LING 650 - Class questions/comments 3/13
Chapter 8
First, I’d like to comment on the Zulu data p.162. I think I got a bit confused trying to understand it and get the difference between inflection class and gender agreement prefixes, and how they can be distinguished from each other. However, they are already different since one set simply attaches to nouns while the other attaches to verbs, one creates a sg/pl distinction, and the other creates a fem/masc distinction. I wonder why the book presents the data as “striking”. The same applies to the Italian data where inflection classes are for nouns while gender agreement is for adjectives.
Regarding the Arabic data in the underspecification section, it makes more sense to me as a speaker of Arabic to posit that the case system in the singular is different from that of the plural ( I was taught both paradigms separately). A specific word would have 3 case markers in the singular, and only 2 in the plural. The example mentioned in the book is a sound feminine plural, and the final suffix is a case marker only. The following example is a sound masculine plural, and the final suffix marks both number and case.
pl Mualim Sing Nom Mualim-uun Nom Mualim-un Gen/acc Mualm-iin Gen Mualim-an acc Mulima-in
Since ‘mualim’ is masc, it gets a specific suffix which in this case subsumes both plurality and case, and it is a totally different paradigm from the singular.
- Hana Baalousha
In section 8.2.2, while discussing the relationship of inflection and gender, Haspelmath talked about Russian nouns of the second declension, which generally mark feminines but, on occasion, will be masculine. The thing I found interesting was his choice of example, sluga 'male servant'. This is a relatively uncommon example of a second declension masculine and does little to show why these nouns would not migrate over to the first declension and take a consonant-final form like *slug in order to pattern with other masculines. The answer is that the more common exponents of this pattern are all encountered on a regular basis: kinship terms and diminutives of masculine names. For example, the words papa 'daddy', d'ad'a 'uncle', and d'eduška 'grandpa' all decline as members of the second declension, as do common nicknames like Saša from Aleksandr, Miša from Mikhail, and Žen'a from Jevgenij.
I really liked the inheritance hierarchies as a method for easily documenting the categories and subcategories to which different inflectional patterns belong.
In section 8.7.2, Haspelmath discusses deponency, which I had never studied before as a phenomenon. While reading about it, I realized that Old English has its own deponent verbs, some of which survive down to this day. In the Germanic context, these are known as the preterite-present verbs, and those which survive in Modern English make up our modal verbs (which, interestingly enough, are defective). They are called preterite-presents because in the present tense they behave like strong verbs (they use apophony to indicate certain grammatical changes), but they use the vowel exponents usually associated with the preterite forms. For example, OE cunnan 'know how to, can' takes the form can(n), even though it would normally be expected to take a present-tense form of *cin(n) (with the normal vowel for a class III strong verb in the present). Because the preterite forms have already been used to form the present-tense conjugation, these deponent verbs make up the difference by using the so-called 'weak' verb endings, consisting of a suffix with a dental consonant, to form the preterite conjugation. This gives us forms like can(n)-cūþe 'can-could' (the
- Scott Brewer
1. After the section on “rules of referral”, I was unclear about whether underspecification is considered to be disproven by data like the Old Church Slavonic nominal inflection, or whether it is still a valid explanation for syncretism in certain examples. If it is, then how is it possible to tell whether forms are underspecified? Should syncretism be considered the result of underspecification whenever it forms a natural class?
2. I was interested by the section on defectiveness, particularly how lexemes become defective or are learned as such. I understand that some forms are difficult to predict (ex. ?foregoed vs. ?forewent as the past tense of forego), and occur so rarely that the correct form might fall out of use. However, the Russian defective verbs on p. 181 have predictable 1sg forms, and some of the lexemes are fairly frequent. None of them seem to have any semantic difficulties with the 1sg present, either. Why would a semantically useful form disappear? Did it ever exist? And why do speakers not fill in what is clearly a gap in the language with the obvious solution, rather than put in the extra effort to learn the absence of the form (and invent circuitous ways of expressing its meaning)?
- Keiko Bridwell
In Chapter 8, we see that there are two broad types of relations between linguistic units, mainly syntagmatic relations and paradigmatic relations. On the one hand, syntagmatic relations are relations between units that follow each other in utterances. On the other hand, paradigmatic relations are relations that are between units that occupy the same slot in a sentence. To illustrate more, syntagmatic relations can be shown in the example: The older boy brought some food to the entire family. In this sentence, relations can be established between the definite article the, the adjective older, and the noun boy because they occur within a nominal phrase that is headed by the noun boy. If the adjective older is replaced by the adjective younger, in that case, a paradigmatic relation is established between older and younger because they cannot occupy the same slot.
The chapter also states that inflectional affixes can be categorized into inflection classes. And when different words demonstrate different suppletive inflectional allomorphs, they belong to different inflection class. In this sense, an inflection class is seen as a set of paradigms that exhibit the same inflectional patterns. In addition, in any given language, phonological, semantic, or morphological criteria are used to assign words into inflection classes. Among the semantic criteria, animacy is employed to make distinctions between animate and non-animate nouns (e.g. German).
- Maad El-Gali
Haspelmath claims that all German masculine, weak nouns ending with -e are animate. However, this is not the case for all of them. For example, der Wille ‘the will, volition’ and der Friede ‘peace’ are both masculine, weak nouns ending with -e, but will/volition and peace are certainly not animate beings. On the other hand, German philosophers have used der Wille to refer to the individual but never Friede. Der Friede can only be made animate through anthropomorphism. However, Haspelmath correctly states that German first and third person plural verbal endings are examples of syncretism. In fact, the Middle High German first and third person, indicative verbal endings were -en and -ent respectively, as in nemen ‘we take’ and nement ‘they take’. The likely reason that German speaers see the first and third person plural verbal inflection –en as related but not the third person singular and second person plural inflection –t is that the former always attaches to the same base, as in wir/sie haben ‘we/they have’, while the latter often attaches to different base forms, as in er nimmt ‘he takes’ but ihr nehmt ‘you all take’.
I find the explanation for Latin paradigm shifts to likely be correct, but I do not think that a less frequently occurring paradigm cannot be the basis of analogical extension and thus a paradigm shift. English has the forms dive-dove and fling-flung, which according to this explanation would be unlikely because the weak verbal paradigm is far more common in English than the strong verbal paradigm. Nevertheless, these weak verbs among a number of others shifted to the less common paradigm.
- Michael Highlander
- Zee Hildreth
On page 184, Haspelmath writes, "It is significant that paradigmatic periphrasis can only be identified in the context of other paradigmatic forms." However, he doesn't state exactly why it is significant, and I don't understand. Right before giving this statement, he has just explained that categorial periphrasis exists and is not morphologically relevant or found in contrast in other paradigmatic forms. This seems to be something of a tautology to me in that he defines a term and then says it is significant based on the qualifications of the definition. Perhaps I am overthinking this--I do understand how periphrasis provides evidence for a paradigmatic perspective and that it is not quite as strong as the evidence of inflection class or syncretism. It does not seem possible to explain periphrasis through a syntagmatic perspective, at least. (However, I know this book has been a little biased before--is there a theoretical perspective that encompasses a syntagmatic explanation?)
Another question I have here regards the brief discussion of whether periphrasis is included in a lexeme's paradigm. Why is there not consensus on this point? Non-compositional meaning is an established component of morphology and it seems illogical to say that a group of words that serves a paradigmatic function wouldn't be included as part of the formal paradigm. What is the other side of this debate?
- Ruthanne Hughes
Comments and Questions for Understanding Morphology: Chapter 8 (Haspelmath & Sims, 2010)
Admittedly, this chapter was at time the most difficult one for me to understand and at other times the easiest. Generally, I have understood that exploring evidence to support the existence of inflectional paradigms is a way to either support or refute the word-based model of morphology. Again, the authors seem to have supplied evidence that a pure morpheme-based model, presented in the form of “syntagmatic relations between units,” in not sufficient to account for what occurs in languages. The existence of (seemingly) vast occurrences of suppletive inflectional allomorphy lends more strength to the word-based model.
One of the most perplexing examples given (for me, at least) is the one in 8.2.2 on gender agreement prefixes in Zulu. Although the authors claim that there is obvious “close correspondence between gender classes and inflection classes,” I fail to see it. I think the problem may lie in the fact that I am uncertain which noun(s) is(are) feminine and which is(are) masculine. I guess, based on the authors’ assertion, that hambi ‘traveller’ is masculine and that the agreement prefix si- only appears when the subject is masculine. However, I don’t think this was clearly stated (or I’m just missing something). Luckily, the example given for Italian is much clearer. This may have to do with the fact that my understanding of Italian is better than that of Zulu.
- Raymond Knight
- John McCullough
To me, natural syncretisms make sense, as they seem to function as a simplification of the inflectional paradigm, and rule underspecification is something I’m quite used to dealing with. But I’m still confused as to how diachronic evidence of phonological change (as with the Old English example on page 176) tells us anything about the accidental or intentional/systematic nature of homophones. And what exactly is the difference between syncretism and inflectional homophony?
As for defectiveness, is it too Whorfian to suggest that these ‘missing pieces’ are pragmatically or culturally conditioned? It seems like differing perceptions of what is possible, or at least of how one can inflect words, might be the reason why Russians can’t say ‘I will win’ or why Spanish speakers cannot use present tense of abolir (because they perceive abolishment as a verb used to describe something that already happened, lending itself to past and/or participles?)
Finally, I’d like to point out something interesting happening in Spanish that I presented on in 2013. Modern Spanish has two means of expressing the future: a future tense and a periphrastic future construction. While they used to be categorical, in that the periphrastic form always referred to a ‘closer’ future event, like within a day’s time, or a gerundial future (i.e. I’m going to X very soon), NOW there are two things happening. Language contact with English is causing US Spanish (and Mexican Spanish, to a large extent) to adopt the periphrastic future for many more conditions, because of English’s reliance on the ‘will + V’ construction to express the future; it’s seen as a more direct translation/ easier for bilinguals to acquire. The other thing happening, which still needs more updated research to confirm, is that strangely, in certain cases of doubt, the periphrastic future can replace the subjunctive mood!
- Alecia Nichols
Gender is a complicated feature in morpho-syntax. Not all languages have the gender feature, and even though languages have its own gender system, the correspondence between the gender affixes and inflectional morphemes vary depending on languages. Because of the disagreement of the gender system, several questions arise. At first, why do some languages have the gender feature, and some other languages don’t? If there are some languages that do not have the gender feature, does this mean that the gender feature is useless on semantic point of view. Secondly, among the languages that have the gender feature, why do some languages like Zulu have a close correspondence between the gender classes and inflection classes, why do some languages like Italian do not? Productivity problem?
Loan words also arise some questions on inflection. When a language borrows some words from another language, do they also borrow the infection or gender systems from the original words? If not, do they just borrow a lexeme and apply the lexeme to their own inflectional and gender system? If two languages have a conflicting feature on inflection or gender, do they follow their own way of inflection and gender marking, or do they follow inflection or gender marking from the loan words? Are all of these related to the productivity explained in ch.8?
- Dennis Keunhyung Park
- Evan Parrotta
Gender in Italian is strange because it must be distinguished between infection class. For example, “mano” has singular suffix “o” but is feminine and as such will have a feminine article, and feminine gender inflected on the adjective. It is difficult to learn these gendered forms because it is one natural inclination to think that a –o ending noun is masculine just as most Italian nouns (such as giardino). This is used in the text to explain how we must distinguish between inflection class and gender, because an inflection class determines the set of inflected forms of the noun lexeme and gender is an agreement feature.
There are also semantic criteria for determining inflection class, like animacy, mass-count, and transitivity of verbs. I think this is very interesting because our thoughts organize information in certain types, such a suffixes to denote human or non-human forms (in Tamil: il for non-human, -itam for human), or in Welsh, a morpheme denoting plural animals (-od). Also, even though English does not have gender, we do have some inflection class assignment when feminizing nouns, such as sorcerersorceress and waiterwaitress. Does this mean that the –ess ending is an inflectional class assignment marker, or does is gender marking distinct from inflectional class here, just as it is in Italian?
- Laura Redden p. 180-181: I wonder if there is a reason why a lexeme may lack word forms. Is it always the result of purely linguistic reasons or can it be culturally or historically determined? For example, if we consider the Russian verb pobedit’ ‘win’, it lacks the first person singular in the present and future tense (e.g. *pobezhu ‘I will win’), but it does have the first person plural (e.g. pobedim ‘we will win’). Can such defectiveness be connected with the type of community identity that, I would say, Russian people share? For various political and other reasons, we are more predisposed to think of ourselves as ‘community members’ rather than as ‘individuals’, like the people in the USA. In the present, such pattern of thinking is changing, but not very quickly.
Or, if the reasons are purely linguistic, do phonological restrictions play a role here? I would argue that it is quite hard to pronounce the first person singular word form *pobezhu ‘I will win’.
As for less frequent lexemes of the *pobezhu type, which are also defective, in accounting for how they are learned to be defective, I very much like the explanation offered in the book – Russian speakers (at least me personally) feel that there is analogy at play here.
- Angelina Rubina
Chap. 8 On page 175, we can see the German examples used for the syntactic test to distinguish between systematic and accidental homonymy. It says that he verb spielt has to agree simultaneously with both coordinands of the disjunction as seen in the following (8.31).
(8.31) a. Entweder Ballack oder Klose spielt gegen Bulgarien. ‘Either Ballack or Klose will play in the Bulgaria match.’ b. *Entweder ich oder du spiele/spielst gegen Bulgarien. ‘Either I or you(sg) will play in the Bulgaria match.’
As we know, ‘either A or B’ means ‘A or B but not both.’ It seems at least to me that the verb is supposed to agree with one of them selectively like English as in (1).
(1) Either you or I am wrong.
I wonder why the verb has to agree both with Ballack or Klose and both with ich and with du, respectively in (8.31). It seems that there is a conflict between a semantic property and a syntactic one when the verb agrees with both.
I am also wondering if there is an auxiliary verb for future tense in German. The four sentences in (8.31) show ‘will’ in the English translation but there seems no counterpart in German sentences. In this case, does present-tense express future tense?
How can we make the sentences (8.31b) and (8.31d) grammatical?
- Jiyeon Song