Analogy in Lovari Morphology

Analogy in Lovari Morphology Márton András Baló Ph.D. dissertation Supervisor: László Kálmán C.Sc. Doctoral School of Linguistics Gábor Tolcsvai Nagy MHAS Theoretical Linguistics Doctoral Programme Zoltán Bánréti C.Sc. Department of Theoretical Linguistics Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Budapest, 2016 Contents 1. General introduction 4 1.1. The aim of the study of language . 4 2. Analogy in grammar 4 2.1. Patterns and exemplars versus rules and categories . 4 2.2. Analogy and similarity . 6 2.3. Neither synchronic, nor diachronic . 9 2.4. Variation and frequency . 10 2.5. Rich memory and exemplars . 12 2.6. Paradigms . 14 2.7. Patterns, prototypes and modelling . 15 3. Introduction to the Romani language 18 3.1. Discovery, early history and research . 18 3.2. Later history . 21 3.3. Para-Romani . 22 3.4. Recent research . 23 3.5. Dialects . 23 3.6. The Romani people in Hungary . 28 3.7. Dialects in Hungary . 29 3.8. Dialect diversity and dialectal pluralism . 31 3.9. Current research activities . 33 3.10. Research of Romani in Hungary . 34 3.11. The current research . 35 4. The Lovari sound system 37 4.1. Consonants . 37 4.2. Vowels . 37 4.3. Stress . 38 5. A critical description of Lovari morphology 38 5.1. Nominal inflection . 38 5.1.1. Gender . 39 5.1.2. Animacy . 40 5.1.3. Case . 42 5.1.4. Additional features. 47 5.2. Verbal inflection . 50 5.2.1. The present tense . 50 5.2.2. Verb derivation. 54 5.2.2.1. Transitive derivational markers . 55 2 5.2.2.2. Intransitive derivational markers . 56 5.2.3. A few remarks on loan-verb adaptation . 57 5.2.4. The past paradigm of the consonantal class . 59 6. Variation in Lovari morphology 61 6.1. Some general remarks on variation . 61 6.2. Weak points in the Lovari nominal paradigms . 64 6.2.1. The masculine oblique base . 64 6.2.1.1. Description of the phenomenon . 64 6.2.1.2. Possible causes and explanations . 70 6.2.1.2.1. Variation in the position of stress . 70 6.2.1.2.2. The number of syllables . 72 6.2.1.2.3. The plural form . 74 6.2.1.2.4. The masculine adjectival ending -ano . 76 6.2.1.2.5. 2nd person singular verbal endings . 77 6.2.1.2.6. The adverbial ending -es . 82 6.2.1.3. A brief sidetrack . 83 6.2.1.3.1. Vowel harmony . 83 6.2.1.3.2. The “inherited-borrowed dichotomy”. 84 6.2.2. The feminine oblique plural base . 85 6.2.2.1. Description of the phenomenon . 85 6.2.2.2. Possible causes and explanations . 89 6.2.2.2.1. The masculine oblique plural -en- . 89 6.2.2.2.2. The feminine nominative plural suffixes . 90 6.3. Weak points in the Lovari verbal paradigms . 90 6.3.1. Some more remarks on the present tense . 90 6.3.2. Variation in the past tense of vocalic verbs . 93 6.3.2.1. Description of the phenomenon . 93 6.3.2.2. Possible causes and explanations . 99 6.3.2.2.1. -i- stem verbs and -a- stem verbs: the stem-final /r/, /n/ and /v/ of consonantal verbs . 99 6.3.2.2.2. -i- stem verbs and -a- stem verbs: the past forms of verbs with the derivational markers -av- and -ajv- . 100 7. Conclusion 101 7.1. General remarks . 101 7.2. Ongoing research and further points of investigation . 103 References 104 3 1. General introduction 1.1. The aim of the study of language The fundamental aim behind the study of language should be to understand how language actually works. Obviously, this does not mean the mere description of a language, which constantly keeps changing, and thus a real-time description can never really be achieved. But it neither means the creation of abstract models, as these are not suitable for understanding or explaining the nature of language. Neither its description, nor abstract models are capable of explaining other aspects of linguistics which are also important: child language acquisition, language change etc. Abstract models in every field of linguistics try to make general statements about the structure of language in the form of rules, and, according to popular belief, these rules are different from prescriptive rules. The latter ones are part of a social construction and they tell the speakers of a language how things should be said in that given language, marking out an “accepted”, “standard” variety, deviations from which are considered substandard and often stigmatised. Theoretical and descriptive linguistics refuse this notion. The rules used, for instance, in generative grammar, are claimed to describe how a language is used and constitute a solid framework. But if we delve deeper into these rules, we find that they do not work so differently from those other rules: they mark out a single, very limited variety of the language, which they call competence. Deviations from this are either thrown into the waste-basket of performance or considered another variety of the language to which different rules apply. This leads to great flexibility – but it is not the theory that is flexible, being able to give account of a wide range of phenomena; it is rather the rules that can be flexibly changed, whether we want to include a certain phenomenon or not. Another downside of abstract models is that they develop into elaborate formalisms and distance themselves from language use. They also have a tendency to become very language-specific, but this is exactly what general and theoretical linguistics would like to avoid. We can only understand how language works through the study of individual languages, but ultimately we would like to achieve an ideal state where we have some ideas about language in general. Neurolinguistics is still in its infancy but based upon recent research in the field (Menn & Duffield 2014) it seems that construction-based and usage-based approaches to grammar can provide insights into how grammars can come closer to reflecting what our brains do. As long as we are not quite sure about the neurolinguistic processes, though, we will adopt the view that “the human mind is an inveterate pattern-seeker” (Blevins & Blevins 2009: 1). Patterns are generalised through analogical reasoning, and cognitive psychological research also justifies the idea that analogical reasoning is an essential part of human thinking (Penn, Holyoak & Povinelli 2008). 2. Analogy in grammar 2.1. Patterns and exemplars versus rules and categories Is not pattern generalisation the creation of rules? Apparently, van Marle 1990 bears upon analogy as a synchronic force and argues that “the speakers of a language have the capacity to construct rules on the basis of the existing words” (van Marle 1990: 267), called “rule-creating creativity”. Here, the notion of rules is also incorporated, although these rules are not to be taken in the generative sense, creating the surface representation from an abstract, underlying form. Still, rules have always been appealing because it is easier to understand a complex system if we break it down into rules. An example is a seemingly simple question I have already tried to answer (Baló 2011). The Romani derivational marker -(V)sar-, to be discussed in detail in the present paper, also called 4 somewhat humorously a “Gypsyfying” marker by Choli-Daróczi & Feyér 1988, is claimed by the literature to be a complex marker, consisting of historically identifiable elements. By breaking it down into the elements -(V)s- and -ar-, we might be able to understand its origins and to categorise it easier, but, as we will see, we do not get closer to the way it actually functions in the complexity of Romani morphology. The patterns speakers can relate to are based on all kinds of utterances, from sound-level to discourse-level instances that the child is exposed to, but only to truly identifiable elements. If the elements in the above example are not identifiable as distinct elements, they will not serve as bases for any sort of pattern.1 We suppose that all the exemplars, from sound- level through word- and sentence-level to discourse-level, are constantly processed, analysed and re-analysed by the brain. Another question that arises here is to what extent they are categorised. Conscious human thinking tends to prefer distinct categories, again because it is easier to place novel items into already existing categories than to wait, see and slowly identify as many aspects of the novel item as possible and get to know it in its own right. This instant and almost instinctive categorisation often happens in everyday life, too, not only in language: when we meet a new person, we will obviously have some initial impressions and based on those, we casually put them into one of our existing types of people, usually subconsciously. And linguistic categories are made up based on rules. But if rules are generalisations over patterns, then are patterns different from categories after all? The answer is obviously yes. The problem with patterns is, though, that they are fuzzy. They are not distinct enough. Recently, generative linguistics has been the theory that advocates a very simplifying view of language by introducing a binary approach of such distinct and, by nature, extreme categories as well-formedness versus ill-formedness, which is in fact not different from the prescriptive approach with its “correct” and “incorrect” forms at all.2 In this framework, simplicity becomes a goal and the model becomes the focus of research, while ignoring recent findings about the cognitive processes of the brain through which it creates constructions and patterns (Chandler 2002, Eddington 1996).

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