)distinction

• relevant to theories that organise inflection
  (but not derivation) in terms of paradigms
• Beard
• McCarthy, Optimal Paradigms
• traditional generalisations
• inflection is paradigmatic, derivation isnt
• derivatives have obvious bases, inflected forms
  dont
• McCarthy derivational paradigms always refer to
  privileged bases, but inflectional paradigms
  never do
• Albright argues that inflectional paradigms also
  have bases
• BV all such cases may involve opportunistic
  selection, not derivational architecture
• relevant to syntactic theories of morphology
• Distributed Morphology
• Selkirk

18
Conclusions

• Problems with observed I-D differences
• may have historical rather than synchronic causes
• may have extra-linguistic causes

19
References

• Aronoff, Mark, Irit Meir, and Wendy Sandler.
  2005. The paradox of sign language morphology.
  Language 81.2301-344.
• Badecker, W., Caramazza, A. (1989). A lexical
  distinction between inflection and derivation.
  Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 108-116.
• Burani, C., Alfonso Caramazza. 1987.
  Representation and processing of derived words.
  Language Cognitive Processes 2217-227.
• Caramazza, A., Laudanna, A., Romani, C. (1988).
  Lexical access and inflectional morphology.
  Cognition, 28, 297-332.
• Conlin, Frances, Paul Hagstrom, and Carol Neidle.
  2003. A particle of indefiniteness in American
  Sign Language. Linguistic Discovery 2.1.
  Available online at http//journals.dartmouth.edu/
  cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/articl
  e/142?htmlOnceyes
• Goldberg, Adele. 2005. Inflectional vs
  derivational morphology. Handout, UC Berkeley.
• Green, Laura, Deborah Schwiebert McCutchen,
  Catherine Quinlan, Tom Eva-Wood, and Amy Juelis.
  2003. Morphological development in childrens
  writing. Journal of Educational Psychology
  95.4752-761.
• Laudanna, A., W. Badecker, and Alfonso Caramazza.
  1992. Processing inflectional and derivational
  morphology. Journal of Memory Language
  31333-348.
• Levin, Iris, Dorit Ravid, and Sharon Rapaport.
  2001. Morphology and spelling among
  Hebrew-speaking children from kindergarten to
  first grade. Journal of Child Language
  28741-772.
• Marangolo, Paola, Chiara Incoccia, Luigi
  Pizzamiglio, Umberto Sabatini, Alessandro
  Castriota-Scanderbeg, and Cristina Burani. 2003.
  The Right Hemisphere Involvement in the
  Processing of Morphologically Derived Words.
  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15.3364371.
• Miceli, G., Caramazza, A. (1988). Dissociation
  of inflectional and derivational morphology.
  Brain Language 3524-65.
• Niswander, Elizabeth, Alexander Pollatsek, and
  Keith Rayner. 2000. The processing of derived and
  inflected suffixed words during reading. Language
  and Cognitive Processes 15.4/5389-420.
• Raveh, M. and G. Rueckl. 2000. Equivalent Effects
  of Inflected and Derived Primes Long-Term
  Morphological Priming in Fragment Completion and
  Lexical Decision. Journal of Memory and Language
  42.1103-119.