The Importance of Morphology, Etymology, and Phonology
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Traditional Grammar
Traditional Grammar Traditional grammar refers to the type of grammar study Continuing with this tradition, grammarians in done prior to the beginnings of modern linguistics. the eighteenth century studied English, along with many Grammar, in this traditional sense, is the study of the other European languages, by using the prescriptive structure and formation of words and sentences, usually approach in traditional grammar; during this time alone, without much reference to sound and meaning. In the over 270 grammars of English were published. During more modern linguistic sense, grammar is the study of the most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, grammar entire interrelated system of structures— sounds, words, was viewed as the art or science of correct language in meanings, sentences—within a language. both speech and writing. By pointing out common Traditional grammar can be traced back over mistakes in usage, these early grammarians created 2,000 years and includes grammars from the classical grammars and dictionaries to help settle usage arguments period of Greece, India, and Rome; the Middle Ages; the and to encourage the improvement of English. Renaissance; the eighteenth and nineteenth century; and One of the most influential grammars of the more modern times. The grammars created in this eighteenth century was Lindley Murray’s English tradition reflect the prescriptive view that one dialect or grammar (1794), which was updated in new editions for variety of a language is to be valued more highly than decades. Murray’s rules were taught for many years others and should be the norm for all speakers of the throughout school systems in England and the United language. -
The Assignment of Grammatical Gender in German: Testing Optimal Gender Assignment Theory
The Assignment of Grammatical Gender in German: Testing Optimal Gender Assignment Theory Emma Charlotte Corteen Trinity Hall September 2018 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Assignment of Grammatical Gender in German: Testing Optimal Gender Assignment Theory Emma Charlotte Corteen Abstract The assignment of grammatical gender in German is a notoriously problematic phenomenon due to the apparent opacity of the gender assignment system (e.g. Comrie 1999: 461). Various models of German gender assignment have been proposed (e.g. Spitz 1965, Köpcke 1982, Corbett 1991, Wegener 1995), but none of these is able to account for all of the German data. This thesis investigates a relatively under-explored, recent approach to German gender assignment in the form of Optimal Gender Assignment Theory (OGAT), proposed by Rice (2006). Using the framework of Optimality Theory, OGAT claims that the form and meaning of a noun are of equal importance with respect to its gender. This is formally represented by the crucial equal ranking of all gender assignment constraints in a block of GENDER FEATURES, which is in turn ranked above a default markedness hierarchy *NEUTER » *FEMININE » *MASCULINE, which is based on category size. A key weakness of OGAT is that it does not specify what constitutes a valid GENDER FEATURES constraint. This means that, in theory, any constraint can be proposed ad hoc to ensure that an OGAT analysis yields the correct result. In order to prevent any constraints based on ‘postfactum rationalisations’ (Comrie 1999: 461) from being included in the investigation, the GENDER FEATURES constraints which have been proposed in the literature for German are assessed according to six criteria suggested by Enger (2009), which seek to determine whether there is independent evidence for a GENDER FEATURES constraint. -
The Role of Grammatical Gender in Noun-Formation: a Diachronic Perspective from Norwegian
The role of grammatical gender in noun-formation: A diachronic perspective from Norwegian Philipp Conzett 1. The relationship between gender and word-formation According to Corbett (1991: 1) “[g]ender is the most puzzling of the grammatical categories”. In modern languages, however, gender is most often seen as nothing more than an abstract inherent classificatory feature of nouns that triggers agreement in associated words. Given this perspec- tive of gender as a redundant category, the question arises of why it none- theless is so persistent in a great number of languages. This question has been answered inter alia by referring to the identifying and disambiguating function gender can have in discourse (e.g., Corbett 1991: 320–321). In this article further evidence is provided for viewing grammatical gender (henceforth gender) as an integral part of Cognitive Grammar, more spe- cifically the domain of word-formation. The relationship between grammatical gender and word-formation can be approached from (at least) two different angles. In literature dealing with gender assignment, characteristics of word-formation are often used as a base for assigning gender to nouns. This approach is presented in sec- tion 1.1. On the other hand, gender is described as a feature involved in the formation of new nouns. This perspective is introduced in 1.2. 1.1. Gender assignment based on word-formation Regularities between the gender of nouns and their derivational morphol- ogy can be detected in a number of languages. Gender can be tied to overt or covert derivational features. The former type is usually realized by suf- fixation, e.g., Norwegian klok (adj. -
Hittite Etymologies and Notes*
Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 129 (2012) DOI 10.4467/20834624SL.12.015.0604 ROBERT WOODHOUSE The University oo Queensland, Brisbane [email protected] HITTITE ETYMOLOGIES AND NOTES* Keywords: Hittite, etymology, Proto-Indo-European, historical phonology, semantics Abstract Discussed are the etymologies of twelve Hittite words and word groups (alpa- ‘cloud’, aku- ‘seashell’, ariye/a-zi ‘determine by or consult an oracle’, heu- / he(y)aw- ‘rain’, hāli- ‘pen, corral’, kalmara- ‘ray’ etc., māhla- ‘grapevine branch’, sūu, sūwaw- ‘full’, tarra-tta(ri) ‘be able’ and tarhu-zi ‘id.; conquer’, idālu- ‘evil’, tara-i / tari- ‘become weary, henkan ‘death, doom’) and some points of Hittite historical phonology, such as the fate of medial *-h2n- (sub §7) and final *-i (§13), all of which appear to receive somewhat inadequate treatment in Kloekhorst’s 2008 Hittite etymological dictionary. Several old etymologies are defended and some new ones suggested. The following notes were compiled while writing a response (in press b) to that part of the (2006) paper, recently kindly brought to my attention by its author, Professor Witold Mańczak, that purports to unseat the laryngeal theory on the basis of al- legedly incompatible Hittite material collected over three decades ago by Tischler (1980). The massive debate on the laryngeal theory that essentially followed Tisch- ler’s paper was no doubt in part a response to it and produced solutions to most if not all of the problems raised by Tischler, a position I attempt to summarize in my own paper noted above with reference to the superb Hittite etymological diction- ary recently published by Kloekhorst (2008, hereinafter referred to as K:) with its several innovations in the areas of Hittite and Anatolian historical phonology and morphology. -
Syntax and Morphology Semantics
Parent Tip Sheet Language Syntax & Morphology yntax is the development of sentence structure meaning your child’s first attempts at putting two words together. SMorphology refers to the structure and construction of words and the rules that determine changes in word meaning; it’s knowing plural forms 9 and correct use of verb tense. Introduce words from many different categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. The emergence of first words 9 typically begins around 12 months of Use the Plus One Rule: add a word to expand the length of your child’s utterance to model longer sentences. Also use correct grammar, even age. Syntax typically begins when if it means adding more than one word. E.g., if your child says ‘blue a child begins to combine words in ball” you can say “The blue ball is big.” early two word utterances (ex. Daddy 9 work) around 18-24 months. Read books with repetition, such as: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt or I Went Walking. 9 A child needs approximately 50 Watch videos of people or objects in action and describe what is happening. words to begin to combine them 9 Pay attention to the use of plurals with an “s”, add them whenever into short phrases. When children possible. Point out words that do not use an “s” to be plural (e.g., men, begin to learn words, they learn that children) to understand placement in space. some words refer to objects, some 9 Play games with “in” and “on.” To focus on correlation with space. -
Historical Linguistics and Cognitive Science
5 Historical Linguistics and Cognitive Science Philip Baldi 1 2 & Paola Eulalia Dussias1 (1 Penn State University) (2 University of Cagliari) Abstract In this paper we investigate possible links between historical linguistics and cognitive science, or theory of the mind. Our primary goal is to demonstrate that historically documented processes of a certain type, i.e. those relating to semantic change and grammaticalization, form a unified theoretical bundle which gives insight into the cognitive processes at work in language organization and evolution. We reject the notion that historical phenomena are excluded from cognitive speculation on the grounds that they are untestable. Rather, we argue for an extension of Labov’s uniformitarian doctrine, which states “that the same mechanisms which operated to produce the large-scale changes of the past may be observed operating in the current changes taking place around us.” (Labov, 1972:161). This principle is transferable to the current context in the following way: first, language as a system is no different today than it was millennia ago, easily as far back as diachronic speculation is likely to take us; and second, the human brain is structurally no different today from the brain of humans of up to ten thousand years ago. The cognitive- linguistic parallelism between the past and the present makes speculation possible, in this case about code- switching, even if it is not testable in the laboratory. It further allows us to make forward and backward inferences about both language change and its cognitive underpinnings. Keywords: historical linguistics, cognitive science, code-switching, semantic change, grammaticalization 1. -
Contextualizing Historical Lexicology the State of the Art of Etymological Research Within Linguistics
Contextualizing historical lexicology The state of the art of etymological research within linguistics University of Helsinki, May 15–17, 2017 Abstracts Organized by the project “Inherited and borrowed in the history of the Uralic languages” (funded by Kone Foundation) Contents I. Keynote lectures ................................................................................. 5 Martin Kümmel Etymological problems between Indo-Iranian and Uralic ................ 6 Johanna Nichols The interaction of word structure and lexical semantics .................. 9 Martine Vanhove Lexical typology and polysemy patterns in African languages ...... 11 II. Section papers ................................................................................. 12 Mari Aigro A diachronic study of the homophony between polar question particles and coordinators ............................................................. 13 Tommi Alho & Aleksi Mäkilähde Dating Latin loanwords in Old English: Some methodological problems ...................................................................................... 14 Gergely Antal Remarks on the shared vocabulary of Hungarian, Udmurt and Komi .................................................................................................... 15 Sofia Björklöf Areal distribution as a criterion for new internal borrowing .......... 16 Stefan Engelberg Etymology and Pidgin languages: Words of German origin in Tok Pisin ............................................................................................ 17 László -
Official! Morphology & Syntax Syllabus
Official Morphology & Syntax syllabus Linguistics 4050 – Morphology & Syntax Haj Ross [email protected] UNT address: Department of Linguistics and Technical Communication 1155 Union Circle, # 305298, Denton, TX 76203-5017 Telephone: 940 565 4458 [for messages] FAX: 940 369 8976 Office: Language Building 407K Office hours: Th 4:00 – 6:00 Blog: haj.nadamelhor.com Some poetics and syntax papers are at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/hajpapers.html Squibnet is at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/Squibnet/ Goals: To provide an introduction to the structure of words, phrases and clauses. To hook the unwary into an unending fascination with structure. To reawaken in you the sleeping morphopragmantactician you have always been and loved being. (Hint: who was it who easily mastered at least one mother tongue without any vocabulary drills, explicit grammar instruction, boring drills, etc.? Who has always been the best linguist in the world??) Well then. Step into your own magnificence. Take a bow. Books: None required. However, anyone who is going to want to deeply remember syntax will of course eventually want to buy Jim McCawley’s indelible The Syntactic Phenomena of English University of Chicago Press (1988). ISBN: 0226556247 (paper). Similarly, if you are addicted to morphology, you will always treasure Mark Aronoff’s Word Formation in Generative Grammar (1976). MIT Press. ISBN: 0-262-51017-0. And Beth Levin’s English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (1993) ISBN 0-226- 47533-6 (paper) is a delicious cookie jar of weird (and unweird) classes of verbs that you may have thought you had forgotten since you were three. -
Laryngeal Features in German* Michael Jessen Bundeskriminalamt, Wiesbaden Catherine Ringen University of Iowa
Phonology 19 (2002) 189–218. f 2002 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0952675702004311 Printed in the United Kingdom Laryngeal features in German* Michael Jessen Bundeskriminalamt, Wiesbaden Catherine Ringen University of Iowa It is well known that initially and when preceded by a word that ends with a voiceless sound, German so-called ‘voiced’ stops are usually voiceless, that intervocalically both voiced and voiceless stops occur and that syllable-final (obstruent) stops are voiceless. Such a distribution is consistent with an analysis in which the contrast is one of [voice] and syllable-final stops are devoiced. It is also consistent with the view that in German the contrast is between stops that are [spread glottis] and those that are not. On such a view, the intervocalic voiced stops arise because of passive voicing of the non-[spread glottis] stops. The purpose of this paper is to present experimental results that support the view that German has underlying [spread glottis] stops, not [voice] stops. 1 Introduction In spite of the fact that voiced (obstruent) stops in German (and many other Germanic languages) are markedly different from voiced stops in languages like Spanish, Russian and Hungarian, all of these languages are usually claimed to have stops that contrast in voicing. For example, Wurzel (1970), Rubach (1990), Hall (1993) and Wiese (1996) assume that German has underlying voiced stops in their different accounts of Ger- man syllable-final devoicing in various rule-based frameworks. Similarly, Lombardi (1999) assumes that German has underlying voiced obstruents in her optimality-theoretic (OT) account of syllable-final laryngeal neutralisation and assimilation in obstruent clusters. -
Graphemic Methods for Genderneutral
Graphemic Methods for GenderNeutral Writing Yannis Haralambous & Joseph Dichy Abstract. In this paper we present a model and a classification of graphemic genderneutral writing methods, we explore current practices in French, Ger man, Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish languages, and we investigate in teractions between genderneutral writing forms and regular expressions. 1. Introduction: The General Issue of, and behind, Gender Neutral Writing The issue behind genderneutral writing is that of the representation of intergender relations carried by languages. What is at stake is the representation of equality, or not, between genders. The issue is also re ferred to as “inclusive writing,” which apparently refers to human rights, but does not cover all cases, i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. The term “GenderNeutral Writing” is, in fact, both clearer and more inclusive. Generally speaking, languages are conservative, if not archaic. A sig nificant example is that of the idea of time, which is traditionally repre sented as a dot sliding along a straight line in a continuous movement. This has been a philosophical image of time since ancient Greek philoso phers and throughout the Middle Ages both in Arabic and European phi losophy, but can no longer be considered as a valid representation after 20th century existentialist philosophers and Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Yannis Haralambous 0000-0003-1443-6115 IMT Atlantique & LabSTICC UMR CNRS 6285 Brest, France [email protected] Joseph Dichy Professor of Arabic linguistics Lyon, France [email protected] Y. Haralambous (Ed.), Graphemics in the 21st Century. -
Lectures on English Lexicology
МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ ГОУ ВПО «Татарский государственный гуманитарно-педагогический университет» LECTURES ON ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY Курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка Казань 2010 МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ ГОУ ВПО «Татарский государственный гуманитарно-педагогический университет» LECTURES ON ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY Курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка для студентов факультетов иностранных языков Казань 2010 ББК УДК Л Печатается по решению Методического совета факультета иностранных языков Татарского государственного гуманитарно-педагогического университета в качестве учебного пособия Л Lectures on English Lexicology. Курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка. Учебное пособие для студентов иностранных языков. – Казань: ТГГПУ, 2010 - 92 с. Составитель: к.филол.н., доцент Давлетбаева Д.Н. Научный редактор: д.филол.н., профессор Садыкова А.Г. Рецензенты: д.филол.н., профессор Арсентьева Е.Ф. (КГУ) к.филол.н., доцент Мухаметдинова Р.Г. (ТГГПУ) © Давлетбаева Д.Н. © Татарский государственный гуманитарно-педагогический университет INTRODUCTION The book is intended for English language students at Pedagogical Universities taking the course of English lexicology and fully meets the requirements of the programme in the subject. It may also be of interest to all readers, whose command of English is sufficient to enable them to read texts of average difficulty and who would like to gain some information about the vocabulary resources of Modern English (for example, about synonyms -
Basic Morphology
What is Morphology? Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Fudeman MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS 1 1 Thinking about Morphology and Morphological Analysis 1.1 What is Morphology? 1 1.2 Morphemes 2 1.3 Morphology in Action 4 1.3.1 Novel words and word play 4 1.3.2 Abstract morphological facts 6 1.4 Background and Beliefs 9 1.5 Introduction to Morphological Analysis 12 1.5.1 Two basic approaches: analysis and synthesis 12 1.5.2 Analytic principles 14 1.5.3 Sample problems with solutions 17 1.6 Summary 21 Introduction to Kujamaat Jóola 22 mor·phol·o·gy: a study of the structure or form of something Merriam-Webster Unabridged n 1.1 What is Morphology? The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: morph- means ‘shape, form’, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In biology morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and in geology it refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land forms. In linguistics morphology refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch 2 MORPHOLOGYMORPHOLOGY ANDAND MORPHOLOGICAL MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ANALYSIS of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed. n 1.2 Morphemes A major way in which morphologists investigate words, their internal structure, and how they are formed is through the identification and study of morphemes, often defined as the smallest linguistic pieces with a gram- matical function.