Morphological theory

"This dissertation is about the elements that build verbs, the elements that introduce arguments, and how these elements interact to determine the interpretation of arguments and events. A theory of argument structure is a theory how arguments are introduced syntactically, interpreted semantically, and marked morphologically, and how this information is linked to predicates and their morphological shape. Through a detailed empirical study of Icelandic verbal alternations, this dissertation contributes to a line of research in which much of the work of argument structure is handled by the syntax, the component of language responsible for combining elements into larger structures, rather than a pre-syntactic lexicon.

The major theoretical contribution of this thesis is a syntactic theory of argument structure which is much more syntactically autonomous than its closest relatives. The system proposed shares with construction-based approaches to argument structure the assumption that structures generate meanings independent of the lexical roots embedded in them. That is, lexical roots play a secondary role in effecting argument structures. However, it differs from most syntactic approaches in that the syntax is far less deterministic of semantics, much as late insertion theories of morphology take syntax to underdetermine morphophonology.

In the present theory, syntactic structure may underdetermine interpretation in three ways. First, a functional head may be compatible with multiple ‘allosemes’, or denotations, which are decided post-syntactically on the basis of surrounding material. The categorial v head, for example, may have the interpretation of an activity or a cause (among other possible interpretations), depending on the interpretation of its complement. Second, a DP may be interpreted as an entity, or may be type-shifted to be interpreted as a (stative) eventuality. Third, a lexical root is associated with a web of possible semantic contributions, but the selection from among them is made on the basis of surrounding structure, after such structure has been built."

Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how universal and language-specific factors interact to determine affix combinability patterns. While focus has been primarily on the interaction of semantic scope and language-specific formal factors, in this paper we take a first step towards a cross-linguistic, typological perspective on a different potential influencing factor: lexical processing. Based on a corpus study, we show that derivational suffix ordering is less constrained in Russian than in English. And significantly, statistical-distributional evidence also suggests that Russian words are overall more likely to be decomposed during lexical access. This hints that the balance between whole-word storage and decomposition in a given language may partly determine freeness of derivational affix ordering, with more decomposition leading to more freedom of combination. This is consistent with an interpretation of the complexity-based ordering hypothesis.

Urban morphology is a thriving field of enquiry involving researchers from a wide diversity of disciplinary, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While this diversity has helped advance our understanding of the complexity of urban form, confusion and controversy has also arisen over the various theoretical formulations forwarded by researchers from different philosophical and epistemological backgrounds. With the aim of improving intelligibility in the field, this paper proposes a straightforward scheme to identify, classify and interpret, or 'map', individual contributions to the study of urban form according to their respective theoretical or epistemological perspectives. Drawing upon epistemological discussions familiar to the readers of this journal, the authors first distinguish between cognitive and normative studies. A second distinction is made between internalist studies that consider urban form as a relatively independent system, and externalist studies in which urban form stands as a passive product of various external determinants. Using these basic criteria, it is possible to interpret and synthesize a multitude of contributions and map them using a simple Cartesian grid. The paper highlights how contributions from seemingly different theoretical approaches to urban morphology are intrinsically similar in their treatment of urban form as an object of enquiry.

A language's morphology possesses a large set of meaningful elements, affixes, which combine in order to express an even larger set of semantic meanings; and affixation is the default rule for derivation of new words and word forms. However, of all possible affix combinations in a language, a relatively limited number really exist, which gives rise to the question: What principle(s) is/are responsible for the combination of affixes? This question is a central one in linguistic theory. As might be expected, there is much research on affix order, especially in particular languages. Overviews on the topic are, however, rare; and to the best of our knowledge, there is no study on affix order from a typological perspective. These facts make the writing of the following text a challenging task-easy and difficult at the same time.

Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of Sino-Tibetan verbs, contrasting verbal expressions of two languages with very large (Chinese, Burmese) and of two languages with very small (Bunan, Chintang) numbers of second language speakers. We find that while the amount of second language speakers accounts for differences in the range and number of inflectional categories (degrees of synthesis), it does not affect the way in which morphological constituents are bound together, reflecting fortification through a mix of diachronically stable and universally preferred patterns. This calls for theoretical models that narrow down the range of changes that are driven by second language speaker admixture, and for extensive empirical testing on a global scale.

"Kayardild possesses one of, if not the, most exuberant systems of morphological concord known to linguists, and a phonological system which is intricately sensitive to its morphology. This dissertation provides a comprehensive description of the phonology of Kayardild, an investigation of its phonetics, its intonation, and a formal analysis of its inflectional morphology. A key component of the latter is the existence of a ‘morphomic’ level of representation intermediate between morphosyntactic features and underlying phonological forms.

Chapter 2 introduces the segmental inventory of Kayardild, the phonetic realisations of surface segments, and their phonotactics. Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the empirical facts of Kayardild word structure, outlining the kinds of morphs of which words are composed, their formal shapes and their combinations. Chapter 4 treats the segmental phonology of Kayardild. After a survey of the mappings between underlying and (lexical) surface forms, the primary topic is the interaction of the phonology with morphology, although major generalisations identifiable in the phonology itself are also identified and discussed. Chapter 5 examines Kayardild stress, and presents a constraint based analysis, before turning to an empirical and analytical discussion of intonation. Chapter 6, on the syntax and morphosyntax of Kayardild, is most substantial chapter of the dissertation. In association with the examination of a large corpus of new and newly collated data, mutually compatible analyses of the syntax and morphosyntactic features of Kayardild are built up and compared against less favourable alternatives. A critical review of Evans’ (1995a) analysis of similar phenomena is also provided. Chapter 7 turns to the realisational morphology — the component of the grammar which ties the morphosyntax to the phonology, by realising morphosyntactic features structures as morphomic representations, then morphomic representations as underlying phonological representations. A formalism is proposed in order to express these mappings within a constraint based grammar.

In addition to enriching our understanding of Kayardild, the dissertation presents data and analyses which will be of interest for theories of the interface between morphology on the one hand and phonology and syntax on the other, as well as for morphological and phonological theory more narrowly."

In spite of the central position that the concept word has among the basic units of language structure, there is no consensus as to the definition of this concept (or network of related concepts). Many perspectives are needed in order to gain even a schematic idea of what words are, how words may be composed, and what relationships there might be between words. Many linguists have put forward frameworks for describing the domain of morphology, each framework proceeding from its author's assumptions, prioritizing distinct formal and functional dimensions, and therefore entering into de facto competition. This book addresses the needs of the language scholar/student who finds her/himself engaged in morphological analysis and theorizing. It offers a guide to existing approaches, revealing how they can either complement or compete with each other and ranks them on multiple continua.

Inferential–realisational analyses formalise a language’s inflectional morphology in terms of a mapping from a lexical index and a representation of morphosyntactic properties to a phonological form. Round (2009) has argued that the Australian language Kayardild requires the postulation of an intermediate level of representation, identified with Aronoff’s (1994) notion of a ‘morphome’. This morphomic level serves to express patterns of identities of exponence abstracted away from the actual forms of exponents, and its use makes possible the expression of certain identities of form which defy expression by means of Rules of Referral (Zwicky 1985, Stump 1993). This paper considers identities of form that span the inflection–derivation divide in Kayardild and shows that they too are coherently captured by assuming that a morphomic level of representation is present. A consequence is that lexical stems must possess a morphomic representation in addition to their representations on other levels.

In this paper we will discuss the notion of prominence in morphology by reviewing how morphological heads are defined through their prominence at different levels. After outlining the main issues and, specially, the problems posed by heads in morphology, we consider how prominence and headedness are dealt with in two different influential contemporary theories: Minimalism and Construction Morphology. Despite being very different in many respects, the two models agree that there is no need for a structural notion of head, because interpretability is guaranteed by the interplay of features within complex constituents.

This paper deals with the semantic structure of the verbal prefixes apo-, ek(s)-, and kse- in Modern Greek, by considering their interface with pragmatics. 223 verbal creations are examined, elicited by means of language interviews with native Greek speakers. For the sake of comparison, 495 existing verbs are considered. The analysis relies on Lieber’s (2004) framework. The interpretations of the creations suggest that the prefixes have a negative socio-expressive (SE/pragmatic) content by default. This content is a function of the base and can be formalized as a set of semantic/pragmatic conditions of a probabilistic nature on specific arguments.

This study deals with the morphology-pragmatics interface in Modern Greek compounding. The object of investigation are 64 compounds explicitly marked for stance. It is shown that the linking of denotational (semantic and/or categorial) and socio-expressive (pragmatic) heads defines the different classes of compounds in a highly restrictive manner. The threefold negative socio-expressive structure of the verbal derivatives in -(i)áz(o) shows up in the compounds as well. It is concluded that, in both verbal derivation and compounding, the morphology-pragmatics interface recruits specific denotational structures for its expression.

"Paradigm shape," our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations between inflected forms, has not been formally quantified in a gradient manner. We develop a method to formalize paradigm shape by modeling the joint effect of stem alternations and affixes. Applied to Spanish verbs, our model successfully captures aspects of both allomorphic and distributional classes. These results are replicable and extendable to other languages.

Работа посвящена изложению базовых принципов описания грамматического слова как синтагматической единицы, построенной из морфем, связанных между собой морфолого-синтаксическими отношениями. Подобное описание должно опираться на мор-фологический словарь, в котором должна быть отражена вся информация, необходимая для синтеза грамматического слова по семантическому заданию. Работа выполнена в рам-ках общей интегральной теории типа «Смысл  Текст», а именно в том ее варианте, который развивается автором настоящей работы с 1977 г. The paper is devoted to the basic principles of description of syntactic relations between morphemes. A word is viewed as a syntagmatic unit constructed out of morphemes within ther-ules of inner syntax of the word. This kind of explanation should be based on morphological dictionary, wherein all the information needed for grammatical word synthesis in line with a semantic task should be given. This kind of dictionary was coined as explanatory combinatorial dictionary by I. A. Mel'čuk and A. K. Zholkovski. This kind of dictionary is far from being completed even for lexical syntax, not to mention syntax of morphemes.. This paper sticks to a version of Meaning-text theory, which has been being developed by the author of this paper from 1977.

"Résumé
Dans son étude des mots en -Vche, Plénat (2008) affirme que le choix entre les différentes formes du suffixe est sensible à des contraintes de taille et à des contraintes dissimilatives et que l’interaction de ces contraintes est responsable d’autres alternances en français. Cependant, il prétend que le phénomène est si complexe que la version standard de la Théorie de l’Optimalité ne suffit pas à le décrire correctement et suggère d’importantes modifications au modèle. Notre analyse des faits nous mène en revanche à conclure que la TO n’est pas conçue pour décrire la compétence morphologique et que la morphophonologie ne constitue pas un module de la grammaire au même titre que la phonologie et la morphologie. Nous présentons donc un commentaire de l’analyse de Plénat et une alternative purement morphologique dans le cadre d’une théorie de la morphologie basée sur le mot (Whole Word Morphology, Ford & Singh 1991). Cette approche présente l’avantage de rendre compte de la variabilité du résultat des processus de formation de mots – dans le cas -Vche et dans la morphologie en général – en laissant au locuteurs le choix de former de nouveaux mots en utilisant l’une ou l’autre des stratégies de formation de mots qui sont légitimées par leur lexique mental.
Abstract
In his study of French -Vche words, Plénat (2008) claims that the choice between the different shapes of this suffix is guided by size constraints and dissimilatory constraints and that their interaction is also responsible for some other alternations in French. At the same time, he says that the phenomenon is so complex that Standard Optimality Theory is not enough to account for it and suggests important modifications to the model. However, our analysis of the facts leads us to conclude that OT may in principle be unable to describe morphological competence and that morphophonology is not a module of grammar like phonology or morphology. We present a critique of Plénat’s analysis and an alternative treatment within a word-based theory of morphology (Whole Word Morphology, Ford & Singh 1991). This approach has the advantage of accounting for the variability of outcome – in the -Vche case just as in morphology in general – by giving speakers the choice to use one or the other of the word-formation strategies that are licensed by their mental lexica."