Language attrition is the loss of linguistic abilities or the regression of specific grammatical properties and overall fluency in linguistic skills. It impacts language use, lexical access, and grammatical integrity. Non-pathological attrition is natural in situations of language contact and bilingualism and can occur in the first, native, language as well as in a second language. As a gradual and dynamic process of accommodation that occurs when bilinguals use the second language extensively, attrition is a highly individualized phenomenon and hard to predict a priori. If attrition eventually happens, it affects individuals differently, with some exhibiting more widespread loss than others. Two factors that determine the extent of language attrition in bilinguals are the availability of input and the age of the individual at the onset of the reduction in input in their native language. An important question is whether attrition mainly occurs at the level of processing or whether it affects actual linguistic competence. Theoretical approaches to attrition have emphasized its relationship with L1 acquisition, the selectivity of attrition by linguistic modules, the effects of language use on memory, and the interplay between the L1 and the L2 along the life span. We still lack understanding of how attrition affects linguistic representations and processing and the external and individual cognitive factors that modulate, predict, or prevent attrition in bilinguals.
Morphological attrition is far more common and extensive in children than in adults and it manifests itself in a variety of ways: morphophonemic leveling, morphological simplification, including omission of required morphology in obligatory contexts, paradigmatic reduction, simplification/reduction of suffixal allomorphy, regularization of irregular forms, and the replacement of synthetic forms for analytic/periphrastic forms. Morphological attrition has often been discussed in the context of language death and language loss at the community level for both child and adult bilinguals. The scant empirical evidence to date seems to indicate that the processes of omission, regularization, and suppletion that are common in attrition occur regardless of the dominant morphological type of a language. Both inflectional and derivational morphology are affected under language attrition and seem to undergo similar processes of reduction and simplification, regardless of the morphological type of the language. Within inflectional morphology, nominal morphology (gender, number, case) is more prone to attrition in the actual number of occurrences than verbal morphology (agreement, tense, aspect, mood), and attrition occurs more rapidly and extensively.
Article
Morphology and Language Attrition
Silvina Montrul and James Yoon
Article
Morphology and Phonotactics
Maria Gouskova
Phonotactics is the study of restrictions on possible sound sequences in a language. In any language, some phonotactic constraints can be stated without reference to morphology, but many of the more nuanced phonotactic generalizations do make use of morphosyntactic and lexical information. At the most basic level, many languages mark edges of words in some phonological way. Different phonotactic constraints hold of sounds that belong to the same morpheme as opposed to sounds that are separated by a morpheme boundary. Different phonotactic constraints may apply to morphemes of different types (such as roots versus affixes). There are also correlations between phonotactic shapes and following certain morphosyntactic and phonological rules, which may correlate to syntactic category, declension class, or etymological origins.
Approaches to the interaction between phonotactics and morphology address two questions: (1) how to account for rules that are sensitive to morpheme boundaries and structure and (2) determining the status of phonotactic constraints associated with only some morphemes. Theories differ as to how much morphological information phonology is allowed to access. In some theories of phonology, any reference to the specific identities or subclasses of morphemes would exclude a rule from the domain of phonology proper. These rules are either part of the morphology or are not given the status of a rule at all. Other theories allow the phonological grammar to refer to detailed morphological and lexical information. Depending on the theory, phonotactic differences between morphemes may receive direct explanations or be seen as the residue of historical change and not something that constitutes grammatical knowledge in the speaker’s mind.
Article
Morphology and Pro Drop
Olaf Koeneman and Hedde Zeijlstra
Many, and according to some estimates most, of the world’s languages allow the subject of the sentence to be unexpressed, a phenomenon known as ‘pro(noun) drop’. In a language like Italian, Gianni parla ‘Gianni speaks’ and Parla ‘(S)he speaks’ are both grammatical sentences. This is in contrast to a language like English, in which not expressing the subject leads to an ungrammatical sentence: *Speaks. The difference between being and not being able to leave the subject unexpressed (or, to put it differently, to have a ‘null subject’) has been related to the richness of the verbal paradigm of a language. Whereas Italian has six different agreement endings in the present tense, English only marks the third-person singular differently (with an -s affix, as in John speak-s). Although this correlation with rich agreement is pervasive, it does not successfully capture all the cross-linguistic variation that is attested. Languages like Japanese and Chinese, for instance, allow unexpressed arguments (including subjects) in the absence of any agreement. For these languages, it has been observed that their pronominal paradigms tend to have transparent, agglutinative nominal morphology, expressing case or number features. Trickier perhaps are languages that allow pro drop under certain conditions only. Some languages, such as Finnish or colloquial variants of German, allow it in certain but not all person/number contexts. Other languages, such as Icelandic, allow the subject to be unexpressed only if it is an expletive, the counterpart of English it (cf. It is raining) or there (There is a man in the garden). For these so-called partial pro drop languages, it is still unclear if one can relate their more restricted absence of overt subjects to other observable properties that they possess.
Article
Morphology in Australian Languages
Brett Baker
The languages of Australia, generally recognized as falling into two groups, Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan, are remarkable for their phonological and morphological homogeneity. All Australian languages exhibit a range of suffixation for grammatical and derivational categories, typically with a high index of agglutination, along with widespread patterns of compounding and reduplication, in the latter case, often of unusual types. In some Pama-Nyungan languages, case suffixation forms complex constructions indexing multiple levels of relations within the clause and across clauses, including agreement of nouns with verbs for erstwhile cases which have developed into tense-aspect-modality systems. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages tend to have more elaborate verbal structures, including such features as incorporation of nouns and adverbs, cross-referencing of multiple participants, valence-changing morphology, and systems of noun class/gender agreement across the clause, typically of four to five classes. Many languages from both subgroups have complex predicate formations, which typically inhabit a region between phrasal and compound status. Finite verbs commonly inflect for a smallish number of tense-aspect-mood categories and can often be classified into a number of conjugation classes. Nouns by contrast rarely (if ever) inflect in patterns characteristic of declension classes in European languages. Words appear to be largely right-headed, based on the evidence of noun-adjective compounds. Gender/noun class systems in some languages have been co-opted by the case system to mark case relations, and in others to realize derivational meanings such as association or part-whole relations. Pronominal agreement systems in both PN and NPN languages can reach Baroque levels of complexity in incorporating distinctions based on social categories such as sibling, social category membership (such as moeity) and kinship. Bound pronominal agreement with a single argument is exceedingly rare: if there is a verbal or clitic agreement system, it almost always agrees with at least two arguments.
Article
Morphology in Austronesian Languages
Theodore Levin and Maria Polinsky
This is an overview of the major morphological properties of Austronesian languages. We present and analyze data that may bear on the commonly discussed lexical-category neutrality of Austronesian and suggest that Austronesian languages do differentiate between core lexical categories. We address the difference between roots and stems showing that Austronesian roots are more abstract than roots traditionally discussed in morphology. Austronesian derivation and inflexion rely on suffixation and prefixation; some infixation is also attested. Austronesian languages make extensive use of reduplication. In the verbal system, main morphological exponents mark voice distinctions as well as causatives and applicatives. In the nominal domain, the main morphological exponents include case markers, classifiers, and possession markers. Overall, verbal morphology is richer in Austronesian languages than nominal morphology. We also present a short overview of empirically and theoretically challenging issues in Austronesian morphology: the status of infixes and circumfixes, the difference between affixes and clitics, and the morphosyntactic characterization of voice morphology.
Article
Morphology in Altaic Languages
Aslı Göksel
The Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic) are spread across Eurasia, from Central Asia to the Middle East and the Balkans. The genetic affinity between these subgroups has not been definitively established but the commonality among features and patterns points to some linguistic connections. The main morphological operations in Altaic languages are suffixation and compounding. Generally regarded as morphologically regular with easily identifiable suffixes in which there are clear form-meaning correspondences, the languages, nevertheless, show irregularities in many domains of the phonological exponents of morphosyntactic features, such as base modification, cumulative exponence, and syncretism.
Nouns are inflected for number, person, and case. Case markers can express structural relations between noun phrases and other constituents, or they can act as adpositions. Only very few of the Altaic languages have adjectival inflection. Verbs are inflected for voice, negation, tense, aspect, modality, and, in most of the languages subject agreement, varying between one and five person-number paradigms. Subject agreement is expressed through first, second, and third persons singular and plural. In the expression of tense, aspect, and modality, Altaic languages employ predominantly suffixing and compound verb formations, which involve auxiliary verbs.
Inflected finite verbs can stand on their own and form propositions, and as a result, information structure can be expressed within a polymorphic word through prosodic means. Affix order is mostly fixed and mismatches occur between morpholotactic constraints and syntactico-semantic requirements. Ellipsis can occur between coordinated words.
Derivational morphology is productive and occurs between and within the major word classes of nominals and verbs. Semantic categories can block other semantic categories.
Article
Morphology in Arawak Languages
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
The Arawak language family is the largest in South America in terms of its geographical spread, from Central America (Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua) to as far south as Bolivia (and formerly Argentina and Paraguay). Within South America, Arawak languages are spoken in Lowland Amazonia and adjacent regions, covering Guyana, French Guiana, Surinam, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, in at least ten locations north of the River Amazon, and at least ten to the south of it. There are over forty extant languages and a few dozen extinct ones. The genetic unity of Arawak languages was first recognized by Father Filippo Salvadore Gilij as early as 1783, based on a comparison of pronominal prefixes in Maipure, an extinct language from the Orinoco Valley, and in Moxo from Bolivia. The limits of the family were established by the early 20th century. Proposals to include Arawak languages in putative macro-groupings such as “Arawakan” or “Macro-Equatorial” have proved spurious and unsubstantiated. The heritage of Arawak languages survives in such common words as hammock, hurricane, barbecue, guava, and tobacco.
Arawak languages are synthetic, predominantly head-marking and suffixing, with a closed and historically stable set of prefixes—bound pronouns on verbs, the relativizing prefix ka- and its negative counterpart ma-. Personal prefixes distinguish first, second, and third person, and also impersonal and indefinite forms. Prefixes mark the subject of a transitive verb and of an intransitive active verb, and the possessor on nouns. In at least two thirds of the languages, personal suffixes or enclitics express the object of a transitive verb (o), and the subject of stative verbs (s
o) or the subject of non-verbal predicates. A few highly synthetic languages (including those from the Kampa subgroup in Peru) employ suffixes or enclitics to cross-reference the object and also the recipient or an oblique. There is typically a number of locative cases which can be stacked in one word. The majority of Arawak languages do not employ cases for marking core grammatical relations. The only exception is Tariana, from the multilingual Vaupés River Basin linguistic area. Here, core cases were developed under the influence of the neighboring Tucanoan languages. Inclusive–exclusive distinctions were developed in Resígaro and Palikur as a result of language contact.
Open classes are verbs and nouns; adjectives tend to form an open class, and share some features with nouns, and some with verbs. Verbal roots tend to be exclusively monosyllabic. Noun roots can contain more than one syllable. Derivational processes include affixation, compounding, and various kinds of reduplication. Just a few languages have single-word serial verb constructions. The order of suffixes within a word can be variable, reflecting the scope of the morphemes.
Nouns divide into obligatorily, or inalienably, possessed and optionally, or alienably, possessed. Obligatorily possessed nouns are body parts, kinship terms, and a few important possessions, for example ‘name’ and ‘house’. If the possessor is not specified, these nouns take an unpossessed form marked with a suffix, also used as a nominalizer on verbs in many languages. Alienably possessed nouns take a possessive prefix and an additional suffix (chosen based on the meaning of the noun). Most languages distinguish masculine and feminine genders in third person singular personal pronouns, demonstratives, nominalizations, and also as agreement markers on adjectives. More than half the languages have complex systems of classifiers on number words, and also on verbs, in possessive constructions, and on nouns themselves. They categorize the noun in terms of its shape, consistency, and animacy. Singular and plural numbers are fairly uniform across the family; dual has developed in Resígaro, as a consequence of language contact with the unrelated Bora. Other nominal grammatical categories include nominal tense, augmentative, diminutive, and approximative.
The verb is the most complicated part of the grammar of every Arawak language, and the only obligatory constituent in a clause. Typical verbal categories include tense, aspect, evidentiality, numerous modalities (including a frustrative meaning ‘do in vain’), and valency-changing derivations—passives, reflexives, reciprocals, causatives, and applicatives. Some Kampa languages have up to six applicative derivations, including comitative, benefactive, goal, presential, separative, and instrumental. Highly synthetic languages, such as Kampa and Palikur, have patterns of noun incorporation.
Many Arawak languages are located next to speakers of languages from other families. They take on their features, in grammar and sometimes also in lexicon. Tariana, the only Arawak language spoken in the multilingual Vaupés River Basin area surrounded by Tucanoan languages, has a distinct Tucanoan flavor to its grammar. Mawayana, Garifuna, and Palikur, in contact with Carib languages, have acquired a few Carib features. Resígaro has been affected by Bora, and Amuesha bears traces of contact with Quechua and other languages that are hard to identify. The interaction of genetic inheritance, language contact, and independent innovations makes Arawak languages dauntingly diverse.
Article
Morphology in Austroasiatic Languages
Mark J. Alves
The languages of the Austroasiatic (AA) language family share a core set of derivational prefixes and infixes that are largely fossilized. Beyond these, there is a wide range of morphological features throughout these more than 160 languages. Of the 13 branches of AA, there is a geographically central concentration of branches with predominantly isolating morphology (Khmeric, Monic, Vietic, and Pearic), while geographically peripheral branches have more complex morphology (Aslian and Khasic), and some with inflectional morphology (Munda and Nicobaric). Other branches are typologically between, largely lacking inflectional morphology (i.e., systematic, productive grammatical morphology) but having a somewhat more complex range of morphological features (Katuic, Bahnaric, Palaungic, Khmuic, and Mangic), including those with some grammatical functions. Other than Munda and Nicobaric, most AA languages have iambic word-level stress and have only prefixes and infixes while lacking suffixes. This has resulted in a collapsing of older morphological material, while new affixes, with new morphosemantic functions, emerge. Alternating reduplication, in which complete prosodic templates are copied but various segments are alternated, is a common word-formation strategy and sometimes combines with prefixes and affixes. While lexical compounds are common, so are pseudo-compounds with near affix-like semantic, and sometimes phonological, features. Overall, while monomorphemic words are common among the more isolating types of AA languages, ample linguistic descriptions show a substantially wider range of morphological complexity throughout the AA language family.
Article
Morphology in Cognitive Linguistics
Tore Nesset
Cognitive linguistics and morphology bear the promise of a happy marriage. Cognitive linguistics provides theoretical concepts and analytical tools for empirical analysis, while morphology offers fertile ground for testing hypotheses and refining core concepts. It is no wonder, then, that numerous contributions to the field of morphology have been couched in cognitive linguistics, and that morphological phenomena have figured prominently in cognitive linguistics.
Cognitive linguistics is a family of closely related frameworks that share the idea that language should be analyzed in terms of what is known about the mind and brain from disciplines other than linguistics. Cognitive linguistics furthermore adopts a semiotic perspective, claiming that the raison d’êtreof language is to convey meaning. Another central tenet is the usage-based approach, the idea that grammar emerges through usage, which implies a strong focus on language use in cognitive linguistics.
An example of how cognitive linguistics relates morphology to general principles of cognition is the application of general principles of categorization to morphology. Morphological categories are analyzed as radial categories, that is, networks structured around a prototype. Such category networks can be comprised of the allomorphs of a morpheme or be used to model theoretical concepts such as paradigm and inflection class.
The radial category is also instrumental in analyzing the meaning of morphological concepts. Rather than assuming abstract invariant meanings for morphemes, cognitive linguistics analyzes the meaning of morphological phenomena through networks of interrelated meanings. The relationships among the nodes in a category network are analyzed in terms of general cognitive processes, such as metaphor, metonymy, and blending.
The usage-based approach of cognitive linguistics manifests itself in the strong focus on frequency effects in morphology. It is argued that frequency is an important structuring principle in cognition, and that frequent forms have a privileged status in a morphological paradigm.
Article
Morphology in Dene Languages
Keren Rice
Dene languages are often recognized for their morphological complexity. The languages are known in particular for their complex verbal morphology, and the Dene verb word has received considerable attention in the literature. The verb word is polysynthetic, with several unusual properties: the actual morpheme inventory is relatively small, with rich word formation possibilities; it is prefixing, while suffixing is far more common amongst the world’s languages; what is a single morpheme from a semantic perspective can be discontinuous, illustrating what Whorf calls interrupted synthesis; a single morpheme can be both semantically productive and lexically idiosyncratic; some affixes are mobile; there is considerable homophony; fusion of morphemes is common; and aspects of the phonology lead to surface opacity, with unexpected allomorphy. Several proposals have been introduced to account for the structure of the verb word, and psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors that enter in to understanding the complexities of the verb word have been addressed. There is also research on the acquisition of and teaching of the verb word. Overall, it is important to ask what the structure of the verb is synchronically, and what, while interesting, is a consequence of diachronic developments.
In addition to the well-studied complexities of the verb, there are also interesting aspects of other categories. The nouns are worthy of attention for their formation, a noun classification system, and nominal possession. The directional systems of Dene languages tend to be rich, including both a root that indicates direction and a prefix that specifies distance or direction from the speaker. At least some of he languages also have evidentials, and these are, in general, understudied.
Dene languages, like many other languages of North America, are now being learned largely as second languages. This increases the urgency to study areas such as acquisition and language use in order to help in sustaining the languages in communities where this is desired.
Article
Morphology in Dene-Yeniseian Languages
Edward Vajda
Dene-Yeniseian is a putative family consisting of two branches: Yeniseian in central Siberia and Na-Dene (Tlingit-Eyak-Athabaskan) in northwestern North America. Yeniseian contains a single living representative, Ket, as well as the extinct Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, and Pumpokol languages. Na-Dene contains Tlingit, spoken mainly in the Alaskan Panhandle, and a second branch divided equidistantly between the recently extinct Eyak language of coastal Alaska and the widespread Athabaskan subfamily, which originally contained more than 40 distinct languages, some now extinct. Athabaskan was once spoken throughout interior Alaska (Dena’ina, Koyukon) and most of northwestern Canada (Slave, Witsuwit’en, Tsuut’ina), with enclaves in California (Hupa), Oregon (Tolowa), Washington (Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie), and the American Southwest (Navajo, Apache). Both families are typologically unusual in having a strongly prefixing verb and nominal possessive prefixes, but postpositions rather than prepositions. The finite verb arose from the amalgamation of an auxiliary and a main verb, both with its own agreement prefixes and tense-mood-aspect suffixes, creating a rigid, mostly prefixing template. The word-final suffixes largely elided in Yeniseian but merged with the ancient verb root in Na-Dene to create a series of allophones called stem sets. Na-Dene innovated a unique complex of verb prefixes called “classifiers” on the basis of certain inherited agreement and tense-mood-aspect markers; all of these morphemes have cognates in Yeniseian, where they did not innovate into a single complex. Metathesis and reanalysis of old morphological material is quite prevalent in the most ancient core verb morphology of both families, while new prefixal or suffixal slots added onto the verb’s periphery represent innovations that distinguish the individual daughter branches within each family. Other shared Dene-Yeniseian morphology includes possessive constructions, directional words, and an intricate formula for deriving action nominals from finite verb stems.
Yeniseian languages have been strongly affected by the exclusively suffixing languages brought north to Siberia by reindeer breeders during the past two millennia. In modern Ket the originally prefixing verb has largely become suffixing, and possessive prefixes have evolved into clitics that prefer to attach to any available preceding word. Na-Dene languages were likewise influenced by traits prevalent across the Americas. Athabaskan, for example, developed a system of obviation in third-person agreement marking and elaborated an array of distinct verb forms reflecting the shape, animacy, number, or consistency of transitive object or intransitive subject. Features motivated by language contact differ between Tlingit, Eyak, and Athabaskan, suggesting they arose after the breakup of Na-Dene, as the various branches spread across northwestern North America.
The study of Dene-Yeniseian morphology contributes to historical-comparative linguistics, contact linguistics, and also to the diachronic study of complex morphology. In particular, comparing Yeniseian and Na-Dene verb structure reveals the prominence of metathesis and reanalysis in processes of language change. Dene-Yeniseian is noteworthy not only for its wide geographic spread and for the effects of language contact on each separate family, but also for the opportunity to trace the evolution of uncommon morphological structures.
Article
Morphology in Indo-European Languages
Paolo Milizia
Indo-European languages of the most archaic type, such as Old Indic and Ancient Greek, have rich fusional morphologies with predominant use of suffixation and ablaut as formal devices. The presence of cumulative inflectional morphs in final position is also a general IE feature.
A noteworthy property of the archaic IE morphological system is its root-based organization. This is well observable in Old Indo-Aryan, where the mental lexicon is largely made up of roots unspecified for word-class membership.
In the historical development of the different IE branches, recurrent phenomena are observed that lead to an increase in configurationality and a decrease in the degree of synthesis (use of adpositions at the expense of case forms, rise of auxiliaries and increasing employment of periphrastic morphology, creation of determiners). However, not all the documented developments can be subsumed under the rubric ‘morphological decay’: new synthetic verbal forms, which often coexist with the inherited ones, are often created via resynthesization of periphrases; new nominal case forms are sometimes created through univerbation of adpositional phrases; instances of prefixation recurrently arise from former compound structures consisting of adverb (‘preverb’) + verb.
The formation of inflectional paradigms with several mutually unpredictable subsections and of relatively complex systems of inflectional classes is also observed in various IE languages. The same holds for the rising of new patterns of morphophonological alternations, which often allow the preservation of several morphological oppositions even after the loss of inflectional endings. As a consequence, modern IE languages may exhibit higher degrees of fusionality, at least in specific morphological subsystems, than their diachronic foregoers.
In the various branches, the system of inflectional morphology could undergo several reshapings at the level of both the structure of grammatical categories and the formal organization of paradigms, sometimes with noteworthy typological changes. English poor morphology, Ossetic and New Armenian agglutinative nominal inflections, lack of verbal inflection of number, and presence of numeral classifiers in Eastern New Indo-Aryan varieties are among the examples of extreme departure from the ancient IE morphological type. A common development concerning word formation is the decline of the root-based organization of morphology.
Article
Morphology in Dravidian Languages
R. Amritavalli
The Dravidian languages are rich in nominal and verbal morphology. Three nominal gender systems are extant. Pronouns are gender-number marked demonstratives. Gender-number agreement in the DP suggests an incipient classifier system. Oblique cases are layered on a genitive stem; iterative genitive and plural marking is seen. Genitive and dative case mark possession/ experience (there is no verb have), and the adjectival use of property nouns.
Verbs inflect for agreement (in affirmative finite clauses), aspect, causativity, and benefactivity/ reflexivity. Light verbs are ubiquitous as aspect markers and predicate formatives, as are serial verbs. Variants of the quotative verb serve as complementizers and as topic and evidential particles. Disjunctive particles serve as question particles; conjunctive and disjunctive particles on question words derive quantifiers. Reduplication occurs in quantification and anaphor-formation.
Article
Morphology in Kra-Dai Languages
Yongxian Luo
The Kra-Dai languages (also known as Kam-Tai, Tai-Kadai, Tai-Kradai, Daic) are generally described as one of the most representative and extreme examples of isolating and analytic types; they are tonal, lacking in inflectional morphology of the type found in Indo-European. Kra-Dai languages can be said to have no distinction for number and gender in morphology, although many languages have lexical items to indicate number and gender, and some of these are increasingly used as prefixable morphemes. The majority of basic vocabulary items are monosyllabic, but disyllabic and multi-syllabic words also abound.
The main strategies of morphological devices in Kra-Dai include the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes, compounding, and reduplication. There are also phonological alternations involving stem-internal initial, vowel, or tone changes to form doublets or word families.
In compounding, a significant number of compounds are idiosyncratic. Some are exocentric compounds. Opinions are divided over the identification of certain word classes due to their multifunctionality. Questions have been raised about the distinction between nouns and classifiers, and between verbs and prepositions, between adjectives and adverbs, among others. These word classes exhibit cross-boundary morphosyntactic features.
Kra-Dai languages possess a rich system of noun classifiers. Some of them play a crucial role in ethno-biological taxonomy imbedded in morphological systems. A number of lexical items function as grammatical morphemes in morphosyntactic operations to mark case and other semantico-syntactic relations. Serial verb constructions are widely used without overt marking to indicate grammatical relations. Temporal and aspectual meanings are expressed through tense-aspect markers typically derived from verbs, while mood and modality are conveyed via a rich array of discourse particles as well as a set of modal-auxiliary verbs and pragmatic devices. Word formation and related morphosyntactic processes in Kra-Dai are shown to exhibit features, some of which reflect what is the universal, but others, what is culture specific.
Article
Morphology in Niger-Congo Languages
Denis Creissels
This chapter is an overview of the structure of words belonging to the major lexical categories (nouns and verbs) in Niger-Congo languages, with an emphasis on the morphological patterns typically found in the core Niger-Congo languages commonly considered as relatively conservative in their morphology: rich systems of verb morphology, both inflectional and derivational, and systems of gender-number marking with a relative high number of genders, and no possibility to isolate number marking from gender marking. As regards formal aspects of the structure of words, as a rule, verb forms are morphologically more complex than nominal forms. The highest degree of synthesis is found in the verbal morphology of some Bantu languages. Both prefixes and suffixes are found. Cumulative exponence is typically found in gender-number marking. Multiple exponence is very common in the verbal morphology of Bantu language but rather uncommon in the remainder of Niger-Congo. Consonant alternations are common in several groups of Niger-Congo languages, and various types of tonal alternations play an important role in the morphology of many Niger-Congo languages. The categories most commonly expressed in the inflectional morphology of nouns are gender, number, definiteness, and possession. The inflectional morphology of verbs commonly expresses agreement, TAM, and polarity, and is also widely used to express interclausal dependencies and information structure. As regards word formation, the situation is not uniform across the language groups included in Niger-Congo, but rich systems of verb-to-verb derivation are typically found in the Niger-Congo languages whose morphological patterns are commonly viewed as conservative.
Article
Morphology in Quechuan Languages
Willem F. H. Adelaar
Quechuan is a family of closely related indigenous languages spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, in the central part of the Andean cordilleras, in what used to be the Empire of the Incas and adjacent areas. It is divided into two main branches, commonly denominated Quechua I and II, and comprises 15 or more spoken varieties and several extinct ones that can be considered separate languages, although an exact number cannot easily be established. Quechuan shares a long and intense contact history with the neighboring Aymaran languages, but a genealogical relationship between the two families has never been demonstrated, nor a relationship with any other language family in the area. Quechuan languages are mainly agglutinative. All grammatical categories are indicated by suffixes with very few exceptions. The order in which these suffixes occur within a word form is governed by rules and combinatory restrictions that can be rigid but not always explicable on a basis of scope and function. Portmanteau suffixes play a role in verbal inflection and in mutually interrelated domains of aspect and number in the Quechua I branch.
In Quechuan verbal derivation affixes may be semantically polyvalent, depending on the combinations in which they occur, pragmatic considerations, the nature of the root to which they are attached, their position in the affix order, and so on. Verbal derivational affixes often combine with specific verbal roots to denote meanings that are not fully predictable on the basis of the meaning of the components. Other verbal affixes never occur in such combinations. Verbal morphology and nominal morphology tend to overlap in the domain of personal reference, where subject and possessor markers are largely similar. Otherwise, the two morphological domains are almost completely separate. Not only the morphological inventories but also the formal constraints underlying the structure of verbs and nouns differ. Nominal expressions feature an elaborate but relatively instable system of case markers, some of which appear to be of recent formation. Transposition from one class to another, nominalization in particular, is indicated morphologically and occupies a central place in Quechuan grammar, particularly in interaction with case. Finally, there is a class of Independent suffixes that can be attached to members of all word classes, including adverbial elements that cannot be classified as verbs or nominals. These suffixes play a role at the organizational level of larger syntactic units, such as clauses, nominal phrases, and sentences.
Article
Morphology in Typology: Historical Retrospect, State of the Art, and Prospects
Peter M. Arkadiev
Morphology, understood as internal structure of words, has always figured prominently in linguistic typology, and it is with the morphological classification of languages into “fusional,” “agglutinating,” and “isolating” proposed by the linguists and philosophers of the early 19th century that the advent of typology is often associated. However, since then typology has shifted its interests toward mapping the individual parameters of cross-linguistic diversity and looking for correlations between them rather than classifying languages into idealized “types” and to syntactically and semantically centered inquiries. Since the second half of the 20th century, morphology has been viewed as just one possible type of expression of meaning or syntactic function, often too idiosyncratic to yield to any interesting cross-linguistic let alone universal generalizations. Such notions as “flexive” or “agglutinating” have proven to be ill-defined and requiring revision in terms of more primitive logically independent and empirically uncorrelated parameters. Moreover, well-founded doubts have been cast upon such basic notions as “word,” “affix,” and the like, which have notoriously resisted adequate cross-linguistically applicable definitions, and the same has been the fate of still popular concepts like “inflection” and “derivation.” On the other hand, most theoretically oriented work on morphology, concerned with both individual languages and cross-linguistic comparison, has largely abandoned the traditional morpheme-based approaches of the American structuralists of the first half of the 20th century, shifting its attention to paradigmatic relations between morphologically relevant units, which themselves can be larger than traditional words. These developments suggest a reassessment of the basic notions and analytic approaches of morphological typology. Instead of sticking to crude and possibly misleading notions such as “word” or “derivation,” it is necessary to carefully define more primitive and empirically better-grounded notions and parameters of cross-linguistic variation in the domains of both syntagmatics and paradigmatics, to plot the space of possibilities defined by these parameters, and to seek possible correlations between them as well as explanations of these correlations or of the lack thereof.
Article
Morphology in Uralic Languages
Anna Sőrés and Krisztina Hevér-Joly
Uralic languages are synthetic, agglutinative languages, overwhelmingly suffixing, and they have a rich inflectional morphology in both the nominal and the verbal domain. The Uralic family includes about 30 languages spoken in Europe and in North Eurasia and is traditionally divided into two branches: Finno-Ugric and Samoyed languages. The separation of the branches and subgroups is very distant in time; thus, these general morphological features show a notable variation.
Agglutinating is a general feature but there are some syncretisms, fusions, and suppletions and all languages have postpositions beside suffixes and some of them have prepositions.
Nouns and pronouns are inflected for number (singular, plural, and in some languages for dual), person, and case but not for gender. All Uralic languages have a case system. However, the number and the nature of the cases show a great variety: from 3 to 18 cases including grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive) and other spatial and non-spatial cases. A characteristic feature of these languages is the tripartite location system. The system of personal possessive markers is particularly interesting: the person and the number of the possessor and the number of the item possessed can be marked by suffixes. Combining the expression of possession and case, the morphotactic rules differ between the languages. Comparative and superlative adjectives can be also formed by inflection.
Verbs are inflected for person/number, tense, and mood. Uralic languages generally do not have the canonical passive voice. A characteristic feature of Ugric languages is the double conjugation of transitive verbs depending on the definiteness of the direct object. As verbal aspect is not an inflectional category, certain languages use a rich system of preverbs or derivational suffixes to express aspect and Aktionsart.
Article
Morphology in Japonic Languages
Taro Kageyama
Due to the agglutinative character, Japanese and Ryukyuan morphology is predominantly concatenative, applying to garden-variety word formation processes such as compounding, prefixation, suffixation, and inflection, though nonconcatenative morphology like clipping, blending, and reduplication is also available and sometimes interacts with concatenative word formation. The formal simplicity of the principal morphological devices is counterbalanced by their complex interaction with syntax and semantics as well as by the intricate interactions of four lexical strata (native, Sino-Japanese, foreign, and mimetic) with particular morphological processes. A wealth of phenomena is adduced that pertain to central issues in theories of morphology, such as the demarcation between words and phrases; the feasibility of the lexical integrity principle; the controversy over lexicalism and syntacticism; the distinction of morpheme-based and word-based morphology; the effects of the stage-level vs. individual-level distinction on the applicability of morphological rules; the interface of morphology, syntax, and semantics, and pragmatics; and the role of conjugation and inflection in predicate agglutination. In particular, the formation of compound and complex verbs/adjectives takes place in both lexical and syntactic structures, and the compound and complex predicates thus formed are further followed in syntax by suffixal predicates representing grammatical categories like causative, passive, negation, and politeness as well as inflections of tense and mood to form a long chain of predicate complexes. In addition, an array of morphological objects—bound root, word, clitic, nonindependent word or fuzoku-go, and (for Japanese) word plus—participate productively in word formation. The close association of morphology and syntax in Japonic languages thus demonstrates that morphological processes are spread over lexical and syntactic structures, whereas words are equipped with the distinct property of morphological integrity, which distinguishes them from syntactic phrases.
Article
Morphology and Language Documentation
Yuni Kim
What does it mean to document the morphology of a language, and how does one go about such a task? Most of the world’s languages are arguably underdocumented, yet morphological generalizations often require large amounts of primary data: thousands of word forms could be needed to establish basic patterns of allomorphy, for example, or the structure of an inflection-class system. Because of this, the major debates in the language documentation literature affect the field of morphology by shaping the nature of the data. A starting point is the idea that traditional methods of elicitation, often via translation from a contact language and inevitably requiring a patient speaker, can mask ingrained assumptions about the ontology of data and the wider context of linguistic research. Critical examination of these assumptions yields a wider range of possible approaches that can be drawn on to produce a corpus theorization (i.e., a rationale for the types of communicative events to be recorded) appropriate to each language situation. In particular, it has been argued that it is sometimes not ethical to collect language data in a decontextualized way that prioritizes (or appears to prioritize) the linguist’s goals above speakers’ goals, where those are not the same. Thus, in morphology, where virtually everyone agrees that some type of elicitation is essential, creativity and flexibility are sometimes needed to address or modify research questions. Fortunately, documentary linguistics has seen significant advances in the theory and practice of data management, making it possible to work efficiently with data from a wide variety of recording-session structures.
Of equal interest are the reasons why a decontextualized approach may be undesirable, even for the linguist’s analytical purposes. The goal of ‘documenting morphology’ is an abstract one; one can only really document word forms, and morphological structure is a product of analysis. From this fact arise a few problems. First, and even independently of the ethical issues referred to above, it is not always obvious what methods are most reliable for getting speakers to produce word forms or for understanding speakers’ knowledge about them. Different methods have complementary pros and cons, so it is usually necessary to use a mix. When working with existing data, an appreciation of the complexities of the data gathering process is useful for developing a critical approach to the background contexts, strengths, and limitations of primary sources. Second, ‘documentation’ implies a reasonable level of comprehensiveness. For many semantically or functionally defined phenomena, it is possible to make a cross-linguistically robust checklist that ensures that one has more or less covered the relevant territory. It is much less straightforward to compile an inventory of structures in any formal domain, particularly given cross-linguistic variation in morphological vs. syntactic vs. prosodic encoding of similar functional categories. In morphology, the linguist’s inventory of phenomena often keeps expanding until nearly all grammatical constructions and large numbers of lexical items have been encountered. Again, this challenge can be addressed by using a mix of methods and genres to check that one has a correct understanding of at least the most commonly occurring patterns. Spontaneous speech tends to contain constructions that fail to show up in elicitation for reasons like pragmatics or interference from the contact language, while structured elicitation or metalinguistic work is needed to fully investigate the word-formation patterns within each of those constructions, or indeed (if the linguist is nonnative) to get enough of a foothold to work with spontaneous speech at all. Checklists from the viewpoint of morphological typology tend to initially be most useful for monitoring and organizing, and later for filling gaps at a more advanced stage of research.
