MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES

1

• MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES
• All languages possess the same set of grammatical
  categories (about 25) such as number (singular,
  dual, or plural), gender (masculine, feminine, or
  neuter), tense (past, present, or future),
  aspect (perfect, or imperfect), etc.
• When you begin learning a new language, you do
  not have to learn a new set of grammatical
  categories since all languages have the same
  categories you only have to learn how these
  categories are expressed in the new language. It
  is probably the case that children learning their
  first language have a similar advantage--they are
  born with these categories built into their
  cognitive system.

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• MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES
• Grammatical categories are composed of sets of
  morphological features.
• Gender features
• Feminine
• Animate
• Masculine Feminine Neuter
• Feminine - -
• Animate -
• The morphological features are also universal,
  providing a range of possible feature
  combinations that languages can make use of. Of
  course, all languages do not use the same
  features and combinations of features. For
  example, English and French do not distinguish
  the dual number, and so the feature dual is
  absent from the grammars of these languages.

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THE NOTION OF PARADIGM A paradigm is the set of
the morphological realizations of the contrastive
features of a given terminal node of the
morpho-syntax. Consider three features X, Z,
Y, of a given terminal node of the morpho-syntax
in a language L. We have the following
combinations
X X -X -X X X -X -X Z -Z Z -Z Z -Z Z -
Z Y Y Y Y -Y -Y -Y -Y Assume that each
terminal node has a different exponent (where
?n??n1)
X X -X -X X X -X -X Z -Z Z -Z Z -Z Z -
Z Y Y Y Y -Y -Y -Y -Y ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ???
???????? Thus, (?????????? is the paradigm
formed by the features X, Y, Z
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• DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGICAL TYPES OF LANGUAGES
  (preliminaries)
• Agglutinative languages vs. Fusional languages
• AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUAGES
• In a agglutinative language, for each single
  morphological category, there is a vocabulary
  item.
• (15) Turkish
• ev-ler-den
• house-plural-ablative
• from the houses
• (16) Finnish
• kirja t ssa ni --gt kirjoissani
  in my books
• N PLLocativePossessive 1sg.

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• FUSIONAL LANGUAGES
• Strings of several morphological categories are
  commonly represented by single vocabulary item.
• (17) Latin
• dom-is
• house-pluralablative
• Latin I-II declensions
• Singular Plural
• N. port-a ami_at_c-us port-ae
  amic-i_at_
• A. port-am amic-um port-a_at_s amic-o_at_s
• G. port-ae amic-i_at_ port-a_at_rum amic-o_at_rum
• D. port-a_at_ amic-o_at_ port-i_at_s amic-is
• Ab. port-a_at_ amic-o_at_ port-i_at_s amic-I_at_s
• door friend

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• See Appendix III on Portmanteaux morphology and
  feature cumulation.

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• NOMINAL GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
• NUMBER
• Singular, Dual, Plural
• Nouns in some languages reflect the number of
  objects to which they refer. English
  distinguishes only two numbers, singular and
  plural. The former is used to indicate singular
  objects or referents that can be neither singular
  nor plural (mass nouns like contemplation).
  Plural sometimes refers to singular objects, too,
  e.g. glasses, so the category is clearly
  grammatical and not semantic. Some languages,
  Arabic or Old Church Slavonic, for example, also
  distinguish objects occurring in pairs by
  assigning dual number to the noun and a few
  languages distinguish a paucal, used for
  referring to a few objects without specifying
  number
• .
• (1) Yupik Nouns
• Singular Dual Plural
• tafsi 'belt' tafsi-k 'belts' tafsi-t 'belts
• tuma 'trail' tum-k 'trails tum-t 'trails
• yuk 'person' yug-k people' yug-t 'people
• Singular Dual Plural
• (2) Plural -
• Dual - -

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• GENDER
• Some languages discriminate two types of gender.
  There is natural gender, which relates to the
  gender of the referent and distinguishes nouns
  referring to males from those referring to
  females. There is also grammatical gender, which
  has nothing to do with natural gender, but is
  only a system of noun classes . The Indo-European
  languages generally combine the two, i.e. do not
  distinguish one from the other so that in French,
  for example, la table 'the table' reflects
  feminine gender (purely grammatical) as does la
  femme 'the woman' (combined natural and
  grammatical).
• The most common genders are Masculine and
  Feminine but some languages have Neuter as well.
• NOUN CLASS
• Noun class is often closely linked to grammatical
  gender in Indo-European languages, the two
  generally overlap. Noun class is an arbitrary set
  of categories and all nouns must belong to one of
  them. There is no semantic meaning attached to
  them, although there is a tendency for nouns with
  similar meanings or of the same gender to belong
  to the same class, e.g. all feminine nouns tend
  to belong to the same class, often the names of
  trees or cities will mostly belong to the same
  class. In Chinese and some African languages,
  noun class can be based on the physical shape of
  the referent. While there are always exceptions
  to these tendencies, there is no exception to the
  rule that all nouns must belong to some noun
  class.

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( 3) Swahili noun classes and prefixes  
 Singular noun class example Corresponding
plural class example 1.  m-  person m-toto
child 2. wa- people wa-toto children  3.
m-  tree m-ti tree 4. mi- trees   mi-ti
trees  5.  ji- big/round j-oka giant
snake 6. ma-  big/round things, liquids  7.
ki- (small) thing ki-kapu basket 8. vi-
(small) things vi-ti stools  9.  N-
name  10. N-  names (of people,
insects) 11.  u- abstract/mass nouns u-pepo
wind 12.  ku-  activity  ku-soma
reading 13.  pa- place mahali po-moja one
place 14.  ku- location (towards) 15. mu-
location (inside)
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AGREEMENT Languages often have an agreement
system whereby adjectives modifying gendered
nouns must have an ending which reflects the
gender and number of the noun they modify. Verbs
also often reflect the gender of their subject
nouns and, sometimes, their object nouns as well.
Italian ( 4) molt-e ragazz-e bell-e sono
venut-e ieri many girls beautiful have come
yesterday molt-i ragazz-i bell-i sono venut-i
ieri many boys beautiful have come yesterday
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Noun classes and Agreement in Swahili (5) a. Agre
ement with modifiers wa-toto  w-a-ngu
2-child  2-POSS-1sg 'my children'
ki-kapu  ki-kubwa  ki-moja  ki-lianguka
7-basket   7-large    7-one    7-fell One
large basket fell down. b. Agreement with
subject   m-tu     a-li-kuja        m-shale
u-li-anguka 1-person 1-past-come       
3-nail   3-past-fall A person
came.               A nail fell. c. Agreement
with object   ni-li-m-tafuta  
I-past-1-seek I looked for
him/her. d. Agreement with subject and
object Yu-le  m-tu  m-moja  m-refu
a-li-ye-ki-soma   b-le  ki-tabu ki-refu 1-that
1-person 1-one 1-tall 1-past-who-7-read 7-that
7-book 7-long That tall person who read that
long book.    Wa-toto wa-na-ki-soma
ki-tabu   (SVO)   2-child  2-Pres-7-read  
7-book                        or   
Ki-tabu wa-na-ki-soma wa-toto (OVS) 7-book
2-Pres-7-read   2-child    The children are
reading the book.
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• DEFINITENESS Definite, Indefinite
• Most languages also have a way of distinguishing
  definite and indefinite objects. A definite
  object is one that the speaker expects the
  listener to already know about either from
  previous discussion or from experience. If you
  don't expect the listener to know what you are
  talking about, you would say, for example, I
  bought an armadillo today. If the listener can
  see the armadillo or if you have already
  mentioned it to the listener, you would normally
  say I bought the armadillo today.
• (6) Two Ways of Indicating Definiteness
• French
• une femme 'a woman' la femme 'the woman'
• un cachet 'a seal, stamp' le cachet 'the seal,
  stamp'
• Bulgarian
• Jena 'a woman' Jena-ta 'the woman'
• tSovek 'a man' tSovek-t 'the man'
• selo 'a village' selo-to 'the village'

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• Features of Person
• (7) First person Second Person Third Person
• I You he/she
• Speaker - -
• Participant to
• speech act -
• (8) Palaung (Burma).
• 1. ar 'you and I
• 2. E 'we (three or more, including addressee)
• 3. O 'I
• 4. yar 'we two (not including addressee)
• 5. yE 'we (three or more, not including
  addressee)
• 6. mi 'you (singular)
• 7. par 'you two
• 8. pE 'you(three or more)
• 9. Un 'he or she

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• (9) Segmentation
• O mi Un
• I you he/she
• Ø-ar y-ar p-ar g-ar Dual
• Ø-e y-E p-E g-E Plural
• (10) Featural analysis
• Ø- y- p- g-
• Speaker - -
• Addressee - -
• Participant to
• speech act -

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• POSSESSION 1st, 2nd, 3rd Singular Plural
• The category of possession indicates that the
  referent possesses the noun marked with this
  category. The functions of this category are the
  same as those of verbal person, i.e. 1st, 2nd,
  3rd person singular and plural. English marks
  possession with possessive pronouns my/mine,
  your/yours, his, her/hers, its, etc. Other
  languages, such as Turkish, use inflectional
  affixes and 'conjugate' their nouns.
• (11) Turkish Possessive Paradigm
• Singular Plural
• baba-m 'my father' baba-m-Iz 'our father'
• baba-n 'your father' baba-n-Iz 'your(pl)
  father'
• baba-sI 'his/her father' baba-lar-I 'their
  father'

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• CASE PARADIGM (DECLENSION)
• Languages require a means of marking certain
  grammatical relations in sentences that of the
  Subject to the verb, the Direct Object to the
  verb, the Indirect Object to the verb, the Means
  to the verb. Languages possess a limited number
  of adverbal relations which could be indicated by
  but are in fact always represented by grammatical
  means cases, adpositions, or both. These
  adverbal relations include Locative, Origin, Goal
  (all of which may be spatial) and several others.
  Turkish uses a set of basic Cases.
•  
• (12) The Turkish Nominal Declension
• Case 'horse' 'my horse''horses' 'my horses'
• Nominative (Subject)at-e at-Im at-lar at-lar-Im
• Genitive ('of') at-In at-Im-In at-lar-In at-lar-I
  m-In
• Accusative (D. O.) at-I at-Im-I
  at-lar-I at-lar-Im-I
• Dative ('to /for') at-a at-Im-a
  at-lar-a at-lar-Im-a
• Locative ('in/at') at-da at-Im-da at-lar-da at-la
  r-Im-da
• Ablative ('from') at-dan at-Im-dan at-lar-dan at-
  lar-Im-dan

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• (13) Russian Nominal Declension
• Case 'book' 'books' 'table' 'tables'
• Nominative (Subject) knig-a knig-y stol-e
  stol-y
• Genitive ('of') knig-y knig-e stol-a stol-ov
• Accusative (D. 0.) knig-u knig-y stol-e stol-y
  
• Dative ('to /for') knig-e knig-am stol-u stol-a
  m
• Locative ('in/at') knig-e knig-ax stol-e stol-
  ax
• Instrumental (by/with) knig-oj
  knig-ami stol-om stol-ami

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• TURKISH CASE FUNCTIONS
• (14) a. Nominative Case Subject/Accusative Case
  Object
• Halil-e kitab-i oku-du
• Halil-Nom book-Obj read-Past
• 'Halil read the book
• b. Genitive Case Possession
• Halil-in evi simdi Mehmed-in
• Halil-Gen house now Mehmed-Gen
• Halil's house is now Mehmed's
• c. Dative Case Indirect Object
• Adam-a yemek verd-im
• man-to meat gave-I
• I gave meat to the man
• d. Dative Case Goal
• Halil ev-e gel-di
• Halil house-to come-Past

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• e. Ablative Case Source (The from-Case)
• kitab-I Halil-den ald-Im
• Book-Obj Halil-from got-I
• 'I got the book from Halil
• f. Ablative Case Origin (The from-Case)
• Mehmet Istanbul-dan gel-di
• Mehmet Istanbul-from come-Past
• 'Mehmet came from Istanbul
• g. Locative Case Location (The at-Case)
• Halil ev-de kal-dI
• Halil home-Loc remain-Past
• 'Halil stayed at home
• h. Instrumental Case (Russian) (The by/with
  Case)
• MaSa napisala pis'mo karandaS-om
• Masha wrote letter pencil-Inst
• Masha wrote the letter with a pencil'

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• VERBS
• TRANSITIVITY Transitive, Intransitive
• Verbs may either accept a direct object or not.
  Those that do are transitive those that do not
  are intransitive. Some verbs can belong to either
  category depending on the context, as with the
  English verb "to eat."
• (19) ENGLISH John ate the fish John ate

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• TENSE
• Distant Past, Past, Present, Future, Distant
  Future Tense indicates the time relative to the
  speech act when an action or state took place.
  Languages are limited to five tenses distant
  past (past pluperfect), past, future, distant
  past, and distant future (future perfect).
  English has all five.
• (20) English Tenses
•   Future  I will eat, I'm gonna eat, I eat
•   Future Perfective  I will have eaten
•   Present  I eat, am eating
•   Past   I ate, have eaten
•   Past Perfective   I had eaten

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• (21) Sanskrit. (The forms illustrated here are
  all third person singular indicative active)
• present imperfect future conditional
• 'cross' tarati atarat tarisyati atarisyat
• 'move' carati acarat carisyati acarisyat
• 'forsake' tyajati atyajat tyajisyatia tyajisyat
• 'hold dharati adharat dharisyatia dharisyat
• (22) Verb stems tar- cross,'
• car- 'move,'
• tyaj- 'forsake,'
• dhar- 'hold.'
• Third person singular present suffix -ati
• The imperfect is characterized by a prefix, a-,
  and a distinct third person singular suffix, -at.
  
• The future is characterized by the suffix -isy-
  and the personal suffix that is the same as in
  the present tense.
• The conditional combines aspects of both the
  imperfect and the future it has the prefix a-,
  which is found with past tenses, along with the
  personal suffix -at, also found with past tenses,
  and, between the stem and the personal suffix,
  the conditional has the future morpheme -isy.
• (23) past present future conditional

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• ASPECT Perfective, ImperfectiveSome languages
  distinguish between whether an action or state is
  completed or not rather than between whether it
  occurred in the past. (Most languages distinguish
  both tense and aspect to varying degrees.)
• The Russian Aspect System
• (24) Imperfective Perfective
• MaSa pisala pis'ma MaSa na-pisala pis'ma
• i. 'Masha was writing letters ''Masha wrote the
  letters'
• ii. 'Masha wrote letters several times'
• MaSa piSet pis'ma MaSa na-piSet pis'ma
• i. 'Masha is writing letters' 'Masha will write
  the letters'
• ii. 'Mash writes letters'

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• Latin has six combinations of tense and aspect,
  of which representative forms are given in (51).
• (25) am-o am-av-i
• 'I love' 'I have loved'
• (present) Perfect)
• am-a-ba-m am-av-era-m
• 'I loved' 'I had loved'
• (imperfect) (pluperfect)
• am-a-b-o am-av-er-o
• 'I will love' 'I will have loved'
• (future) (future perfect)
• In feature terms
• (26) -perfect perfect
• -past
• -future present perfect

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• VOICE
• Active, Passive Most languages have a means of
  shifting the semantic emphasis from the subject
  to the object. If the subject is focussed, the
  verb is placed in the active voice if the object
  is focussed, the verb is placed in the passive
  voice.
• (27) Voice in Western IE Languages
•   LANGUAGE Active Voice  Passive Voice
•  ENGLISH   John eats the fish   The fish is
  eaten by John
•   FRENCH   Jean mange le poisson Le poisson est
  mange de Jean
•  GERMAN   Hans isst den Fisch   Der Fisch ist
  von Hans gegessen

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• MOOD Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive
• Verbs may also vary as to mood or modality. The
  three major modalities are indicative, which mere
  indicates that something occurs, imperative,
  which demands that something occurs, and
  subjunctive, which suggests that something might
  occur, usually also implying that it doesn't
  occur.
• (28) The Moods of English
• Indicative John eats
• Imperative Eat!
• Subjunctive I would eat, Were I to eat
• FEATURES OF MOOD
• Classical Greek mood system (Jensen (1990)
• (29) indicative subjunctive optative imperative
  
• potential - -
• wish - -
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• CONJUGATION CLASS
• Verbs often belong to arbitrary lexical classes
  like the nouns the verbal version is called
  conjugation class. There is no semanic reason why
  a verb belongs to one class or another they just
  do. Latin (French, Italian, Spanish) verbs all
  must bear a conjugation class marker.
• (30) The Latin Conjugations
• I. Conjugation
• amo 'I love' amamus 'we love'
• amas 'you love' amatis 'yuse love'
• amat 's/he loves' amant 'they love'
• II. Conjugation
• moneo 'I advise' monemus 'we advise'
• mones 'you advise' monetis 'yuns advise'
• monet 's/he advises' monent 'they advise
• III. Conjugation
• tego 'I cover' tegimus 'we cover'
• tegis 'you cover' tegitis 'yall cover'
• tegit 's/he covers' tegunt 'they cover

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• See Appendix IV on morphological markedness