LIGN 120 MORPHOLOGY

Review

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN
Join up into groups of 2-3 (move if you have to!), look
over the data, discuss, and answer the questions

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN
student i mir
a good male student
student- student
studenti i mir
the good male student
mirgood
student t mir
good male students
studentt e mir
the good male students
studente e mir
a good female student
studentja e mir
the good female student
studente t mira
good female students
studentet e mira
the good female students
*the particles of concord i, t and e have no concrete meaning.

Based on the given data, what inflectional dimensions does Albanian have?

What are the feature values for each inflectional dimension?

What values do the particles of concord i, t and e express? What values do the
adjectives mir and mira express?

FREQUENT INFLECTIONAL DIMENSIONS

Gender
Number (singular, plural, dual, paucal, etc.)
Person (first, second, third)

Others:
Case (nominative, accusative, genitive, etc.)
Definiteness
Tense (present, past, future, etc.)
Aspect (perfective, imperfective, habitual, etc.)
Mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, etc.)
Polarity (negative or positive verbs)

INFLECTION IN ALBANIAN
The issue: In Albanian, the forms do not seem to make a full set
of oppositions.
For the particles of concord, gender is obviously marked in the singular,
but not in the plural.
There is contrastive marking for definiteness in the plural, but not in the
singular.
So what features are expressed?

Basic principle: for a language with a given set of

inflectional categories for a given lexical category, there is
a value for each category.

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Contextual inflection: involves features determined by the syntactic
context in which they occur.
Structural cases (those required by syntactic agreement or government, e.g.,
nominative, accusative, genitive and dative).
Number for verbs.

Q: Does English have any overt realizations of inflectional case

morphology?

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Inherent inflection: involves features that are relevant to the syntax,
but convey a certain amount of independent information.
Tense and aspect values for verbs.
Number for nouns.

English inherent vs. contextual inflection:

Contextual inflection
sing/sings (person/number agreement)

Inherent inflection
sing/sang (past tense)

CONTEXTUAL VS. INHERENT INFLECTION

Two types of dependency in contextual inflection: government and

agreement.
Government: a constituent imposes requirements on a
related constituent.
Manu-s
manu-m
hand-NOM.SG
hand-ACC.SG
One hand washes the other

lava-t
wash-3SG

Latin example: the verb requires specific case markings on its

subject and object; the verb itself does not have any case
marking.
Agreement: the constituents involved in agreement are all
marked for the relevant inflectional properties: (e.g. singular
number) der
Vater
putz-t
the.MASC.SG.NOM father(M).SG.NOM brush-PRES.3SG

SOME DERIVATIONAL DIMENSIONS

A much more diverse range of meanings found in derivation than
in inflection.
Both common cross-linguistic meanings (agent noun or agentive
(paintV -> paint-erN), quality or abstract noun (kindA -> kindnessN) as well as highly idiosyncratic meanings.
Instrumental prefixes in Uto-Aztecan
with heat or fire
with the teeth or mouth
with the hand
with the nose

Form
*kuh
*ki
*maa
*mu-pi

Gloss
fire
bite
hand
nose

(with or pertaining to) water

with the butt or behind with or
from cold

*paa
*pih
*sp

water
back
cold

with the mind, by feeling or sensation with

the foot

*suuna
*tannah

heart
foot

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR

words: lexeme, word-forms
affixes, bases and roots
morphemes and allomorphs
inflection and derivation

WHAT IS WORD?
Lexeme: word in an ABSTRACT sense

Q. Is [lv] a lexeme?
A. Yes B. No

WHAT IS WORD?
Lexeme: word in an ABSTRACT sense
word-form
o sequence of sounds that express
lexeme + grammatical meanings

LIVE

lives

live
lived

living

/lvz/ = LIVE + 3SG.PRS.

WHAT IS WORD?
word-family (lexeme family)
o a set of related lexemes

READ

read

READABLE

READER

REREAD

readers

reads
reading

Q. Which one is
illustrating word-family?

A or B

MORPHOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
morphological
relationships

word formation

compounding

derivation

inflection

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Morpheme

word
morpheme

The smallest meaningful part of a

linguistic expression that can be
identified by segmentation
Free (lexical) morpheme

root
base/stem

affix

Bound morpheme
Q. How many morphemes are there in
unfriendliness?
A. 1 B. 2 C. 3 D. 4

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
root

word
morpheme

a base that cannot be analyzed

any further into constituent
morphemes

base

root
base/stem

affix the part of the word that an affix

is attached to
stem
base of the inflectional affixes

ROOT VS. BASE/STEM

readability
Q. readable is the ROOT of readability
A. yes B. no

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
word
morpheme
prefix

root
base/stem

affix

infix
suffix
circumfix

ALLOMORPHY
Two roots or affixes are allomorphs of the same morpheme if they

1) express the same meaning AND

2) occur in complementary distribution

KOREAN
John-i
Tom-ul
John-NOM
Mary-ACC
John met Tom.
*John-i-ul, *John-ul-i

manna-ss-e.
meet-pst-DECL
Q. -i and -ul in Korean
are allomorphs.
A. true B. false

ALLOMORPHS
KOREAN
ton

money

ton-ul

money-ACC

tali

leg

tali-lul

leg-ACC

chayk

book

chayk-ul

book-ACC

sakwa

apple

sakwa-lul

apple-ACC

Q. What is the right form of the accusative case

marker following Mary?
A. -ul B. -lul

ALLOMORPHY
Alternation Type
Conditioning Factor

Phonological
allomorphy

Suppletive
allomorphy

Phonological
conditioning
Lexical and morphological
conditioning

Q.

phonological allomorphy?

A. The alternation is general. There is a single underlying representation;

allomorphs are derived via morphophonological rules.
B. The alternation is idiosyncratic (item-specific). The allomorphs cannot be
derived from a single underlying representation.

ALLOMORPHY

Q. What type of allomorphy

does this example illustrate?

WESTERN ARMENIAN
da

boy

da-n

the boy

gadu

cat

gadu-n

the boy

kirk

book

kirk-

the book

madid

pencil

madid-

the pencil

Alternation Type

Phonological
allomorphy

Suppletive
allomorphy

Phonological
conditioning

Lexical and morphological

conditioning

Conditioning Factor

INFLECTION VS. DERIVATION

o Inflection

Q. thick-thicken, dark-darken, short-shorten

A. Inflection B. derivation C. compounding

- formation of grammatical forms

- depends on the grammatical context

o Derivation
- creation of one lexeme from another
- generally results in a change in lexical meaning or lexical
category

o Compounding
- formation of a complex lexeme that is made up of more than
one lexeme stem

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