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Modelling polysemy and categorial ambiguity in a constructional family: The case of agentive compounds in Persian
Abstract
In this paper we analyse a family of compound constructions in Persian that show two interesting properties: (1) they split into two semantic patterns, human agent noun and instrument noun, and (2) they display categorial ambiguity between noun and adjective. The compounds in question, which are formed with the verbal stem - yāb ‘find’, are collected from diachronic and synchronic corpora and analysed in the framework of Construction Morphology ( Booij 2010 ). We argue that the instrumental pattern is an innovation under the influence of loan-translated English instrument nouns. This pattern dovetailed with a much older morphological construction for human agent nouns. This raises questions about the relation between the two constructions in the contemporary speaker’s lexicon. For the dual functionality of the words as nouns and adjectives, we argue that it can be understood as a second order schema ( Booij & Masini 2015 ) or sister construction ( Jackendoff & Audring 2019 , 2020 ), whereby no precedence is ascribed to either of the two patterns.
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The basic question to be addressed in this chapter is: what is the status of the notions ‘inheritance’ and ‘default inheritance’ in the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology (CM)? This framework, developed in Booij (2010), assumes a hierarchical lexicon with both abstract morphological schemas and stored complex words that instantiate these schemas. The lexicon of a language can be modelled in such a way that the abstract word formation schemas dominate their individual instantiations. Thus, the lexicon is partially conceived of as a hierarchical network in which lower nodes, the existing complex words, can be assumed to inherit information from dominating higher nodes. Advantages of a full-entry theory over an impoverished entry theory are outlined, and the chapter includes discussion of polysemy, allomorphy, and the class of items that fall between derivatives and compounds using ‘affixoids’.
Output-oriented, constructional schemas should be used for stating regularities that are not productive. These schemas have a motivational function only. We show that words may be partially motivated even when they lack a base word. Moreover, they can be motivated by more than one schema. This applies to the huge set of Dutch verbs in -elen. Verbs in -eren appear to exhibit similar properties, as do parallel verbs in German and English, and Dutch words ending in -ig. Diachronic facts, in particular the construction of nouns ending in -er, support the claim that language users make generalizations in the form of output-oriented schemas.
There exists, in Persian language, a highly productive compounding pattern in which a verbal element combines with a non-verbal one to produce a noun or adjective. Three distinct views can be identified regarding this pattern. Some, the most of whom are traditional grammarians, call the output "truncated compound agentive adjective". Some basically accept this but offer a modern linguistic interpretation. Still, others reject the idea of a truncated compound agentive adjective and put forward another idea. The present paper, based on different pieces of evidence, totally rejects the traditional idea and argues that, in this pattern, a verbal element (present root) has simply some relation to a non-verbal one through compounding. The type of relation and hence the meaning of the compound is determined based on the pragmatic implicature by the Persian speakers.
Morphology is the study of the systematic relationship between the form and meaning of complex words. Therefore, it is a central task of morphology to provide a proper account of how the meanings of complex words are computed. One straightforward approach would be to assume that the computation of complex words is ruled by Fregean compositionality. The latter, however, has been claimed to be too narrow, since both syntactic and morphological constructions may exhibit specific holistic semantic properties that cannot be derived from their constituents or from general patterns of combination (Booij 2010; Goldberg 1995; Goldberg 2006; Jackendoff 2013). In the article we address a related problem, i.e. the fact that the meaning of a complex word may derive from that of another linguistic construct (be it a word or a phrase) that is not a building block of that complex word. We illustrate this point by providing data from different languages and we claim that this type of violation of Fregean compositionality can be accounted for by means of " second order schemas " , i.e. sets of two or more paradigmatically related constructional schemas.
Booij argued recently that the problem of Agentive-Instrumental polysemy among Dutch nominalizations ending in -er can be resolved without resorting to the separation of derivation from affixation (the Separation Hypothesis). He argues for a ‘semantic extension scheme’ whereby an instrumental nominalization like open-er ‘opener’ is explained as a relatively less ‘agent-like’ semantic extension of the category ‘Agentive’: spel-er ‘player’. This question is only part of the much larger issue of derivational polysemy: why do certain categories, e.g. Agent and Instrumental, tend to receive polysemous marking across languages when others, e.g. Agentive and Action (nominalization), do not. This paper offers an alternate explanation of Booij's problem in a framework which addresses the larger issue. It proposes that the same universal categories, the category functions of traditional grammars, determine both inflectional and derivational relations (Unitary Grammatical Function Hypothesis). Combined with the Separation Hypothesis, unitary grammatical functions can predict (1) which languages are more likely to exhibit polysemy and which, synonymy, and (2) which categories are more or less likely to be shared by a polysemous derivational affix. Even enriched with semantic extension schemes, purely sign-based frameworks make the wrong predictions.
Some morphologists have proposed the separation of form and meaning in morphology because of the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between them. In this paper it is shown that this position is ill-advised since it impedes a deeper insight into the systematics of the interpretation of complex words. This is demonstrated by a detailed study of one affix, the déverbal suffix -er in Dutch, which creates subject names. The apparent polysemy of this suffix appears to follow from independent, nonlinguistic principles.
The Texture of the Lexicon explores three interwoven themes: a morphological theory, the structure of the lexicon, and an integrated account of the language capacity and its place in the mind. These themes together constitute the theory of Relational Morphology (RM), extending the Parallel Architecture of Jackendoff’s groundbreaking Foundations of Language . Part I (chapters 1–3) situates morphology in the architecture of the language faculty, and introduces a novel formalism that unifies the treatment of morphological patterns, from totally productive to highly marginal. Two major points emerge. First, traditional word formation rules and realization rules should be replaced by declarative schemas, formulated in the same terms as words. Hence the grammar should really be thought of as part of the lexicon. Second, the traditional emphasis on productive patterns, to the detriment of nonproductive patterns, is misguided; linguistic theory can and should encompass them both. Part II (chapters 4–6 ) puts the theory to the test, applying it to a wide range of familiar and less familiar morphological phenomena. Part III (chapters 7–9) connects RM with language processing, language acquisition, and a broad selection of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena beyond morphology. The framework is therefore attractive not only for its ability to account insightfully for morphological phenomena, but equally for its contribution to the integration of linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and human cognition.
How is grammatical knowledge encoded in mental representations? While traditional accounts view grammar as a system of rules, construction-based theories assume declarative schemas – lexical entries with variables – as the locus of grammatical knowledge. Such schemas are evidently needed to encode productive patterns. However, morphological knowledge also includes relations between existing words, in patterns that cannot necessarily be productively extended. This contribution argues that such patterns can be encoded in two ways: by a ‘mother’ schema dominating the listed instances, or by ‘sister’ links between the instances themselves. Sister links are the more parsimonious option, since they do not require a superordinate layer in the constructional network. However, mother schemas can encode properties that sister links cannot. This paper aims to work out how the division of labour between sister links and mother schemas may be organized.
Construction grammar is an approach to grammatical analysis and representation that has attracted considerable attention since the seminal works were published around thirty years ago (Fillmore et al. 1988; Lakoff 1987). Since that time, a number of variants of construction grammar have been developed by different scholars. Nevertheless, there is a common core of principles that characterizes virtually all types of construction grammars (Croft and Cruse 2004, chapters 9–10). Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001) was developed to situate construction grammar in a cross-linguistic perspective. Its primary hypothesis on the nature of grammatical categories has significant implications for lexicography but also holds out the prospect of making lexicographic practice in different languages more comparable.
This book introduces the reader to the basic methods for the study of the internal structure of words, and to the theoretical issues raised by analyses of word structure concerning the organization of the grammars of natural languages. Data from more than sixty languages are used to illustrate these descriptive and theoretical issues. The book is structured into three main parts. In the first part the basic notions of morphology and morphological analysis are introduced, and attention is given to word formation (derivation and compounding), the basics of inflection, and inflectional systems. The second part, reflecting an important characteristic of this book, is the discussion of the interface between morphology and other modules of the grammar such as phonology, syntax, and semantics. It is shown that the formal structure of complex words is not necessarily isomorphic to their phonological or semantic structure. This book is comprehensive since it also deals, in its third part, with the relation between morphology and mind. Facts concerning the processing of complex words are used as a window on the human mind. Language change in the domain of word structure is also approached from that perspective. In a final summarizing chapter, it is shown how the book has taught a theoretically sophisticated notion ‘word’ and that there are different notions ‘word’ that should be recognized in a proper linguistic analysis. An index and glossary of terms, exercises (with answers), a language index, and advice for further reading are also provided.
Construction grammar presents a general theory of syntactic representation for cognitive linguistics. The fundamental principle behind construction grammar is that the basic form of a syntactic structure is a construction -a pairing of a complex grammatical structure with its meaning- and that constructions are organized in a network. The notion of a construction has been generalized so that it is a uniform model for the representation of all grammatical knowledge-syntax, morphology, and lexicon. This article examines the model of syntactic representation against which construction grammarians have reacted, describes the componential model, and discusses the arguments for a construction-based approach to syntax, morphology, and lexicon. It also describes the commonalities among the different models of construction grammar in cognitive linguistics, the structure of constructions, the organization of constructions in a grammar, and the major variants of construction grammar in cognitive linguistics. Finally, the article considers the relationship between construction grammar and the usagebased model, language acquisition, and language change.
The present article seeks to provide an answer to the following question: according to which mechanisms may a pattern of word formation develop a new meaning? In order to keep the task to a manageable size only changes will be considered, the result of which stays within the same type of pattern (affixation, compounding, etc.). Hence, we will not discuss how affixes develop out of compounds or similar phenomena. The only scholar who, to the best of my knowledge, has addressed this issue in a systematic and comprehensive manner is Jaberg (1905), who claimed that semantic change in affixation is always the result of semantic change in individual words plus reanalysis. Our study will reveal, however, that, though this is in fact the most common scenario, there is yet another, hitherto ignored mechanism of semantic change in word formation where no lexical change is involved. This mechanism, which will be called “approximation,” allows a mismatch to arise between a word formation pattern and a neologism formed according to it, if the distance is bridged by metaphor or metonymy.
According to a widely held opinion, agent-instrument polysemy in derivational morphology is the result of semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning. In the present paper we set out to explore the cross-linguistic distribution of patterns of polysemy along the agent-instrument axis. It turns out that about forty percent in a sample of 82 languages expressing both agent and instrument meaning by derivational morphology have markers that are polysemous for the categories in question. A closer look at the data reveals, however, that many of these prima-facie cases of agent-instrument polysemy have arisen not by semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning, but in a number of different ways.
The Latin suffix-tor was purely agentive, while its Romance counterparts, in the standard languages, all also have an instrumental, and some additionally a locative meaning. Traditionally, this state of affairs has been attributed to a meaning extension during the Proto-Romance stage, when instruments are said to have been conceptualized metaphorically as agents. It is the aim of this paper to show that there has never been any such meaning extension. It will be argued that the multifunctionality of Romance-TOR is due instead to a combination of factors such as sound change, borrowing, ellipsis, and analogy.
This paper explores the Persian Ezafe construction, a construction which has received significant attention in the syntactic literature in the past few decades. Descriptively, Ezafe is an unstressed vowel -e (-ye after vowels) which appears between a noun and its modifier (N-e Mod), and is repeated on subsequent modifiers, if they are present, except the last one (N-e Mod1-e Mod2-e Mod3). This paper takes a fresh look at the distribution of the Ezafe vowel, with a special emphasis on its correlation with the order of elements in the noun phrase. After the close connection between word order and the absence/presence of Ezafe is established, the paper considers alternative ways this relation can be captured and argues for a roll-up movement account of this construction, which takes the base order of the noun phrase in Persian to be head final, with the surface order derived via phrasal movement to specifiers of intermediate functional projections in a roll-up fashion. In developing and arguing for this analysis, we will also have a closer look at several constructions in Persian, such as the superlative and the colloquial definite marker, and will account for various word order restrictions in the Persian noun phrase.
Language planning in Iran has been predominantly aimed at the modernization of Persian through word coinage. The process of modernization in Persian started in the 1920s and has continued up to the present time. Although thousands of Persian equivalents have been coined for loan words during the past several decades, Persian certainly needs many more native equivalents for new foreign terms.
Construction Morphology
- Masini
Comprehensive Persian Language Dictionary, Persian Lexicography Corpus and Computer-based Language Corpus
- Khatibi
Kasustheorie und Nomina Agentis
- Panagl
Agens und Instrument in der Wortbildung
- Panagl
Derived nouns ending in -gar based on Construction Morphology
- Rafiei
L’origine dei nomi di strumento italiani in -tor
- Rainer
Noms d’instruments/ de lieux en -tor dans la Galloromania
- Rainer
Compounds formed with the present stem of a verb
- Sadeghi
The structure of words in Modern Persian
- Zomorrodiyan