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On the predictiveness of Natural Morphology
Abstract
1. Natural Morphology as represented in the forthcoming volume by Dressler, Mayerthaler, Panagl & Wurzel (1985) came into being about 1977 as an attempt to create a counter-part to Stampean Natural Phonology and to develop and systematize Jakobsonian reflections on morphological universals. In this paper I will present and exemplify some ideas and findings of Natural Morphology, of course from my own specific point of view.(Received January 02 1985)
... Morphosemantic transparency and opacity holds between the meaning of a complex word to its morphological elements. Optimal morphosemantic transparency holds if there is an equivalence between the lexical meaning of the whole and the constructed result of rule-governed combination of the meaning of the morphological parts, i.e. what has been called in German Wortbildungsbedeutung 'word-formation meaning' (Barz 1983;Motsch 1999: 26) and what is called in Corbin's (1987) tradition sens construit (Fradin 2009: 97-98).There is a common trend in the literature (Dressler 1985(Dressler , 2005(Dressler , 2006Crocco Galéas and Dressler 1992 with further references) to claim a preference for morphosemantic transparency over opacity, especially for inflectional morphology, whereas it is counterbalanced in word formation by lexicalization. These claims are still stronger for early stages of first language acquisition. ...
... Since a scale of morphotactic transparency has been successfully established and applied (Dressler 1985(Dressler , 2005Talamo et al. 2016), also the continuum between optimal morphosemantic transparency, as in Pol. kot-ek 'small/nice cat' (from simplex kot) and total opacity should be modelled by a scale, because so far we usually find only a binary distinction between transparency and opacity, either in regard to the whole complex word or to the contribution of each of its parts (e.g. ...
... We investigated whether the preference for morphosemantically transparent morphology is still stronger in early child language, as generally claimed for word formation in the literature (Slobin 1985: Clark 1993: Dressler 1985: 2005, 2006. Our Viennese acquisition data come from three longitudinal corpora of spontaneous interaction between children and parents (children's age ranges: 1;3-6;0, 1;6-3;0, 1;7-3;0) and from 24 children of a transversal quasi-longitudinal study (with 4 collection data points at the mean ages: 3;1, 3;4, 4;4 and 4;8, cf. ...
The judicious use of electronic corpora allows new possibilities in the study of word formation. In contrast to the usual way of contrasting morphosemantic transparency (or compositionality) and morphosemantic opacity (or non-compositionality) in a dichotomous way, we present a ten-step scale from maximum transparency to total opacity, exemplified with the common German diminutive suffixation in -chen and Austro-Bavarian -erl. Our corpus-linguistic investigation allows new insights into problems of distribution of type and token frequency according to degrees of morphosemantic transparency/ opacity and of the two rivalling diminutive formations. An analysis of diminutive acquisition is added as external evidence for or against previous claims. Acquisition data come from three longitudinal corpora and from 24 children of a transversal quasi-longitudinal study. Here the order of acquisition of diminutives according to the ten-step scale of morphosemantic transparency/opacity and to adult type and token frequency will be presented and the relation between morphosemantic and morphopragmatic meaning will be discussed.
... Questa qualità della MN si traduce da un lato nella ricerca di patterns universali che disegnano la strategia della morfologia nelle singole lingue e dall'altro nella costruzione di un modello semiotico di riferimento che motivi funzionalmente i singoli patterns individuati. A questo proposito, Dressler (1985b) individua cinque momenti fondamentali che modellano la struttura delle lingue del mondo: innanzitutto un livello delle preferenze universali delle lingue. Questo momento costituisce la base di preferenze intorno alle quali si strutturano i singoli tipi linguistici che invece -e siamo così al secondo momento -rappresentano «the particular choice of very natural options from some parameters and of rather unnatural (or marked) options from other parameters of naturalness» (Dressler 1985b:324). ...
... Su questo aspetto gli studi sono molteplici, e i dati empirici raccolti a livello interlinguistico sono confortanti (cf. Dressler 1985b, Dressler et al. 1987; anche i dati relativi ai nomina actionis italiani ne confermano la sostanziale validità e forza esplicativa. Per quanto riguarda invece la trasparenza morfosemantica e il rapporto morfologia -lessico, gli studi sono piuttosto scarsi (cf. ...
... While the biases of an advantaged social group may manifest explicitly in the expression of cultural stereotypes, they can also become embedded in the structure of language [8]. One way in which this occurs is in which words and contexts are "unmarked" in language, and more natural, and which are "marked" as less natural to the speaker [17]. ...
... Greenberg [23] describes markedness as a consequence of the frequency with which a linguistic construction occurs. Dressler [17] describes markedness as linguistic unnaturalness, or as morphological difficulty, while Givón [21] finds that a marked category is cognitively more complex for the speaker. ...
We evaluate the state-of-the-art multimodal "visual semantic" model CLIP ("Contrastive Language Image Pretraining") for biases related to the marking of age, gender, and race or ethnicity. Given the option to label an image as "a photo of a person" or to select a label denoting race or ethnicity, CLIP chooses the "person" label 47.9% of the time for White individuals, compared with 5.0% or less for individuals who are Black, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Indian, or Latino or Hispanic. The model is more likely to rank the unmarked "person" label higher than labels denoting gender for Male individuals (26.7% of the time) vs. Female individuals (15.2% of the time). Age affects whether an individual is marked by the model: Female individuals under the age of 20 are more likely than Male individuals to be marked with a gender label, but less likely to be marked with an age label, while Female individuals over the age of 40 are more likely to be marked based on age than Male individuals. We also examine the self-similarity (mean pairwise cosine similarity) for each social group, where higher self-similarity denotes greater attention directed by CLIP to the shared characteristics (age, race, or gender) of the social group. As age increases, the self-similarity of representations of Female individuals increases at a higher rate than for Male individuals, with the disparity most pronounced at the "more than 70" age range. All ten of the most self-similar social groups are individuals under the age of 10 or over the age of 70, and six of the ten are Female individuals. Existing biases of self-similarity and markedness between Male and Female gender groups are further exacerbated when the groups compared are individuals who are White and Male and individuals who are Black and Female. Results indicate that CLIP reflects the biases of the language and society which produced its training data.
... According to Dressler (1985a), morphotactic transparency depends on the overlap between morphological and phonological elements and "[t]here is a diagrammatic analogy between semantic and morphotactic compositionality (or transparency)" (Dressler et al. 1987: 102). Morphemes are, thus, seen as signs. ...
... For example, in a study about French suffixes, Giraudo and Grainger (2003) posit that the priming effect of affixes is dependent on the perceptual salience of the suffix and on the degree of suffix likelihood, i.e. the probability of a word being suffixed (on the priming effect of affixes, see also Giraudo 2019 Duñabeitia et al. 2007;Marslen-Wilson et al. 1997;Rastle and Davis 2008;Rastle et al. 2000. Giraudo and Dal Maso 2015 define the perceptual salience of the suffix as being determined by word stress, the size of the suffix and the "different degrees of morphotactic transparency" (going back to Dressler 1985aDressler , 2005 and of the "phonological integration of the suffix to the base", which they specify using the criteria of resyllabification and consequent morphological boundaries. ...
This paper first describes the prefixation and circumfixation processes of Mirandese word formation and determines the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence between Portuguese and Mirandese. It then analyses the permeability of Mirandese to Portuguese in word formation, specifically concerning these affixation processes, and goes on to identify the specific phonological conditions that concern the allomorphy of each affix while quantifying their morphotactic transparency. Using Natural Morphology as a framework, data from this analysis demonstrate a relationship between morphotactic transparency and the actualisation of either specific allomorphic conditions or the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence.
... According to Dressler (1985a), morphotactic transparency depends on the overlap between morphological and phonological elements and "[t]here is a diagrammatic analogy between semantic and morphotactic compositionality (or transparency)" (Dressler et al. 1987: 102). Morphemes are, thus, seen as signs. ...
... For example, in a study about French suffixes, Giraudo and Grainger (2003) posit that the priming effect of affixes is dependent on the perceptual salience of the suffix and on the degree of suffix likelihood, i.e. the probability of a word being suffixed (on the priming effect of affixes, see also Duñabeitia, Perea and Carreiras 2008;Marslen-Wilson et al. 1997, Rastle andDavis 2008;Rastle et al. 2004). Giraudo and Grainger (2015: 121) define the perceptual salience of the suffix as being determined by word stress, the size of the suffix and the "different degrees of morphotactic transparency" (going back to Dressler 1985aDressler , 2005 and of the "phonological integration of the suffix to the base", which they specify using the criteria of resyllabification and consequent morphological boundaries. ...
This paper first describes the prefixation and circumfixation processes of Mirandese word formation and determines the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence between Portuguese and Mirandese. It then analyses the permeability of Mirandese to Portuguese in word formation, specifically concerning these affixation processes, and goes on to identify the specific phonological conditions that concern the allomorphy of each affix while quantifying their morphotactic transparency. Using Natural Morphology as a framework, data from this analysis demonstrate a relationship between morphotactic transparency and the actualisation of either specific allomorphic conditions or the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence.
... Le fondamenta di questo studio poggiano su due strutture complesse di dati linguistici, diverse tra loro ma complementari: da un lato, tre repertori di dati (dataset) La scala universale di trasparenza morfotattica 13 , come originariamente ideata da Dressler (1985Dressler ( , 2005, costituisce uno spaccato sulla naturalezza dei fenomeni fonologici, morfologici, morfofonologici e lessicali che intercorrono all'interno del più generale fenomeno dell'affissazione, come presentato nella Tabella 1. ...
... implementata per esprimere la relazione tra produttività e naturalezza, questa curvatura ha permesso allo studioso di dimostrare come più è alta la trasparenza dei processi di suffissazione, più sarà alta la produttività. 13 Le scale riportate in questo paragrafo sono tratte da Thornton (1990), a loro volta riadattate e tradotte dall'opera di Dressler (1985). Abbreviazioni: RF = Regole Fonologiche; RMF = Regole Morfonologiche; RM = Regole Morfologiche; + = confine di morfema; $ = confine di sillaba; am. ...
L’indagine ha lo scopo di fornire un’alternativa alla tradizionale analisi descrittiva delle formazioni nominali suffissate, adottando una rappresentazione del significato derivazionale a esemplari (RaE) così come proposto da Bybee & Eddington (2006) e Bybee (2010). Si tratta di un approccio usage-based che considera le combinazioni tra basi e suffissi, definite all’interno di costruzioni morfologiche, come frutto di un processo di categorizzazione basata sul grado di similarità semantica con gli elementi lessicali già immagazzinati nella memoria linguistica, ovvero di cui il singolo parlante/ascoltatore ha fatto esperienza trattenendo ogni dettaglio di ciascuna istanza d’uso.
Secondo questo modello cognitivo del significato, le formazioni, legate da un rapporto più o meno stretto di similarità semantica e organizzate intorno alla formazione più frequente, si costituiscono in categorie concettuali tramite il meccanismo cognitivo dell’analogia semantica. In queste categorie, è possibile identificare alcune formazioni come più centrali e altre più marginali: ogni formazione è considerata un esemplare, ossia una rappresentazione mentale costituita dall’insieme delle istanze e dei dettagli provenienti dall’esperienza linguistica che l’utente accumula per la singola parola. La risultante rappresentazione è stata poi comprovata sperimentalmente, applicando il modello distribuzionale del significato (Lenci, 2008) in due fasi.
Dapprima, è stata testata la bontà dei diversi cluster e la loro coerenza interna in termini di stabilità dei contrasti semantici e sintattici all’interno della relazione morfologica (Bonami & Paperno, 2018), ovvero attuando una comparazione delle regolarità semantiche e sintattiche tra i vari raggruppamenti che è ipotizzata più stabile nei raggruppamenti individuati dalla RaE.
Per questa analisi, la metodica scelta è stata quella dei vector offsets (Bonami & Paperno, 2018), che consiste in una “operational definition of contrasts between words as offset vectors in a distributional vector space of the kind familiar from distributional semantics” (ivi, pag. 1).
Successivamente, l’analisi è stata indirizzata verso due dimensioni differenti: da un lato, l’articolazione analogica della complessità semantica di –ATA, dall’altro la caratterizzazione della rivalità morfosemantica tra –ZIONE e –MENTO (Bonami &; Thuilier, 2018). Per entrambe, è stato impiegato l’algoritmo per la visualizzazione dei dati t-SNE (van der Maaten &; Hinton, 2008), ampiamente utilizzato in machine learning in quanto basato su una tecnica di riduzione della dimensionalità non lineare: in altre parole, permette di ridurre lo spazio dimensionale di dati con centinaia o migliaia di dimensioni a sole due o più dimensioni, garantendo e preservando la distanza originaria dei punti all’interno dello spazio.
I risultati sperimentali ottenuti da entrambe le analisi computazionali hanno fatto emergere prove sostanziali per una rappresentazione del significato ad esemplari emersa dei tre suffissi, fornendo così spunti di ricerca e nuove intuizioni da indagare.
... All the examples I have analysed so far come from the Polish data, as in English the mechanism of reduplicative onomatopoeic expressions is not so widespread as in Polish (Szymanek (1998: 75)). 76 Consequently, I have recorded no instances of onomatopoeic reduplications in the English data. As far as the literature and the study of the acquisition of English is concerned, the issue of reduplicative phrases has been ignored; therefore, for the discussion of reduplicative images I will concentrate exclusively on the Polish data. ...
... Thus, piszu-piszu, from pisać, i.e. 'to write', stands for a ballpoint, whose primary and inherent function is that of writing. Other examples of this kind are the following: iconic reduplication symbolic 'adult' gloss czeszu-czeszu 78 'grzebień', i.e. 'comb' from czesać się, i.e. 'to comb' kic-kic 'królik', i.e. 'rabbit' from kicać, i.e. 'to jump' 76 The phenomenon of reduplication in English tends to be discussed more in the context of compound-formation than child language (Jespersen (1965), Marchand (1969)). 77 The issue of reduplication in child Polish has been discussed by, for example, Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (1997). ...
... Morphotactic (MT) and morphosemantic (MS) transparency were not typically at the forefront of investigations of paradigmatic relations structuring the lexicon, the role usually taken by synonymy, semantic fields and other semantic relations. The notions of MT and MS transparency were primarily introduced by Dressler (1985Dressler ( , 2005 within the framework of natural morphology. As to our knowledge, avenues of research on MT and MS transparency further investigated it from: a) a theoretical perspective; b) a computational-linguistic perspective, and c) a psycholinguistic perspective. ...
In this paper, we present the first study on morphotactic and morphosemantic transparency in Croatian. The study was conducted via the Survey Monkey platform and consisted of a series of tasks in which participants were required to identify morphemes or segment words with differing levels of morphotactic (MT) and morphosemantic (MS) transparency, and to provide judgments on the relatedness of words based on morphological or semantic criteria. All the motivated words from the study were produced by suffixation and belong to the general lexicon of Croatian. 101 adult native speakers of Croatian participated in the study. The study was designed to investigate the following research questions: RQ1: are suffixes and base words more accurately identified in MT transparent words, RQ2: what role morphological relations play in assessing paradigmatic relatedness between words, and RQ3: are speakers able to distinguish between derived and non-derived words. Results of the study show that both MT and MS transparency are relevant notions that need to be taken into account for a comprehensive investigation of morphological processing of Croatian derivatives.
... According to Dressler (1985), the semantic transparency of a form is a matter of degree and ranges from semantically transparent to semantically opaque. This means that at least in some of the prefix-verbs combinations, the degree of semantic transparency is sufficient to allow us to treat the (bound) verb root as path-or manner-denoting and to include the prefix-verb unit in our analysis. ...
Cross-linguistic studies of the lexicalization of motion tend to contrast satellite- with verb-framed languages (e.g. Slobin 1996; 2004; Cardini 2008; Özçalışkan & Slobin 2003; Kopecka 2004; Fargard et al. 2013, etc.) and concentrate less frequently on intra-typological analyses (but cf. e.g. Filipović 2007; Hasko 2010; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2009; Ibarretxe-Antuñano & Hijazo-Gascón 2012). Even fewer studies contrast genetically related languages (but cf. e.g. Łozińska 2018). The main aim of this study was to establish the path-saliency cline of three satellite-framed languages: Polish, Russian, and English. The analysis was based on elicited data. The overall patterns of expressing the path of motion in the three languages were shown to be caused by their belonging to the same typological category. The differences could be attributed, to a large extent, to differences in the morphological structures and in the lexical repertoires of motion-coding expressions available to the speakers of the three languages. However, the analysis of descriptions of three specific spatial situations (i.e. vertical, boundary-crossing, and deictic relations) pointed to other factors that may influence path coding in the three languages. Thus, despite the satellite-verb character of the languages examined and the morpho-syntactic differences between them, all our participants, who were native speakers of the three languages examined, tended to code vertical relations by means of path verbs. The number of tokens of path verbs used to code this particular spatial relation was found to be higher than the number of tokens of path verbs used to code deictic or boundary-crossing motion.
... As a part of morphonology (Dressler 1985a), morphonotactics is based on the theories of Natural Morphology and Natural Phonology (Dressler 1984(Dressler , 1985b. Studying consonant clusters relies heavily on the principles of Beats-and-Binding phonotactics within Natural Linguistics (Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2002). ...
This study investigates the emergence of (mor)phonological consonant clusters in L1 acquisition. Following the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis (SMH), distribution and preferability of word-medial consonant clusters in the corpus of three children acquiring Croatian were explored. VCCV and VCCCV clusters were extracted from the Croatian Corpus of Child Language. Subsequently, all word-medial clusters were tagged as exclusively phonotactic, exclusively morphonotactic, and ones that occurred in both contexts. The results partially corroborated SMH, strengthening the premise that morphological richness of a language moderates the interaction between morphology and phonology in early language acquisition. The data showed a clear predominance of morphonotactic clusters in one out of three subcorpus. Developmentally, an increase in all three cluster types was observed and generally all clusters were predominantly less preferred. Early emerging phonotactic clusters appeared to be mostly preferred, while the first morphonotactic clusters comprised less preferred combinations, with a gradual increase in preferability. Individual differences in cluster distribution and preferability blurred the role of the importance of morphonotactic information in L1 acquisition, suggesting that children employ different paths to acquire a language, but also suggesting that further exploration of this hypothesis in different languages and using different approaches is needed.
... Our view on morphosemantic transparency/opacity has been developed from Dressler (1985), to Dressler et al. (2016), Ransmayr et al. (2016) and Mattiello & Dressler (2019), cf. Talamo et al. (2016), resulting in models of grading morphosemantic transparency/opacity in various degrees of fineness. ...
This contribution is dedicated to Steven Gillis with whom we have collaborated since the nineties within the “Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition” on both child speech (CS) and child-directed speech (CDS) and also about the development of diminutives (DIMs). We investigate parallels in the use of DIMs and of hypocoristics (HYPs) between CDS and pet-directed speech (PDS), whereas CS is only marginally dealt with. When relevant, also adult-directed speech (ADS), written or oral (especially from electronic corpora, wherever available) will be compared. The presuppositions of this investigation will be stated at the beginning of the Introduction (§ 1). This involves several innovations (beyond descriptions of new data), when compared with existing literature, relevant to theoretical and typological problem areas. We will show that also in DIMs and HYPs used in CDS and PDS semantics only plays a partial or even marginal role when using more DIMs to communicate with young children and young and/or small pets, because it is more relevant that both younger and smaller pets are emotionally closer to us, which is again a pragmatic factor. In regard to language typology, we will apply our concepts of morphological richness and productivity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, to CDS and PDS and show that richer and more productive patterns of DIM formation of a language also have a typological impact on more frequent and more productive use both in CDS and PDS. We will also apply our concepts of grading morphosemantic transparency/opacity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, and we start to show, as already shown for CS, that also in CDS towards young children (and similarly in PDS) more morphosemantically transparent DIMs are used than in ADS. This is also connected to their predominantly pragmatic meanings in CDS and PDS (obviously not exclusively pragmatic as in early CS). The languages and authors were selected according to who among the participants in the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition had CDS and PDS available, plus Elisa Mattiello who has collected English and Italian PDS data.
... Ono u čemu se istraživači slažu jest postojanje određenih razdoblja u gramatičkom razvoju unutar višečlanih iskaza, razdoblja koje karakterizira razli-čita razina uporabe i samostalnosti njihove gramatičke strukture (na primjer, Tomasello 1992, Dressler 1985, pri čemu se pokušava objasniti kako dijete od najranijih iskaza dospijeva do statusa govornika koji posjeduje jezično znanje koje mu omogućava da proizvodi beskonačan broj konstrukcijski različitih iskaza. ...
In early language development complexity of syntax increases with the
chronological age. Various theoretical models attempt to describe the early de�velopment of syntax and the way in which a child from the earliest utteran�ces becomes a competent adult speaker. Tomasello offered a description of the
complexity of the syntax of utterances from single and multi word utterances
(combinations of words, pivot-schemes, item-based constructions) to abstract
constructions. Two categories of constructions are of special importance for
the description of the early syntax development: pivot-schemes and item-ba�sed constructions. Pivot-schemes are defined as two-item constructions with
a ‘constant’ element supplemented with additional elements. Item-based con�structions are less limited in lexical choice than pivot-schemes. Moreover, they
differ in their usage of syntactic marking (morphosyntax and word order), for�ming a category of increased level of abstraction in child language. The aim of
this study was to test whether a common definition of pivot-constructions and
item-based constructions matches the structures in the Croatian child language
and what their word order is considering the typological characteristics (mor�phological richness and a relatively free word order) of the Croatian language.
Two word verbal utterances in the Croatian Corpus of Child Language (CCCL
– Kovačević 2002) were studied. Pivot-constructions were selected and descri�bed together with their path to more complex item-based constructions. The re�sults of the analysis show an early usage of grammatical morphemes, which di�ffers from previous research based on the English language. According to this,
when interpreting the results for the Croatian language, interlanguage differen�ces must be taken into account. Furthermore, the applicability of a common
definition of pivot-constructions to the Croatian language is just partial. The
Croatian pivot-constructions contain specific morphological and syntactic ele�ments, different from the grammar system of adult language, but certainly with
associated meanings. The research has shown that the typological features of a
language influence the development of syntax in language acquisition and in�duce an early onset of complex grammatical elements.
... Dažniausiai garsai, kurių 1 Natūraliosios fonologijos (NF) teorija atsirado XX a. iš fonetikos ir fonologijos studijų: šios teorijos pradininkas D. Stampe'as (1969Stampe'as ( / 19791973). Vėliau NF plėtojosi skatinama Natūraliosios lingvistikos darbų, ypač susijusių su W. U. Dresslerio studijomis (1985;1993;Dressler et al. 1987 Taigi kalbos pokyčiai vyksta natūraliai, t. y. pirmiau įsisavinami lengviausi, dažniausiai girdimi, vėliau -rečiau kalboje pasitaikantys elementai. Pavyzdžiui, pirmiausia tariami CV 2 struktūros skiemenys, nes ištarti priebalsį ir balsį reikia mažiau pastangų nei ištarti priebalsių samplaiką. ...
The paper aims to analyse and compare children’s acquisition of phonotactic patterns in two regional areas in Lithuania: Southern Samogitia and Western High Lithuania. The sample of the study consisted of 48 children: 24 children living in Kelmė (representing the Raseiniškiai subdialect of Southern Samogitian) and 24 children living in Kaunas area (representing the Kauniškiai subdialect of Western High Lithuanian). The data was collected using a non-word repetition test task in Lithuanian.
In general, since in Lithuanian dialects vowels differ more than consonants, the pronunciation of vowels serves as one of the main criteria used to define dialects. The main dialect divisions are based on the variants of the stressed diphthongs uo and ie when they occur in the non-final position in a word. In the Samogitian subdialects, the vowels o and ė are pronounced as uo and ie (for example, kuoje [= koja] and dieti [= dėti]); the diphthongs uo and ie are pronounced as long vowels ū and ī.
The results of the current research have disclosed that some features of the Raseiniškiai subdialect of Southern Samogitian prevail in children’s language. For example, instead of the vowel o, children employ uo: geluoša [= geloša], talabuosa [= staligosa]; instead of the vowel u, they opt for uo: lasmuove [= lasmuvi]; and instead of the vowel e, they tend to use ei: šveila [= švela].
The results of the research also demonstrate that Lithuanian children apply the typical universal strategies of pronunciation simplification, mostly substitution and omission; other strategies, such as consonant assimilation, metathesis, sound migration to another syllable, and sound addition, were much less frequent.
... anche Harris, 1969). Inoltre, nella scala di iconicità (Bauer, 1988: 188-189;Carstairs-McCarthy, 1992: 218-219), così come in quella di trasparenza di Dressler (1985), il procedimento additivo senza regole fonologiche ricopre senz'altro il grado più alto, è più iconico e più trasparente. Seppure foneticamente quasi-identico, il prestito di de comporta una microristrutturazione del sistema delle preposizioni italiane in direzione di una minore allomorfia e una conseguente maggiore regolarità e trasparenza anche nei meccanismi di composizione delle preposizioni articolate. ...
Quale italiano parlano gli immigrati? Stanno nascendo delle nuove varietà di italiano tipiche degli stranieri? Questo nuovo gruppo di parlanti sta cambiando l’italiano? Il volume cercherà di rispondere a queste domande partendo dal presupposto che i parlanti immigrati non si limitano ad acquisire una lingua ma, in una certa misura, la ricreano, ne propongono una propria versione.
Nell’indagine empirica, svolta su un gruppo di immigrate peruviane a Torino, l’autore analizza secondo la prospettiva della sociolinguistica del contatto i fattori linguistici e sociali in grado di favorire la formazione e lo sviluppo di una varietà etnica. Questa è definita come una varietà di lingua che si sviluppa attraverso il contatto tra lingua di origine del migrante e lingua di arrivo del paese ospite e caratterizza chi la parla come membro di un particolare gruppo etnico.
Oltre ai risultati della ricerca, nel testo sono esposti e discussi in modo sistematico molti dei temi centrali della sociolinguistica del contatto (pidgin, creoli, lingue miste, fenomeni di interferenza ecc.). In tal modo il volume si propone non soltanto come una lettura per specialisti del settore, ma anche per insegnanti e operatori nel campo della comunicazione e mediazione interculturale.
... Il loro lavoro si inserisce all'interno del quadro teorico della Morfologia Naturale (d'ora in poi MN; cfr. Dressler (1985), Dressler e Tonelli (1993)) e propone un'analisi dei parasintetici in termini di circonfissazione. Secondo gli autori, infatti, il processo parasintetico sarebbe caratterizzato da due operazioni simultanee: la prima consiste in una prefissazione, la seconda in un'operazione definita come metafora morfologica (cfr. ...
La mia tesi propone un’analisi des verbi parasintetici dell’italiano nel quadro teorico della Construction Morphology. La definizione di parasintesi diffusa in letteratura corrisponde a ‘doppia affissazione simultanea su una base di derivazione’ ([préf+[X]N/A+suff]V, cf. ad esempio IMBARCARE). Questa particolarità è motivata dall’impossibilità di attestare la ‘tappa intermedia’ di derivazione tra la base e il verbo costruito (cf. BARCA, *IMBARCA, *BARCARE). Questa definizione è dovuta ad un’analisi morfemica, incrementale e concatenativa e presuppone che i processi derivazionali siano concepiti come regole orientate. Nell’analisi proposta, al contrario, sono definiti come parasintetici tutti i verbi costruiti tramite prefissazione. Questa definizione si basa esclusivamente sul parametro di appartenenza allo schema [pref[X]N/A]V (il suffisso è di tipo flessivo). Secondo la prospettiva adottata, la mancata attestazione di una forma è un parametro che risulta, oltre che insufficientemente affidabile da un punto di vista empirico, persino irrilevante dal punto di vista di una teoria basata sull’idea che i processi siano non orientati. Il corpus utilizzato contiene 1674 lessemi estratti automaticamente da ItWaC. Le variabili strutturali dei verbi in questione corrispondono (i) al prefisso selezionato (a-, in-, s-, de-, dis-), (ii) alla classe flessiva (-are, -ire), (iii) alla categoria della base (N, A). Ogni lessema, definito come costruzione, è l’associazione tra una forma (il risultato della combinazione delle variabili) e di un valore semantico olistico. I valori semantici identificati sono : (i) cambiamento di stato, (ii) cambiamento di relazione locativa e (iii) valore intensivo/iterativo. Per i primi due valori è stata proposta un’analisi unificata all’interno di un’unica componente semantica che esprime il cambiamento (formalizzata con il predicato BECOME), mentre la classe di verbi che esprimono il valore (iii) rimane esclusa da questa generalizzazione.
... Un altro modello all'interno del quale il suppletivismo viene considerato come un'aberrazione è quello della Morfologia Naturale (Mayerthaler, 1981;Dressler, 1985a;Dressler et al. 1987;Fertig, 1998). Questa corrente si basa sul presupposto che nel linguaggio umano il rapporto ideale tra forma e significato sia 1:1 (una forma per ogni significato e un significato per ogni forma). ...
... Ono u čemu se istraživači slažu jest postojanje određenih razdoblja u gramatičkom razvoju unutar višečlanih iskaza, razdoblja koje karakterizira razli-čita razina uporabe i samostalnosti njihove gramatičke strukture (na primjer, Tomasello 1992, Dressler 1985, pri čemu se pokušava objasniti kako dijete od najranijih iskaza dospijeva do statusa govornika koji posjeduje jezično znanje koje mu omogućava da proizvodi beskonačan broj konstrukcijski različitih iskaza. ...
In early language development complexity of syntax increases with the chronological age. Various theoretical models attempt to describe the early de-velopment of syntax and the way in which a child from the earliest utteran-ces becomes a competent adult speaker. Tomasello offered a description of the complexity of the syntax of utterances from single and multi word utterances (combinations of words, pivot-schemes, item-based constructions) to abstract constructions. Two categories of constructions are of special importance for the description of the early syntax development: pivot-schemes and item-ba-sed constructions. Pivot-schemes are defined as two-item constructions with a ‘constant’ element supplemented with additional elements. Item-based con-structions are less limited in lexical choice than pivot-schemes. Moreover, they differ in their usage of syntactic marking (morphosyntax and word order), for-ming a category of increased level of abstraction in child language. The aim of this study was to test whether a common definition of pivot-constructions and item-based constructions matches the structures in the Croatian child language and what their word order is considering the typological characteristics (mor-phological richness and a relatively free word order) of the Croatian language. Two word verbal utterances in the Croatian Corpus of Child Language (CCCL
– Kovačević 2002) were studied. Pivot-constructions were selected and descri-bed together with their path to more complex item-based constructions. The re-sults of the analysis show an early usage of grammatical morphemes, which di-ffers from previous research based on the English language. According to this, when interpreting the results for the Croatian language, interlanguage differen-ces must be taken into account. Furthermore, the applicability of a common definition of pivot-constructions to the Croatian language is just partial. The Croatian pivot-constructions contain specific morphological and syntactic ele-ments, different from the grammar system of adult language, but certainly with associated meanings. The research has shown that the typological features of a language influence the development of syntax in language acquisition and in-duce an early onset of complex grammatical elements.
... 17 Libben (1998:37) observa, corretamente na minha opinião, que palavras, tais como shorhorn "calçadeira", são parcialmente opacas, visto que a primeira parte é conhecida enquanto que a segunda não é. Bauer (2001:52) também examina uma hierarquia da transparência segundo a formulação de Dressler (1985). Parece claro que o supletivismo, como foi mostrado, de fato cria opacidade (ex: be vs. am, etc.). ...
Toda língua tem seu quinhão de discrepância no que se refere a palavras idiossincráticas, expressões e à forma de organizar seu vocabulário. O árabe, por exemplo, tem muitos lexemas, locuções e expressões que usam o plural, mas que ao serem traduzidos ao inglês, usam o singular. O plural nestes casos é claramente marcado em árabe, e aquilo ao qual se refere pode ser explicado em termos da noção de uma pluralidade semanticamente transparente. Do ponto de vista da lógica da semântica e da estrutura cognitiva, a “dialetologia” estuda dialetos, normalmente muitos dialetos, e não apenas um — o que confere à marcação do plural um sentido lógico. Usando um esquema lingüístico cognitivo diretamente ligado ao pensamento e à estrutura conceitual, esta pesquisa sugere que um falante do árabe conceba uma imagem mental de como um plural paralelo à noção de plural inerente em “informações”. Neste ensaio, muitos temas serão explorados a fundo, com vários exemplos do árabe e de outras línguas para propósitos ilustrativos e comparativos. Embora a língua árabe prefira a pluralização na maioria dos exemplos, há diversas exceções notáveis à tendência geral em vários itens lexicais e expressões. Serão dadas razões para explicar-se a maioria delas.
... Let us now consider the perceptual salience of the suffixes. We defined it according to the following criteria: (i) SIZE of the suffix (number of phonemes and graphemes); (ii) DIFFERENT DEGREES of MORPHO-TACTIC TRANSPARENCY (Dressler 1985) and of phonological integration of the suffix with the stem, in particular in relation to the phenomenon of: ...
A masked priming experiment was conducted in order to determine whether suffixes and morphological schemas play a role in the access and processing of Italian complex words like bases do and, more precisely, whether (i) the suffix salience and (ii) the consistency of the suffix series affect processing. To this end, three suffixes with different perceptual characteristics, i.e., –tore, –ico and –etto, and whose series present a different degree of functional consistency, were manipulated. The results indicate very clear base priming effects for –tore and –ico targets (e.g., nostalgia-nostaligico; pescare-pescatore) but no effect for –etto targets. On the other hand, while the suffix priming condition did not reveal any effect for –tore and –ico (e.g., sinfonico-nostaligico; traditore–pescatore) compared to the unrelated condition, –etto series yielded the longest reaction times (RTs). The distributional properties, together with the non-prototypical semantic and functional characteristics of –etto, seem therefore to affect also the relation between the base and the suffixed word. We conclude that different nature of morphological entities might imply different priming effects and that suffixes might need more activation than bases to emerge.
The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet to learn.
The article is devoted to the consideration of tools for positioning banking services, analysis of the structure of response to a negative customer review, systematization of ways to resolve a conflict situation and strengthening a positive image of the organization in the minds of the target audience. Particular attention is paid to the typology of strategies and tactics aimed at resolving a conflict that caused a negative feedback from a client. The material of the study was advertising and PR texts initiated by Pochta Bank (2016–2022), as well as texts of customer reviews of Pochta Bank and responses from employees of the bank in question on the Banki.ru portal (more than 500 messages). When analyzing the material, the following methods were used: descriptive-analytical method; classification method, comparative analysis, content analysis; conceptual analysis. The study showed that through advertising and PR activitie Pochta Bank seeks to form the following image-forming (positioning) categories in the minds of the target audience: accessibility, profitability, reliability, stability of financial services provided, social orientation of the bank. As a result of analyzing the responses of bank employees, the authors came to the conclusion that when resolving conflict situations, Pochta Bank does not use neutral (ignoring, silence, silence) and destructive (pressure, demands, refusal, indignation) strategies. The following communication strategies and tactics are in the arsenal of bank employees: strategy of accession (tactics of consent,concession, attracting attention); cooperation strategy (tactics of sympathy, support, persuasion, suggestions, consent); compromise strategy (tactics of persuasion, consent, encouragement).
Polazeći od građe iz referentnih rječnika srpskog jezika, kao i relevantnih teorija nacije i proprijalnosti, u radu se bavimo imenima naroda i nazivima stanovnika fiziografskih i administrativnih regija. Lingvistička obilježja tih jedinica rekonstruišemo s obzirom na sva tri ugla semiotičkog trougla: gramatički, semantički i pragmatički. Iz gramatičkog aspekta, uglavnom u osloncu na teorijski okvir tzv. prirodne morfologije, zaključujemo da je kanonski oblik etnonimâ množinski ako su posrijedi oznake naroda, a jedninski ako su posrijedi oznake stanovnika fiziografskih i administrativnih regija. Preispitujući status oznaka naroda u podjeli imenica prema značenju, zaključujemo da su one vlastite ako upućuju na narod kao cjelinu, a zajedničke ako se odnose na pripadnike te cjeline kao pojedince. Iz semantičkog i pragmatičkog aspekta, uglavnom u osloncu na rezultate primjene dviju istraživačkih metoda – rekonstrukcije onomasiološkog portreta, razrađene u uralskoj onomastičkoj školi, i rekonstrukcije pseudokomparacijskog portreta, koju smo razradili sami – zaključujemo da su stereotipi pojedinih naroda i regionalnih grupa kodirani unutar srpskog jezika, pa i van njega, ali tako da se manifestuju kroz govor, mnogobrojni i sve brojniji kako se čovječanstvo primiče idealu svijeta kao globalnog sela, a odmiče od primitivnih predstava o Drugome kao, u osnovi, lažljivom i prevrtljivom. Povodom denotacije etnonimâ, a na osnovu uvidâ u složenu mrežu taksonimije/meronimije, antonimije, sinonimije, polisemije, i, naročito, paronimije, koja ih karakteriše mimo svih (ostalih) jedinica onomastičkog fonda, zaključujemo da etnonimi – čak ni u slučajevima gdje predstavljaju vlastite imenice – nisu prava, prototipska imena, nego kategorija na međi s leksičkim fondom. Pored što kompletnijeg opisa etnonimije srpskog jezika i njenih tvorbenih obrazaca, sprovedeno istražavanje trebalo je da obezbijedi i originalan doprinos na polju primijenjene lingvistike – opisom i objašnjenjem mjerilâ u standardizaciji etnonimikona i leksikografske prakse u njegovoj obradi, kao i preporukama koje bi tu obradu mogle da ujednače, ubrzaju, olakšaju i, po mogućstvu, unaprijede. U najužoj naučnoj oblasti, etnonimike, doprinos smo pokušali dati i ograničenim promjenama preporučenim u sferi terminologije i njenog opisa.
Le présent état de l’art dresse la situation contemporaine de la morphologie, de façon générale et en France en particulier. Plutôt que de lister et caractériser, de façon nécessairement trop succincte, les différents courants en concurrence, l'article propose d’articuler cet état de l’art autour de quelques-unes des grandes questions qui traversent le champ : sont ainsi successivement abordées la question de l’autonomie de la morphologie relativement à d’autres composantes de la grammaire, celle de l’unité de compte de la morphologie, pour finir par les types d’approche en concurrence. Cette synthèse s’achève sur la situation de la morphologie en France.
Ce faisant, il sera question d’histoire récente de la discipline. En effet, la morphologie a connu des vicissitudes au fil du temps : saturant l’espace d’analyse linguistique hors phonologie jusqu’à l’avènement du structuralisme, la morphologie s’est éclipsée aux premières heures de la grammaire générative au profit de la syntaxe et de la phonologie, pour réapparaître sur le devant de la scène linguistique depuis une trentaine d’années, aussi bien au sein du cadre génératif au sens large que dans des cadres qui en récusent les principes et méthodes. La situation contemporaine conserve des traces de cette histoire.
This paper sketches the current status of morphology and paradigms in linguistic theorising. In particular, it is shown that from a constructionist as well as from a compositional perspective, morphology including paradigms tends to dissolve. The former might be less obvious; however the paper argues that a constructional deconstruction of paradigms and morphology follows directly from Haspelmath's (2011) take on Booij (2010) and related approaches in the realm of Construction Morphology (CxM). The latter is more obvious; in particular, proponents of Distributed Morphology (DM) regularly emphasise that morphology is but an interface and paradigms are epiphenomenal. Throughout the paper I assume some familiarity with Construction Morphology and Construction Grammar more generally whereas I introduce DM specifically. However, the paper is not intended as a thorough discussion of the approaches presented (nor do I take sides); rather it is their shared detachment from paradigms that is at stake here. Consequently, also what is sometimes called Autonomous Morphology is addressed in the paper: a rather recent approach that advocates morphology as an irreducible level of description and upholds the paradigm as a format of description in its own right. The balance of the paper is rather pessimistic for morphology and paradigms but eventually I come up with a presumably new argument in favour of regarding paradigms as fundamental: restrictions on inflectional recursion fall out naturally from them.
The volume discusses the breadth of applications for an extended notion of paradigm. Paradigms in this sense are not only tools of morphological description but constitute the inherent structure of grammar. Grammatical paradigms are structural sets forming holistic, semiotic structures with an informational value of their own. We argue that as such, paradigms are a part of speaker knowledge and provide necessary structuring for grammaticalization processes. The papers discuss theoretical as well as conceptual questions and explore different domains of grammatical phenomena, ranging from grammaticalization, morphology, and cognitive semantics to modality, aiming to illustrate what the concept of grammatical paradigms can and cannot (yet) explain.
The volume, originating from the 5th Slavic Linguistics Meeting (Rome, 25-27 September 2014), reflects the state of the most recent research carried out in Italy in this discipline. It aims to continue the tradition already started at the end of the 1980s from the series Morphosyntactic problems of Slavic languages (Bologna 1988, 1990, 1991; Padua 1994, 1995), which has been recently renewed in the volumes published after the Meetings of Bergamo (2007), Padua (2008), Forlì (2010) and Milan (2014). This contribution testifies an expansion of interest beyond the boundaries of morphosyntax, towards other areas of theoretical and applied linguistics, such as pragmatics, semantics, language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Due to the variety of topics and methodologies used, the publication could interest not only those who carry out both theoretical and applied research in the field of Slavic languages, but also scholars in General linguistics.
Most of the papers in this volume originated as presentations at the conference Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics, which was held at the University of Cambridge, 8–10th July, 2019. The aim of the conference was to build bridges between various strands of research in the field of Hebrew language studies that rarely meet, namely philologists working on Biblical Hebrew, philologists working on Rabbinic Hebrew and theoretical linguists.
This volume is the published outcome of this initiative. It contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.
Aujourd’hui, l’apprentissage de l’écriture, tout comme celui d’une langue étrangère, paraissent essentiels dans le parcours de nombreux individus. Lors du processus d’apprentissage d’une L2, l’apprenant se confronte souvent à des informations à la fois phonologiques et orthographiques. Notre recherche souhaite interroger les raisons pour lesquelles, au sein des processus d’apprentissage, le rapport entre langue écrite et langue parlée parait déséquilibré. Nous avons orienté notre réflexion sur l’inconsistance de la correspondance graphème-phonème (CGP) de la consonne spirante latérale palatale voisée en italien. Cette thèse souhaite d’abord analyser les interactions entre la langue écrite et la langue orale lors de l'évolution diachronique des sociétés occidentales. Nous décrirons ensuite le phonème et les graphèmes cibles d’un point de vue historique, sociolinguistique et phonosymbolique. Enfin, nous examinerons la CGP de la latérale palatale italienne à travers une tâche de discrimination audiovisuelle menée en contexte L2. Cette étude invite à sensibiliser à instaurer une relation plus équilibrée entre les inputs oraux et écrits lors des processus d'enseignement de la L2.
This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.
This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.
This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.
Historical linguistics does not really need the field of biology to exist in order to establish the conclusion that change in language is arguably an evolutionary process with different terminology. Historical and other linguists just need to acknowledge the achievements of, and relevance to themselves of the impressive work by, scholars who deal with biological change and reconstruction: molecular biologists, geneticists, and cladists. This chapter argues that it is theoretically‐informed biologist fieldworkers who have the most to offer students of language change willing to learn from day‐to‐day, boots‐on‐the‐ground practitioners of biology. Before presenting the linguistic predictions themselves, a word is in order on their germination as a group. Anyone who predicts the outcome of instances of variation or apparent change in a language is acting as a kind of frontier scout directing the attention of others to certain paths into the future.
This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.
Nominal morphology and morphosyntax have been relatively neglected topics in Welsh, with diachronic studies dealing mostly with syntax and phonology, and with some work on verbal morphology. Searchable text corpora have been created relatively recently, both for Middle and Modern Welsh, which have made this study possible and allowed me to quantify and test earlier assumptions and theories. This book is the first monograph length treatment of grammatical number in Welsh and it is aimed at Celticists as well as linguists interested in number more generally. It explores questions such as ‘does Middle Welsh have number values other than singular and plural?’, ‘does Middle Welsh have a
dual?’, ‘does Welsh have “collective” nouns?’, ‘why are there so many different plural endings in Welsh?’, ‘why do adjectives sometimes, but not always, agree with a plural noun?’, and ‘why do we use the singular with numerals in Welsh?’ Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12157
This paper examines the semantic factors involved in three crucial questions about suppletion in verbs: what verbs develop suppletion, what verbs contribute to suppletive paradigms, and how roots are distributed in suppletive paradigms. My analysis shows that the development of suppletion is more orderly than commonly believed. Specifically, semantic distance and other semantic factors facilitate explanations of suppletive patterns that earlier studies focusing on typological and morphological considerations could not account for. I apply semantic maps to well‐known cases of suppletion in addition to underreported and previously unreported patterns, including Hungarian data displaying a previously unknown type of suppletion—non‐aligned overlapping suppletion—where forms shared by separate lexemes belong to distinct parts of their paradigms. I contextualize semantic factors in the relationships between synchronic types and diachronic sources. My analysis refines our understanding of suppletion types and shows the logic behind suppletive distributions.
This contribution deals with competition (rivalry) between diminutive suffixations in (Austrian) German and Italian adult language and child speech and the motivation of differences in terms of productivity and degree of morphosemantic transparency/opacity of the respective diminutives. For this purpose productivity, availability and profitability are differentiated, a scale of morphosemantic transparency/opacity is established which ranges from full transparency (degree 1), over slight pragmatic restrictions (degree 2), to total opacity (unless in metalinguistic reflections: degree 9) and fake decompositionality (degree 10). The degrees of transparency/opacity differ for different suffixations, in German also between compound and simplex diminutives. Longitudinal studies of early child language show that child language is more transparent than adult language in types and tokens. In both there is competition between fully transparent suffixations (degree 1) without any pattern blocking or lexical blocking, because such diminutives are mainly formed and used for pragmatic reasons and never for the purpose of lexical enrichment. Since productivity, availability and profitability of diminutive formation is much higher in Italian than in German, there is much more competition between diminutive suffixations in Italian than in German adult language. This difference between the two languages is much less the case in early child language. Possible psycholinguistic consequences are mentioned in the outlook.
Henning Andersen, ed. Sandhi Phenomena in the Languages of Europe. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 33. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1986. Pp. xii + 617. DM 235,-. - Volume 33 Issue 2 - Jürgen Klausenburger
Wolfgang U. Dressler, ed. Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Studies in Language Companion Series 10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1987. Pp. viii + 168. - Volume 35 Issue 4 - Jürgen Klausenburger
In the evolution of morphological studies, morphological features and markedness have come to play increasingly important rôles. Feature notation in morphology allows the development of the notion of natural morphological class, renders explicit much of the internal structure of paradigms and permits the exploitation, suitably adapted, of many of the results obtained in phonology. Markedness considerations, particularly when linked to general theories of morphology, again highlight morphological structure, constrain the variety of permitted analyses, and indicate, at least in part, the expected direction of historical change. In the sections to follow, I will present an analysis of Old French nominal and adjectival inflection which makes key use of morphological features and the differences between the marked and unmarked values of these features. This study will be particularly concerned with constraining the morphological analysis of Old French and conversely, with using Old French data to investigate more general properties of morphological systems.
In this paper, I provide an analysis of Spanish stress with the following three characteristics: (a) both verbal and non-verbal stress are accounted for in a single, unified, system, (b) the three-syllable window for stress is accounted for in a principled way, and (c) the stress algorithm has no access to the morphosyntactic structure. I do this by extending Roca’s analysis of variable edge parameters for stress in Spanish non-verbs to verbs, and by arguing that morphemes which mark for only person, number, and gender (φ-features) are outside of the domain of stress because they are prosodic adjuncts.
The volume addresses developing knowledge and use of Hebrew from the dual perspective of typologically specific factors and of shared cross-linguistic trends, aimed at providing an overview of acquisition in a single language from infancy to adolescence while also shedding light on key issues in the field as a whole. Essentially non-partisan in approach, the collection includes distinct approaches to language and language acquisition (formal-universalist, pragmatic-usage based, cognitive-constructivist) and deals with a range of topics not often addressed within a single volume (phonological perception and production, inflectional and derivational morphology, simple-clause structure and complex syntax, early and later literacy, writing systems), with data deriving from varied research methodologies (interactive conversations and extended discourse, adult input and child output, longitudinal and cross-sectional corpora, structured elicitations). Each chapter provides background information on Hebrew-specific facets of the topic of concern, but typically avoids ethno-centricity by relating to more general issues in the domain. The book should thus prove interesting and instructive for linguists, psychologists, and educators, and for members of the child language research community both within and beyond the confines of Hebrew-language expertise.
A noun category in Welsh which has a shorter form for a collection/plural meaning and a suffixed singulative for a single instance has been described in the literature as both a number category and a plural allomorph, often with terminological ambiguity and blurring of boundaries between different noun types. This paper is an investigation of the features of these nouns using a number of theoretical approaches which cumulatively support the argument that collective can be considered a full number category in Welsh.
Tautology in word-formation is a poorly investigated phenomenon, compared to the more robust discussions of tautology in syntax (Sect. 2). On some restrictive interpretations of the concept of ‘morphological tautology’, it really emerges as an epiphenomenon or else as a terminological misnomer. Within some approaches, the term ‘tautology’ has been replaced by other designations, such as pleonasm, hypercharacterization, etc. Nevertheless, rare references to tautology in word-formation can be found in the literature, suggesting that tautology may be looked upon as a structural and semantic property of certain types of compounds as well as derivatives, in English and in other languages (Sect. 3). The aim of this article is to bring together a variety of sources that have dealt with the phenomenon in question, in order to estimate its scope, characteristics and diachronic development (Sect. 4). The analysis will focus on data from English and Polish word-formation (with a few examples from German and Irish as well).
Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics, linguistic iconicity in semiotics, iconic structures in Sign Languages, natural and unnatural sound patterns, the iconic nature of parts of speech, the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness, and lexical and syntactic iconicity. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.
This study examines two views of lexical storage and word production: a Derivational hypothesis whereby complex nouns such as GOVERNANCE and GOVERNMENT are generated by rules for combining stems and affixes separately stored in the internal lexicon, and an Independent Unit hypothesis whereby GOVERN and GOVERNMENT constitute independent lexical units which are read out directly from lexical store. To test these hypotheses subjects were presented auditorily with verbs (e.g., DECIDE) and had to produce a related noun (DECISION) as fast as possible. Reaction times and errors were related to derivational complexity, thereby supporting the Derivational rather than the Independent Unit hypothesis. A model of lexical retrieval processes incorporating derivational processes is proposed.
Verbal suppletion, the gramatically conditioned alternation of etymologically unrelated forms representing the same morpheme within a paradigm, is one of the most complex types of morphological irregularity. Evidence from numerous languages possessing suppletive verbs shows that there are two patterns which such verbs may follow: suppletion by tense/aspect/mode, and suppletion by person/number in the unmarked present. Further, within a given language, the pattern of suppletion tends to be the same for all suppletive verbs. Evidence from a case of incipient verbal suppletion in Romanian illustrates that the rise of suppletion involves semantic weakening of lexical items in casual speech with resultant changes in word frequency of synonymous and near synonymous verb forms. Over time, these changes result in the replacement of forms of one verb by forms from another, and either loss of the remaining parts of the other verb, or the analogical reformation of forms to replace those taken over by the now suppletive verb.
Professor Dixon's book The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland (CUP 1972) is acknowledge to be a classic study. His study of Yidin is directly comparable in importance. Yidin, which is also a dying language, is Dyirbal's northerly neighbour. Yet the two languages have striking and fundamental differences in each area of grammar (while still both belonging to the Australian language family). In the phonology, there is a preference for each word to consist of an even number of syllables, in order to satisfy the stress targets of Yidin. Syntactically, the language is of a 'mixed ergative' type that cannot easily be accommodated in terms of standard syntactic theory. These and a number of other special features of Yidin have a crucial bearing on several theoretical enquiries into linguistic universals.
Natural Phonology (henceforth NP), founded by Stampe (1969, cf. 1980), and not to be confused with Natural Generative Phonology (henceforth NGP, as in Vennemann 1972 and Hooper 1976) and other ‘natural’ and ‘concrete’ trends in process phonologies (as in Bruck et al. 1974, cf. §3·3), has been well expounded in Donegan & Stampe (1979b) and, in terms of its application to language acquisition, in Edwards & Shriberg (1983). Important differences from Generative Phonology (henceforth GP) have been enumerated by Wojcik (1981). It is not my intention to repeat these expositions, but rather to answer those criticisms that have so far been answered only partially, such as the objections to NP discussed in Anderson (1981), Dinnsen (1978), Dinnsen & Eckmann (1977, 1978), Drachman (1978, 1981), Dressler (1974a), Hellberg (1980), Kodzasov & Krivnova (1981: 145ff), Lass (1980, 1981).
To avoid the triviality of mere taxonomy in which languages are classified by such arbitrary criteria as ‘is/is not tonal’, ‘does/does not have unbounded movement rules’, ‘has prefixes/suffixes’, etc., language typology needs to be able to make implicational statements of the sort usually associated with the name of Greenberg.1 For instance, one wants to be able to say of a language not only that it is VSO, but also that it THEREFORE will have prepositions, will place modifying adjectives after rather than before the noun, will put titles before proper names, and so on. Likewise, if a language has the word-order SOV, then an interesting typology should allow one to predict that it will ipso facto be postpositional, put attributive adjectives before the noun, etc.(Received August 28 1979)
Rède--Geburtsfest des Grossherzogs Karl Friedrich--Universität Heidelberg. "Jahresbericht der Universität. Preisverteilung": p. 85-104. Master microform held by: DLC. Microfilm.
Natural Morphology and Classical vs. Tunisian Arabic
- Kilani-Schoch
The metamorphosis of allomorphs
- Anttila
The indexical element in morphology
- Anttila
Potential words, actual words, productivity and frequency
- Aronoff
Some remarks in the relations between naturalness and typology
- Wurzel
Tak nazyvaemaja interfiksacija i problemy struktury slova v russkom jazyke
- Lopatin
On the acquisition of morphology in normal children and children with Down's syndrome. Studia grammatyczne
- W Dressler
- Schaner-Wolles Ch
- W Grossmann
Zur Stellung der Morphologie im Sprachsystem
- Wurzel
Inflectional suppletion in Natural Morphology
- W Dressler
Aspekte der kindersprachlichen Wortbildung
- Panagl
Morphologischer Ikonismus
- Mayerthaler
Zur semiotischen Begründung einer natürlichen Wortbildungslehre
- Dressler
Problems in morphonology
- Wurzel
Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit
- Wurzel
Suppletivwesen durch Lautwandel
- Werner
Concatenators and Russian derivational morphology
- Shapiro
Elements of a polycentristic theory of word formation
- Dressler
Zur Wertung der Interfixe in einer semiotischen Theorie der Natürlichen Morphologie. Festschrift G. Hüttl-Folter
- W Dressler
Observations on word-formation and syntax
- E Pennanen
Suppletion und Alternanz im Französischen
- Schwarze