Morphology 1

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Morphology 1

• Laurie Bauer
• Victoria University of Wellington

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What is morphology about?

• Some words contain meaningful bits (1)
• Note the use of data sets (2)
• Not all words contain smaller meaningful elements
  (3)

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What kinds of elements do we find?

• Suffixes (4, 5)
• Suffixes are added to bases
• Units do not need to be as long as a whole
  syllable (5)
• Prefixes (6)
• Infixes (7)
• Combinations here circumfixes (8) more
  generally parasynthesis

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What kinds of elements do we find?

• Transfixes (we will see an alternative analysis
  later) (9)
• Affixes

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Sometimes affixes do not have fixed form

• Reduplication (10, 11)
• Various phonological structures may be
  reduplicated e.g. segment, CV, syllable, maximal
  syllable, foot.

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Sometimes the markers of morphological status are
not affixal

• To capture the equivalence with affixal
  morphology, once discussed in terms of superfixes
  or suprafixes
• Verbal patterns in Germanic called Ablaut more
  generally apophony
• All fit under internal modification
• Why not affixal analysis?

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Recall the Arabic data

• Multiple apophony would be an alternative
  analysis.
• Benefit reduced discontinuity
• Disadvantage requires a basic form

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Sometimes there is no change in form

• Examples from English (15) illustrate
  zero-derivation or conversion
• Various analyses are available can you have an
  affix which has zero form?

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Morphs

• Each affix and each base is a morph
• A morph is a recurrent unit of form correlated
  with a fixed meaning such that words can be
  exhaustively analysed into morphs

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Morphs and Morphemes

• Sometimes two morphs have the same function and
  some formal similarity, but are not
  phonologically identical (16, 17)
• The morphs are in complementary distribution
• They are allomorphs of the same morpheme

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The story so far

• Words can be divided into two kinds of morph
  bases and affixes
• Many kinds of affix
• Suffix, prefix, infix, circumfix, transfix, etc.
  (?)
• Any affix can have fixed form or be reduplicative
• Morphs in complementary distribution may be
  allomorphs of a single morpheme

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How do we treat this theoretically?

• What may appear to be a string of facts is open
  to various theoretical interpretations.
• No attempt here to be exhaustive, just to raise
  some questions.

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1 What are morphologists trying to do?

• A question which applies to more than just
  morphology.
• Realism vs. instrumentalism.
• Often called Gods Truth vs. hocus-pocus
  linguistics
• So what are we trying to do here, and does it
  matter?

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Some potential problems

• Subtractive morphology (20)
• Arabic revisited

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2 Markedness and zeroes

• Compare (6) with (21)
• What marks plural in (6) and in (21)?
• What marks singular in (6) and (21)?
• Singular does not have a marker in (6), it is
  unmarkered or, more generally, unmarked

16

• So, is there a zero in (6) holding the position
  of the prefix in (21), or is singular a default
  reading when there is no overt marker of plural?
• Note that, in English, an unmarked form may
  indicate things other than just singularity (22)
• While there are some problems, there is much
  agreement about what is unmarked across languages

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• Zeroes are easier in some circumstances than in
  others (23)

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3 When is a morph an allomorph?

• In the examples of allomorphs given earlier, the
  conditioning factor determining which allomorph
  arises was phonological. What if it isnt?
• What about instances of phonological conditioning
  but different form? (25)

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4 Do morphemes always work?

• Sometimes we seem to have meaningless morphemes
• Whose meaning we expect to know (26)
• Whose meaning we have to invent (27)
• Sometimes we have no form but meaning (zeroes)

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Can we do away with morphemes?

• Various people have tried look at words rather
  than smaller elements
• Some (parts of some) languages work better one
  way, some another
• There is no general agreement

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These are some basics

• In the next class we will move on to look at some
  specific problems in morphology