On Representations in Morphology Case, Agreement and Inversion in Georgian Author(S): Stephen R
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On Representations in Morphology Case, Agreement and Inversion in Georgian Author(s): Stephen R. Anderson Source: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jul., 1984), pp. 157-218 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4047487 Accessed: 26/10/2009 15:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. 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Traditionally, morpheme-based theories con- strued these categories as being in a more or less one-to-one relationwith discrete substringsof phonological structureor FORMATIVES. If this were an adequateview, it would reduce the 'morphologicalrepresentation' of a word to the sequence of formativescomposing it, where each formativeis (uniquely)associated with some semantic materialor grammaticalcate- gories as its content. Especially in the treatmentof inflection,though, the range of classical puzzles concerningthe natureof 'morphemes'refuses to dissolve; and closer analysissuggests a rather different picture from the usual 'beads on a string' view of morphologicalstructure. The observations of Aronoff (1976) concerning 'morphemes'with no isolable meaning already recall the literature of the 1940's and 1950's (e.g., Hockett 1947 and the controversiesprovoked by this paper). The currentdevelopment of morphologicaltheories not based on morphemes can be traced to Matthews' (1972) discussion of these traditionalprob- lems, and his proposals for a WORD AND PARADIGM view of inflectional structure. Such a view substitutesan inventory of rules modifying word * This paper represents a revision of material presented under the same title to the Workshopon LexicalPhonology and Morphologyat StanfordUniversity, 1 March,1983; to the GLOW Colloquium at York, England on 30 March, 1983, and to the Caucasian Colloquiumat the Universityof Hull in July, 1983. I have benefitedfrom comments provided on these and related issues by MichaelHammond and Alan Timberlake.Special thanksare due to Alice Harris and George Hewitt, as well as Frank Heny and several anonymous referees for this journal,for extensive and detailed commentson an earlierversion of this paper. Informationon Georgian comes from the sources listed in the referencesbelow, as well as fromwork with Tamara 'Japaridze at UCLA and classeswith YolandaMarchev at the Universityof Zurich. Naturally,none of the above should be held in agreementwith my views, or responsiblefor my errorsor failure to take their advice. The present paper was preparedwhile the authorwas supportedby a post-Doctoralfellowship from the American Council of LearnedSocieties; supportfrom the Committeeon Research at UCLA is also acknowledged. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2 (1984) 157-218. 0167-806X/84/0022-0157 $06.20 ? 1984 by D. Reidel PublishingCompany 158 STEPHEN R. ANDERSON structure(by affixation,internal change, etc.) for the usual inventory of morphemes. These rules depend on a representationof the inflectional structureof forms which is not directlyderivable from the constituentsof phonological form, however, and whose natureremains to be elucidated. These questions of representation arise particularly clearly in the inflectional theory of Anderson (1977, 1982, 1984a), where a notion of MORPHOSYNTACTIC REPRESENTATION forms the interface between syn- tactic and phonological structure. This kind of representationcan be expected to have its own properties which are worthy of closer in- vestigation. The representations in question can be traced to the proposals of Chomsky (1965), who presents the terminal elements of P-Markersas complex symbols or internally unstructuredcomplexes of features. In addition to features of subcategorization(and selection), some of these features represent inflectional properties (e.g., case, agreement, tense, etc.), and it is assumed that rules of grammarwhich are not part of the syntax per se establish a correspondencebetween these complex symbols and actual sequences of phonologicallyrealized formatives. Recent work in morphologydevelops this picture further,showing that these symbols have a significantinternal structure which forms the basis of a system of morphologicaloperations mapping them onto phonological form. These operations are the morphologicalrules which establish correspondences between morphosyntacticand phonologicalform, and which thus replace (at least in the domain of inflection) a list or lexicon of 'meaningful' grammaticalmorphemes. This paper explores the propertiesof such morphosyntacticrepresen- tations,the rules that create and modifythem, and the role they play in the grammar,on the basis of an analysis of case marking and agreement in Georgian. The interest of Georgian for such purposes lies in the fact that the inflectionalmorphology of this language is substantiallymore complex than that of more familiarlanguages, and thus provides a better test of the expressive power of a proposed morphological theory. Nonetheless, despite the inherentinterest of the Georgianfacts, the goal of the paper is not simply to provide an analysisof Georgian, but to clarify the natureof morphosyntacticrepresentations. The structureof the paperis as follows. In section 1, we sketch the basic propertiesof verbal agreementand case markingin Georgian, limitingthe discussionto sentences whose verbs appearin one of the two fundamental tense/aspect series. We then review the evidence for associatingparticular grammaticalpositions with particularagreement and case markingmor- CASE, AGREEMENT AND INVERSION IN GEORGIAN 159 phology, establishingthe role of the notions of subject, direct object and indirect object in Georgian. Section 2 discusses the INVERSION con- structionwhich is found in the thirdtense/aspect series, and also in the first and second series for a specific set of verbs; the relation of this con- structionto those discussedin section 1 is treated.An analysisof inversion proposedby Harris(1981, 1982, 1983) is presented;the explanatoryscope of this analysis is explored, and arguments are presented against the syntactic relation-changingprocess on which it depends. An alternative, purelymorphological account suggested (but not arguedfor) by Anderson (1982) is then introduced. The discussion in sections 1 and 2 recapitulatesfacts about Georgian from the literature,as well as Harris'analysis. This duplicationof material available elsewhere seems necessary for the benefit of the majority of readers, who will not be familiar with either the facts or their prior analysis;indulgence is begged of those readerswho are better prepared.It is particularlyimportant to stressfrom the outset the crucial relianceof the present paper on Harris' work: her insights into the structure of the Georgian verbal system are relied on heavily here, and the analysis eventually arrived at bears close similaritiesto hers (though with some essentialdifferences). Indeed, the presentpaper can be regardedboth as a critical response to Harris' work and as an application of the theory of inflectionexplored here. Section 3 then goes on to explore the morphology of Georgian agreement in greater detail, on the basis of a discussion of the mor- phosyntacticrepresentations that should be assigned to the various verb classes in the language. It is concluded that when these representationsare adequately explicated, no independent rule of Inversion (even a mor- phological one) is required,though a morphologicalrestructuring opera- tion analogous to the relationalrule of 'Unaccusative'plays a role in the account. A comprehensiveset of agreement and case markingrules are proposed which explicitly accommodate a wide range of apparently complex phenomena in a simple and natural way. One result of this analysis is the elimination of arbitrarylexical markers for the various conjugation classes in the language. Section 4 then provides conclusions and a summaryof results. 1. BASIC MORPHOLOGICAL AND SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES IN GEORGIAN Georgian is well-known for the complexity of its inflectional apparatus, 160 STEPHEN R. ANDERSON and especiallyfor the dependenceof the case-markingsystem on the tense of the verb. There are roughly a dozen