Morphology Exam Notes

Tough Questions

Describe polysynthesis and its distinctive features

Languages differ from one another greatly and there is no doubt that the morphological
and syntactical structure of Mohawk is quite unlike those of English. Mohawk is a
polysynthetic language while English is not. What makes Mohawk polysynthetic is that
the language has Noun Incorporation. Just like English can have compound nouns, such
as doghouse, Polysynthetic languages can have compound verbs that combine noun and
verb, eg. ‘cardrive’ to mean ‘to drive a car’. Polysynthetic languages are also Non-
Configurational meaning there is no set word order therefore it has free word order.
Polysynthetic languages are Pro-Dropping languages meaning that they delete the
pronoun in a sentence and because of this Subject and Object agreement is required in
Polysynthetic languages except for the special case when the direct object is incorporated
into the verb. Since Polysynthetic languages have free word order Syntax does not
determine what is subject or object therefore affixes must takeover this work.

Argue that morphology is separate from Syntax and Phonology

Some languages are grouped into largely arbitrary classes that determine their forms in
different environments. Latin nouns fall in to five distinct classes called declensions,
which have little or nothing to do with syntax or phonology and certainly cannot be
explained by either. The behaviour of nouns like the Latin noun nauta cannot be
accounted for using only syntactic properties (masculine gender) or phonological
properties (such as ending in –a). Instead, there needs to be a purely morphological
property, that of belonging to the inflection that Latin textbooks call the first declension
to account for how Latin noun nauta is classified since classification under any of the
declension do not rely on syntactical or phonological properties.
Also fixed order of element in morphologically complex words like unbreakable proves
morphology is separate from Syntax. This is because the morphemes in the
morphologically complex word unbreakable cannot be rearranged (ex: *breakunable,
*breakableun, *ableunbreak) while a phrase such as “I see what I eat” can be rearranged
and remain grammatical, “I eat what I see”. The meaning changes but the sentences are
grammatical nonetheless but the same cannot be said when morphologically complex
words are rearranged. Therefore there is a clear difference between morphologically
constructed words and syntactically constructed phrases and so they are separate.

Phonology and morphophonology are learned in different ways therefore it points to

them being two separate modules in a language. The English noun ‘cats’ is pronounced
/kæts/, the change of voiced plural marker /z/ to voiceless /s/ before ‘t’ is the result of a
fully automatic progressive assimilation of voiced to voiceless in front of a voiceless
stop. This change is treated as phonological by all modern theories. A child does not
learn to perform phonological operations such as the voiceless assimilations in English,
but rather fails to learn to make distinctions of voiced and voiceless in the coda thus /z/
and /s/ both signify the plural marker and speakers rarely consciously notice it shifting
from being voiced to voiceless. The phonological rule is there by default when the
underlying forms are mastered. It is therefore difficult for a native speaker to consciously
resist the application of a mandatory phonological rule. It is part of his pronunciation
habits, and it will affect his attempt to learn a foreign language or to borrow foreign
words into his own language. Morphophological rules are rules with lexical or
grammatical conditioning. An example of morphophonological rules at work is found in
English plurals of the type ‘wife’ and ‘wives’. This is because it involves grammatical
conditioning, since it is specifically the plural morpheme that conditions the change of /f/
to /v/. The morphonological rules are different because a child can freely pronounce both
alternant in the given phonological environment: there is nothing hard about pronouncing
wifes as opposed to wives. Indeed, both pronunciations must be mastered—one for the
possessive form (wife’s), the other for the plural. In addition, a child must learn
conceptually when to pronounce which configuration. Children may mistakenly produce
the plural form without the change therefore this fundamental difference in production of
words governed by phonological rules and morphophonogical rules points to the two
modules being of separate components in language.
Make an argument that morphology is not a separate component of grammar

Some languages, such as Vietnamese, do not have morphologically complex words

which points to the fact that languages don’t necessarily need morphology therefore if it
was a separate module in grammar it should be present in all languages. Some languages
use Syntax or Morphology to have tense, would languages use different components to
basically show the same thing? Does that then not show redundancy in the UG?
Therefore it can be argued that morphology is a component of syntax since the way
morphemes are put together in morphology to make words are very similar to how syntax
puts together words to make phrases therefore it is not such a leap to say it is actually
syntax that puts morphemes together to make words and the spacing we see is just
orthographic and so a sentence actually only consists of morphemes with some closer
together than others. Also some morphological components are actually influenced by
phonology such as regressive assimilation. When leaf is pluralized the voiceless /f/
becomes voiced /v/ in anticipation of the voiced plural marker /z/. Orthographically the
change is from ‘leafs’ to ‘leaves’ therefore the change is not morphologically based but
phonologically which makes a case for morphology to be a component of phonology and
not autonomous.

Define “word” or why you can’t

There are various ways of defining a word such as the Syntactical Word definition, the
Phonological Word definition and the Gramatical/Morphosyntactic Word definition but
no definition is entirely satisfactory. The Syntactic Word definition defines word as the
smallest unit of syntax, which seems reasonable since sentences are built by combining
words according to particular patterns but this definition runs into problems. In the
sentence, “The Harry Ronsen shoes sold for a million dollars” everyone would agree
Harry, sold, and million are all words and that –s is not. But at the same time
syntactically the –s has a very specific position in a syntactic tree and in both ‘shoes’ and
‘millions’ it is a plural marker and yet it is not a word. But according to the Syntactical
Word definition it should be a word. Another characteristics of word is that they are
smallest unit of language that can stand alone and we recognize the ability of words to
stand alone by saying that they are free forms. Units, such as affixes, cannot stand-alone
and are called bound forms. The problem with this definition is that certain forms that
native speakers would instinctively call words cannot stand alone such as the word ‘my’
and so this definition is also inadequate. The Phonological Word definition is a string of
sounds that behaves as a unit for certain kinds of phonological processes, especially stress
or accent. The problem this definition runs into is due to clitics which changes the stress
pattern within a word and functions like a full word with the word it leans on though
syntactically it is clear they are two separate words phonologically it is impossible to
define clitics as a separate word from the word it is leaning on. Therefore the
Phonological Word definition is inadequate in defining fully what a word is. The final
definition is a little more successful but still inadequate. Grammatical/Morphosyntactic
Word definition defines it as playing a distinct grammatical role within an utterance
therefore anything which plays a distinct grammatical role within a sentence is a word.
The problem that definition runs into is with sentences like “it rained” where ‘it’ has no
grammatical function whatsoever and yet English speakers will instinctively say ‘it’ is a
word. Therefore all the definitions touch upon important aspects of what a word is but
they all fail to fully encompass all the aspects of a word.

Contrast primary and secondary affixes and describe an alternate account for their
behaviour

In general, affixation involves the addition of an affix to a base to derive morphologically

complex words. Morphologists generally assume that there are two kinds of affixes,
primary and secondary. Primary affixes attach to a morpheme (+) boundary, so closer to
the root while Secondary affixes attach to a word (#) boundary, so they attach to a stem.
Primary affixes are of Latin-Romance origin and it changes the stress of the root word
while the secondary affixes are of Germanic origin and does not change the stress of the
stem and occur after the primary affix, eg: finite ín+finite non#fínite. The
primary affixes are idiosyncratic in meaning while the secondary affixes are more
predictable. Primary affixes can attach to non-lexical stems, e.g. inept, inert, secondary
affixes cannot attach to non-lexical stems, e.g. *unept, *unert, except unkempt where
kempt used to exist as past participle of Old English cemban ‘to comb’.

Primary suffixes: +ion, +ity, +y, +al, +ic, +ate, +ous, +ive
Primary prefixes: de+, re+, sub+, in+, con+, pre+, en+, be+
Secondary suffixes: #ness, #less, #hood, #ful, #ly, #y, #like
Secondary prefixes: de#, re#, sub#, un#, non#, semi#, anti#…

Explain why is varying morphology productivity is problematic for UG?

Varying morphological productivity is problematic for UG because if a component of

language is realized through morphology in one language and syntax in another then it
begs the question why would UG have such a redundant component in it, why would it
have two different modules doing the same work. An example of this is how causatives in
English are realized syntactically while in Japanese it’s morphologically and so how can
language be universal? An argument to support UG and bypass the redundancy problem
is to make the “on/off switch” argument where it can be argued that UG has both
components within it and that a language may choose the morphological or syntactical
form of realizing certain aspects of the language. The problem that then arises is the fact
that for some things language can use both morphological and syntactical modules. Tense
in English is realized partly morphologically (eg, the –ed in skated standing for the past)
while the future is realized syntactically through such modals as will and shall. In Latin
all tenses are realized syntactically through suffixes. Inflectional categories in one sense
are universal but such categories as gender do cause problems for the concept of UG and
this is because not all gender is biological in every language. For ex.: eau ‘water’ is
masculine in French but is feminine in Spanish aqua. Not only do certain word not fall
into the same category across languages but not all languages have the same amount of
categories for gender. Some languages recognize neuter while others do not and apart
from gender many languages inflect nouns for case, and number while some do not.
Though inflectional categories themselves may not be universal there are universal
principles governing what is inflectionally possible and what is not.

Define the difference between nominative/accusative case system and

ergative/absolutive systems.

In the nominative/accusative case system, Nominative is always in the subject position, it

is the subject for both transitive and intransitive verb. The Accusative is the object of the
transitive verb and indirect object for the ditransitive verb such ‘give’ and ‘teach’. In a
passive voice where the object (goal) of the transitive verb moves into the subject
position (e.g. Nominative) as in ‘he was hit’ there is no accusative just nominative.

An ergative–absolutive language (or simply an ergative language) is a language that

treats the argument ("subject") of an intransitive verb like the object of a transitive verb,
but distinctly from the agent ("subject") of a transitive verb. In the ergative/absolutive
case system, the ergative is the subject of a transitive verb and the absolutive is both the
object of the transitive verb and subject of the intransitive verb. e.g. ‘I hit him’ (when ‘I’
is the ergative case subject of the transitive verb ‘hit’ and ‘him’ is the object of
absolutive) and ‘him sleeps’ (where ‘him’ is the subject of the intransitive verb ‘sleep’).

Definitions

morpheme:
The smallest unit of language that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful
parts and it correspondences between sound and meaning. There are bound and
free morphemes, bound morphemes cannot stand alone and must be
attached to another morpheme while free morphemes can stand alone.

affixes:
a bound morpheme that attaches to a root or a stem to form a new lexeme or an
inflected form or a stem of an existing lexeme

allomorph:
two or more instances of a given morpheme with different varient: [-t], [-d] and [-
 ed] are all allomorphs of the English past tense suffix.

phonological word:
a string of sounds that behaves as a unit for certain kinds of phonological
processes, (especially with stress or accent). In English: every phonological word
has a main stress

clitic:
morphemes that behave syntactically as words but, unlike words, cannot stand on
its own and must be incorporated into the prosodic structure of an adjacent word.
‘t as in don’t, ‘m as in I’m, ‘ll as in we’ll, ‘re as in you’re, ‘s as in Sam’s, we don’t
consider them words, but we consider by the words - it could be the existence of
vowels, or spaces. enclitic is a clitic that attaches to the end of a word.

concatenation (blending):
term that describes morphology that builds words by the linear addition of
morphemes. motor+hotel=motel, smoke+fog=smog

truncation:
shortening of a word or stem by removing one end and leaving the rest intact. ie:
cell phone -> cell.

suppletion:
the replacement of a form that is missing from an inflectional paradigm by one
with a different root. eg: dived, dove, drived, drove, e.g. went (exists alongside
go, goes, going, gone). Problem: how did we learn that people, person, go-went,
am-are-is were the same word?

onset, nucleus, coda:

Words can be cut up into units called syllables. Humans seem to need syllables as
 a way of segmenting the stream of speech. Syllables have internal structure: they
can be divided into parts. The parts are onset and rhyme; within the rhyme we
find the nucleus and coda. Not all syllables have all parts; the smallest possible
syllable contains a nucleus only.

integrity:
refers to the inability of syntactic processes to apply to pieces of words therefore a
modifier must modify “doghouse” as a whole and not just dog or house since it’ a
compound.

diminutive:
word that indicates smallness usually through such suffixes as –let, -kin, -y eg.:
pig  piglet, munchkin, Bob  Bobby.

progressive assimilation:

(Assimilation: occurs when one segment takes on one or more phonetic

characteristics of another one, such as nasality, place of articulation, or voicing,
Assimilation can be synchronic being an active process in a language at a given
point in time or diachronic being a historical sound change.) Progressive
assimilation is said to take place when the characteristics spreads forward.

cat + s = cats, but dog + s = dogz

the affix changes

regressive assimilation:

(Assimilation: occurs when one segment takes on one or more phonetic

characteristics of another one, such as nasality, place of articulation, or voice.
Assimilation can be synchronic being an active process in a language at a given
point in time or diachronic being a historical sound change.) Regressive
assimilation is said to take place when the characteristics spreads backward.
 leaf + s = leaves (also, know, the /w/ affects the sound of /o/, it
becomes /ow/, onion, the ‘i’/j/, affects /n/, it become /nj/,
i.e. /n/ become palatalized)

path + s = paz (for some people)

run + ed = ran

reduplication

the stem changes.

productivity:

freedom with which morphological process may occur (e.g blending in English is
while infixation is not, but Tagalog has infixation) hence, a morphological pattern
is more productive than another is to say that there is a higher probability of a
potential word in the first pattern being accepted in the language than there is of a
potential word in the second pattern. s is most productive for plural in English
than, -en,

-im, -i, or zero suffix such as deer.

stress:
phonological prominence associated with syllables. it can be realized through
increased duration, increased loudness or heightened pitch. in English stress can
change the menaing of a word. For example the word “export” can either be a
noun or a verb and the only difference between the two is in its stress. If the first
syllable is stressed then it’s a noun while if the second syllable is stressed then it’s
a verb.

hiatus:
when two vowels, usually in two different words or morphemes, come up against
each other. Some languages don’t like this and deals with it through epenthesis
 while others change pronunciations like French.

borrowing:

words that are borrowed from other languages and enter into English lexicon, e.g.
French word chef was borrowed twice into English to give chief, then again to
give chef as a cook.

other borrowed word: typhoon (Chinese), tycoon (Japanese), ketchup (Chinese),

karaoke (Japanese kara ‘empty’ + English oke ‘orchestra’), buget (French),
camouflage (French, cow tow (Chinese).

analogy:
a process by which linguistic forms are created nased on proportion A : B :: C : X.
And so new words and inflections are created on the basis of regularities in the
forms of existing words. The word cow had the plural form kine but through
analogy it became cows as people thought stones was plural to stone therefore
cows must be plural to cow.

overextension:
term that refers to the use of a word to refer to objects or individuals that are
typically covered by the word, as well as to others that are perceptually similar.
e.g. a child might use the word dog to refer to all animals that walk on all four.

reduplication:
a morphological process that repeats all or part of a given word, e.g. in Tagalog,
mag-ama ‘father and child’, mag-a-ama ‘father and children’, house-house means
houses. e.g. in English such as: wishy washy.

Compounding:
a derived form resulting from the combination of two or more lexemes, e.g. space
+ ship = spaceship, dog + house = doghouse, tool + bar = toolbar, coffee + house
 = coffee house etc.

Alphabetical abbreviations:
a process for creating new words form existing words, y taking the first letter of a
sequence of word, where each letter receives its alphabetic pronounce. pc =
personal computer.

Exponence:

a morpheme that corresponds to the grammatical features. Simple exponent is

when one meaning corresponds with one morpheme and so /s/ in dogs means
plural. Multiple (accumulative) exponent is when many meanings correspond
with one morpheme therefore the /s/ in drinks means 3rd person singular present-
tense. Secondary (extended) exponent is when one meaning corresponds with
many morphemes therefore “I have not been getting fired” have + en (perfect), be
+ ing (progressive), get + ed (passive).

Noun Incorporation:
The process of affixing or infixing an uninflected form of a noun to a verb,
resulting in a complex verb. eg. baby-sit, house-hunt, sleep-walk

Subject agreement:
When the verb in a sentence must agree with the subject of the sentence, it is
often in number, person and sometimes even gender in some languages. An
example in English is in the sentence, “When John gives July the ring”, the ‘s’ on
the verb marks it as third person singular which makes it agree with the subject
‘John’ which is third person singular

Object agreement:
When the verb in a sentence is marked to agree with the object of the sentence, it
can be in number, person and sometimes even gender. In Hungarian direct objects
 trigger object agreement with the finite verb in their clause.

pro-drop:
A language where pronouns are dropped, may be partially or always. Pronouns
which in other languages would have those referents can be omitted, or be
phonologically null. Among major languages, what might be called a pro-drop
language is Japanese (featuring pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for
practically all grammatical contexts). Some languages might be considered
only partially pro-drop in that they allow deletion of the subject pronoun. These
null subject languages include many Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian,

Non-configurational:
polysynthetic languages are non-configurational in which there is no
VP constituent. In configurational languages, the subject of a sentence is outside
the VP (directly under TP specifier position) and the object is inside; in non-
configurational languages, since there is no VP constituent, there is no structural
difference between subject and object.

Because there is no structural difference between subject and object there is no

set word order therefore it has free word order.

Competence:
a speakers and hearers have in their language, i.e. what they have in their head or
the big L.

Performance:
how a language is actually used in real life situations. Performance may be
 adversely affected by many factors, including fatigue, nervousness, or
drunkenness.

Economy:
idea that ultimately in a language, we would rather make things simpler to say
thus we when speaking

Blocking:
the process by which a potential word is prevented from occurring in a language
because another form with the same meaning and function already exists. e.g.
*childs because of children, *oxes because of oxen, *foots because of feet

Causative:
(in textbook, section 7.4.3, p. 194) typically expresses the meaning ‘cause to do
something’ or sometimes ‘allow, persuade, help to do something’

Applicative:
(in textbook, section 7.4.4, p. 194) the addition of an applicative affix along with
a change in function of an oblique object (e.g. locative, instrumental), indirect
object, or null object. These come to be expressed as a main object of the verb,
often called the applied object. Depending on the language, the applied object
may be interpreted as beneficiary, maleficiary, goal, instrument, locative, or
motive.

Passive:
distinction in the forms of a verb to indicate the relation of the subject to the
action of the verb (active, passive or middle). Passive is where the object or goal
is at the subject position and the agent can follow the verb or be deleted as: A
book has been written (by John).

Antipassive:

an object of the verb is expressed instead in an oblique case or it becomes null.

 An antipassive is a voice in an ergative/absolutive language in which:

a noun phrase that normally has ergative case instead of has absolutive
case a noun phrase that normally has absolutive case is marked as
oblique or indirect object, and the salience of the normally
absolutive noun phrase is, according to some analysts, decreased.

Markedness:
is non-neutral case, e.g. English verbs are unmarked in present tense but marked
in past tense and past participle (perfect), e.g. went, gone. ‘master’ is an
unmarked form as it can refer to either male or female master, but ‘mistress’ is
marked as it can only refer to female master.

Grammaticalization:
A process by which content words become function words and lose some, if not
all, of its lexical meaning and serve a grammatical function only. An example
being the verb ‘have’ which means to posses, in some sentences it becomes a
function word such as in, “I have to go home” in this instant the word have does
not signifying possession rather it serves a grammatical function showing
modality. A well-known example of grammaticalisation is that of the process in
which the lexical cluster 'let us', for example in the sentence "let us go", is
reduced to a single word 'let's' and later to 'lets' as in the sentence "lets you and me
fight". The phrase has lost its lexical meaning of "allow us" and has changed into
an auxiliary, while the pronoun 'us' reduced first to a suffix and then to an
unanalysed phoneme.

Phonotactic Analysis

I will provide a word that cannot be a word in English and you will be tasked with
explaining the reasons why it can’t be English. I will shoot for a word with three to five
violations of English phonotactics.

-/h/ can never be in the coda

-/ŋ/ never at onset position
-if you have a consonant cluster the first must be an obstruent, the second cannot be an
obstruent
-if the first letter is not ‘s’ the second must be a glide or a liquid
-only voiceless stops can follow ‘s’, street, spear.
-no glides in English coda allowed
-all words in English have at least one syllable (at least 1 vowel)
-no geminates are allowed in English (in underlying form shown through IPA)
-/h/, /j/, /t∫/ and /ch/ not allowed in complex onset
-anything  ___h, r_____ anything, n_____  any coronals but /l/, /r/ and /∫/
-each segment in rhyme has a more (unit of weight), light= 1, heavy= >2 when not heavy
enough we stress to make it heavy, “the end”