Practice Problems for Nidas Principles 2 and 3 English Each of the sentences below contains examples of

ALLOMORPHS. ONE MORPHEME

that has TWO OR MORE

Identify the morpheme and its allomorphs using a structuralist type formalism, such as the following for the English plural. Give an approximate meaning/function for the morpheme. As best you can, identify the distribution of the allomorphs:

HINT ON STATING DISTRIBUTION:

List the most specialized case(s) first and proceed to the more general cases. In this way, you can formulate the general cases easily by saying, Otherwise . For example, for English noun plurals, the /-en/ allomorph is used with just two nouns (oxen, children) and the /- z/ allomorph after only a small set of consonants. Once you get those out of the way, you can make general statements for /-z, -s/. 1. I have pounded, shaken, hacked, banged, and hit the tree, but the possum wont come down. Morpheme: {PAST PARTICIPLE} or {EN} Allomorphs: / (-d ~ - d ~ -t) - n /

Meaning/function: Turns a verb stem into a past participle. Distribution: /-en/ after certain strong or irregular verbs (shake/shaken) // after certain verbs ending in t and d (hit, read) /- d/ after alveolar stops with other verbs (pounded, roasted) /-d/ after other voiced sounds (banged, hosed) /-t/ after other voiceless sounds (passed, peeked) means there are other allomorphs (sing/sang, teach/taught, etc.) 2. The wizardry of the machinery at the bakery and the brewery created a rivalry between the conservative monkery and the big-eating and hard-drinking peasantry. Morpheme: {ERY} Allomorphs: / -ery ~ -ry /

Meaning/function: the realm of, behavior, or activity associated with Distribution: /-ry/ after an unstressed syllable ending in a coronal consonant1 (rocketry, wizardry, rivalry, yeomanry, imagery [ m d i]) /-ery/ after other sounds (brewery, monkery, tomfolery, forgery)

The OED say after an unstressed syllable ending in t, d, n, l, r, , but it seems to hold for all alveolars and alveopalatals in unstressed syllables. Note imagery (pronounced with no e- despite the spelling), I cant think of any real words ending in s, for example, but if one wanted to create a noun meaning activity typical of a campus, I think it would be campusry, not ?*campusery.

Section 4 Practice Problems

Spanish preposition con (Aronoff & Fudeman 2005:73): Identify morphemes and account for allomorphs of the morpheme meaning with. Transcription is IPA. See APS reader for data. The allomorphy is quite simple: / kon ~ kom ~ ko /, with the distribution based on the point of articulation of the following consonant. Spanish verb conjugations: Here are some Spanish verbs in the present tense in two moods, indicative and subjunctive. Hacer is usually listed as irregular, but essentially it belongs to the traditional 2nd conjugation. The others all belong to the traditional 3rd conjugation. These conjugation classes work pretty much alike except that 2nd conjugation sometimes has the vowel e- where 3rd conjugation has i- (as in the infinitive). The forms are in standard orthography, which gives a pretty good phonetic representation. Note the following points: c before i and e is pronounced [s] h is just orthographic; there is no [h] in words with h in the spelling Stress is marked with an acute accent in every word in the data here, i.e. vvo is stressed on the first syllable. Standard Spanish orthography marks stress only in certain conventionalized places. Infinitives: vivr
to live

dormr
to sleep

sentr
to feel, hear

decr2
to say

hacr
to make, do

Present indicative 1 singular vvo 2 sing. (familiar) vves 3 singular 1 plural 3 plural vve vivmos vven

durmo durmes durme dormmos dorms durmen

sinto sintes sinte sentmos sents sinten

dgo dces dce decmos decs dcen

hgo hces hce hacmos hacis hcen

2 plural (formal) vivs

Present subjunctive 1 singular vva 2 sing. (familiar) vvas 3 singular 1 plural 3 plural vva vivmos vvan

durma durmas durma durmmos durmis durman

sinta sintas sinta sintmos sintis sintan

dga dgas dga digmos digis dgan

hga hgas hga hagmos hagis hgan

2 plural (formal) vivis

Some may be curious why sentir and decir have diffent vowels in their present tense forms, even though the infinitives look like they should be the same class. The answer is that in Latin, they had different vowels. The infinitives were sent re and d cere respectively. The infinitive of decir in Spanish has been changed to look like sentir and similar verbs, which are quite numerous, but the present tense forms more closely reflect the original Latin. Historicaly, decir actually goes with vivir.

Section 4 Practice Problems

(1) Roots. Find the roots for each verb and list their allomorphs in the / x ~ y ~ z / or / x y z / format. Root lexeme {VIV} {DORM} {SENT} {DEC} {HAC} live sleep feel, hear say make, do Allomorphs / viv / / duerm ~ dorm ~ durm / / sient ~ sent ~ sint / / dis ~ dig ~ des / / as ~ ag /

(2) Nidas Principles 2 and 3 and allomorphy. Nidas Principles 2 and 3 say that distinct phonetic forms constitute a single morpheme if they share common semantic distinctness AND the formal differences are either phonologically definable (Principle 2) or their morphological distribution is complementary (Principle 3). State the distributions for the allomorphs of each of the verb roots to show that we can justify their being a single morpheme on the basis of Nidas Principles 1 and/or 2. Root lexeme Allomorphs {VIV} {DORM} / viv / / duerm ~ (dorm Distribution no allomorphic variants vvo, vivmos

durm) / duerm / when stressed durmo dorm / ___]pres. indic. when unstressed dorms durm / ___]pres. subj. when unstressed durmas sint) / sient / when stressed sent / ___]pres. indic. when unstressed sint / ___]pres. subj. when unstressed sinto sents sintis

{SENT}

/ sient ~ (sent

If this were a phonology class, we could collapse allomorphy for dormir and sentir as one process. Note that ue-, -o-, -u- are all back rounded vowels (the diphthong ue- starts with one), and ie-, -e-, -i- are all front unrounded vowels. The allomorphs are thus parallel in the two roots, and we could show this using distinctive features. {DEC} / dig ~ dis ~ des / dig / ___non-front vowel dis / ___i, e when stressed des / ___i, e when unstressed ag / ___non-front vowel as / ___e dgo, dga dce decmos hgo, hga hce

{HAC}

/ ag ~ as /

Section 4 Practice Problems

(3) Tense/mood and subject marking morphemes. For this data, one can do a pretty good job of finding separate subject agreement morphemes and morphemes marking present indicative and present subjunctive. Try to find these morphemes, their allomorphs, and justify grouping the allomorphs in terms of complementary distribution, either phonological or morphological. Subject agreement Morpheme {1ST SINGULAR} {2ND SINGULAR} {3RD SINGULAR} {1ST PLURAL} {2ND PLURAL} {3RD PLURAL} Allomorphs3 /o / Distribution o / VERBpresent indicative____ / VERBpresent subjunctive____ with all present tense verbs with all present tense verbs with all present tense verbs with all present tense verbs with all present tense verbs

/s/ // / mos / / is / /n/

Present tense mood forms {INDICATIVE} / ~ ((i ~ e) e) / / ___vowel vvo /vvo/, hgo /hgo/ i / VERB3rd conj___ when stressed vivmos e / VERB3rd conj___ when unstressed vve, etc. e / VERB2nd conj.___ hce, hacmos with all present subjunctive forms

{SUBJUNCTIVE]

/a/

Ngizim: Parse the forms into morphemes and account for allomorphy. Grave accent () = low tone, no accent = high tone. You can ignore tones for this problem. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. bku m nu u t nk su bg nu d b yu m tu v du z g y burn spend a year swell up lean against degenerate become fat die lie down knowledge gabakak gamanak ga ak gatnk sak ga bg nak gadb yak g mtak gavdak gazg yak burned a year old swollen propped, leaned against foolish fat dead prone, lying down well-known

Using common semantic distinctiveness to identify morphemes (1) In the lefthand column, 1-8 are translated as verbs and 9 as a noun. Along with this semantic observation goes the fact that the verbs all end in high tone u, whereas the noun ends in low tone a. Following Principle 1, we might want to use this meaning/sound correlation to propose that u is a verb-forming morpheme and is a
Note that certain person endings attract stress away from the root. Possibly this should be included as part of the allomorphic representation.
3

Section 4 Practice Problems

noun-forming morpheme. This would turn out to be basically correct, though looking at just the data here, the hypothesis would have to be tentative because there is only one noun. (2) In the righthand column, the words are all related in meaning to the words in the lefthand column but differ from them in that the words in the righthand column all share the semantic property of being adjectival. Following Principle 1, we look for some shared phonemic property of these words that we might identify as an adjective forming morpheme. We not that all the words in the righthand column begin with ga- and end with ak, elements that are absent from the words in the righthand column. We are thus justified in proposing the following morpheme:
ADJECTIVE FORMING CIRCUMFIX:

ga--ak

(3) Root allomorphy: The affixes seem to also have the same forms, but in some cases the roots differ between the two columns. In particular, items 6-9 have a / / in the lefthand column that is missing in the righthand column. (Tones are omitted here since we will not be accounting for them.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. bak-u man-u a -u tnks-u bgn-u dbay-u mt-u vd-u zgay-a ga-bak-ak ga-man-ak ga- a -ak ga-tnks-ak ga- bgn-ak ga-dbay-ak ga-mt-ak ga-vd-ak ga-zgay-ak

It seems to be only / / that is involved. For example, the most significant difference between #2 and #7 seems to be the vowel difference. . However, / / is found in both columns of #4 and #5. These items differ from 6-9 in that two consonants follow the / / in 4-5 but only one consonant follows the / / in 6-9. The crucial difference between the two columns seems to be whether or not something precedes the first root consonant. A process of syncopeloss of a vowel between consonantsis fairly common in the worlds languages, esp. where vowels precede and follow, for example, French chaque semaine [ aks m n] each week but la semaine [lasm n] the week. The data thus fit the criterion of Nidas Principle 2 that the differences [in the pronunciation of the roots] is phonologically definable. A Nida-style formalization would be as follows: Root allomorphs: / C C ~ CC / Distribution: CC / V__V C C elsewhere

Section 4 Practice Problems

English: This problem is simple. It is mainly for practice using the Nida-style format for listing types of allomorphs and distributional patterns. The X Y formalism comes up in section 5. lout cloud blouse house mouse grouse cow cow [lawt] [klawd] [blaws] [haws] [maws] [g aws] [kaw] [kaw] louts clouds blouses houses mice grouse cows cattle [lawts] [klawdz[ [blaws z] [hawz z] [majs] [g aws] as in I saw a lot of grouse [kawz] [ktl]

Morpheme: {PLURAL} or{Z} Allomorphs: / (-z ~ - z ~ -s) z s+- z ay aw cattle cow /

Meaning/function: Makes a noun into a plural. Distribution: The list of allomorphs goes roughly from more general to more specific. For stating distribution, it makes sense to present the more specific first. Once we get those out of the way, we can use elsewhere without even mentioning environment, which goes along with our intuition that we must memorize the irregular forms but we probably supply the regular ones by a general rule or principle. {PLURAL} : cattle when singular is cow ay aw / mouse, louse / grouse, fish, sheep, deer, ___
(It may be that we memorize the words that have the plural, but they seem to have some common semantic properties, e.g. they are all animates and are either raised for food or hunted. There are words of this type that have other plurals, however, such as ducks, geese, goats, swine, etc.)

z s + - z / house___ //Z// elsewhere //Z// : [ z] / s, z, , , t , d ___ (= [+coronal, +strident] sounds) [s] / [-voice] ___ elswhere [z] elsewhere American structuralists had a level of morphophonemes, shown by enclosing a symbol in double slashes like //Z//. A morphophoneme could have several phonemic realizations, predictable on the basis of phonemic environment, as in the case of the regular plural morphophoneme //Z// here.