UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title Constructional Morphology: The Georgian Version Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1b93p0xs Author Gurevich, Olga Publication Date 2006 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Constructional Morphology: The Georgian Version by Olga I Gurevich B.A. (University of Virginia) 2000 M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 2002 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Eve E. Sweetser, Co-Chair Professor James P. Blevins, Co-Chair Professor Sharon Inkelas Professor Johanna Nichols Spring 2006 The dissertation of Olga I Gurevich is approved: Co-Chair Date Co-Chair Date Date Date University of California, Berkeley Spring 2006 Constructional Morphology: The Georgian Version Copyright 2006 by Olga I Gurevich 1 Abstract Constructional Morphology: The Georgian Version by Olga I Gurevich Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Eve E. Sweetser, Co-Chair, Professor James P. Blevins, Co-Chair Linguistic theories can be distinguished based on how they represent the construc- tion of linguistic structures. In \bottom-up" models, meaning is carried by small linguistic units, from which the meaning of larger structures is derived. By contrast, in \top-down" models the smallest units of form need not be individually meaningful; larger structures may determine their overall meaning and the selection of their parts. Many recent developments in psycholinguistics provide empirical support for the latter view. This study combines intuitions from Construction Grammar and Word-and-Para- digm morphology to develop the framework of Constructional Morphology. The proposed framework provides mechanisms for describing the full range of regular, sub-regular and irregular patterns in languages with rich morphology and complex morphosyntax. The thesis argues that morphological and morphosyntactic patterns should be described using generalized form-meaning pairings (constructions), which include semantic, syntactic, and morphological information in the same statements. This top-down approach also resolves some long-standing issues in computational morphology. The theoretical framework is illustrated through an analysis of Georgian mor- phosyntax with a particular focus on version, originally a morphosyntactic marker of par- ticipant affectedness or salience. Version represents a case of mismatch between form and function: the same morphological resources can mark participant affectedness in some con- structions and unrelated categories in other contexts, such as voice, tense, and conjugation 2 class. The syntactic function of version markers is in some contexts akin to an applicative, elevating an affected participant to a syntactic core argument, while in other instances they make no syntactic contribution. The theoretical framework, developed to capture the recurrent patterns of Geor- gian morphosyntax, is also applicable to general morphosyntactic description. An exami- nation of version-like phenomena in several other languages reveals that their description also depends on the larger constructions of the particular language and should therefore be done in the same \top-down" approach. The thesis concludes by exploring the consequences of Georgian-type patterns for computational linguistics, which has traditionally assumed straight compositionality. A computational model is proposed for parsing and generating Georgian verbal inflections based on example paradigms and constructions at various degrees of generality. Professor Eve E. Sweetser Dissertation Committee Co-Chair Professor James P. Blevins Dissertation Committee Co-Chair i To the memory of my grandmother, Yudif Gurevich (1912-2006) ii Contents List of Figures vi List of Tables vii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview of the Study . 1 1.2 Terminology . 4 1.3 Transliteration . 6 1.4 Brief Introduction to Georgian Version . 6 1.4.1 Morphotactic Preliminaries . 8 1.4.2 Prototypical Uses of Version: Active Constructions . 8 1.4.3 Further Grammaticalized Uses of Version Vowels in Georgian . 10 1.5 Parallels to Version in Other Languages . 13 1.5.1 Turkic . 14 1.5.2 Burushaski (isolate) . 17 1.5.3 Gorum(Munda) . 18 1.5.4 Ethical Dative . 20 2 Theoretical Framework 23 2.1 Introduction . 23 2.2 Constructions and Construction Grammar . 24 2.2.1 Background . 24 2.2.2 Varieties of `Construction Grammar' . 26 2.2.3 Constructional Approaches to Morphology . 30 2.3 Morphology: Words and Paradigms . 34 2.3.1 Background . 35 2.3.2 Traditional Word-and-Paradigm Theory . 38 2.3.3 Words vs. Morphemes . 43 2.3.4 Modern WP Approaches . 45 2.4 Constructional Morphology: Proposed Framework . 48 2.4.1 Some Basic Definitions and Principles . 48 2.4.2 Constructions at the Sub-Word Level: Inflection . 51 2.4.3 Morphosyntactic Constructions . 59 iii 2.4.4 Putting It Together: Constructs and Constructional Hierarchies . 62 2.5 Productivity and Well-Formedness . 67 2.5.1 Psycholinguistic Evidence and Analogy . 67 2.5.2 Well-formedness and Negative Evidence . 69 2.6 Case Studies . 70 3 Constructions in Georgian Morphosyntax 72 3.1 Introduction . 72 3.2 Morphosyntactic Patterns . 75 3.2.1 Screeves and series . 75 3.2.2 Conjugation Classes, Valence, and Case-Marking . 76 3.2.3 Verb Agreement: Direct . 80 3.2.4 Verb Agreement: Inversion . 82 3.2.5 Phenomena Sensitive to Thematic Roles . 84 3.2.6 Case-Marking and Agreement as Linking Problems . 85 3.2.7 Summary of Issues . 90 3.3 Morphotactic Patterns . 91 3.3.1 Structure of the Verb Template . 91 3.3.2 Preverbs . 94 3.3.3 Thematic Suffixes . 96 3.3.4 Pronominal Agreement Markers and Screeve Endings . 97 3.3.5 Screeve Endings . 99 3.3.6 Conjugation Classes and Other Lexical Classes . 102 3.3.7 Georgian Lexical Classes and Productivity . 104 3.4 Summary of Issues . 109 3.5 Constructional Analysis . 110 3.5.1 The Series as a Construction . 110 3.5.2 Constructional Representations . 111 3.5.3 Summary . 114 3.6 Discussion . 115 4 Georgian Version 117 4.1 Introduction . 117 4.1.1 Version as Participant Affectedness . 121 4.2 Active Verbs|Objective Version . 121 4.2.1 Objective Version in Transitive Verbs . 122 4.2.2 Objective Version in Ditransitive Verbs . 125 4.2.3 Objective Version in Intransitive Verbs . 125 4.2.4 Discourse Factors Relevant for Objective Version . 127 4.3 Active Verbs|Subjective Version . 134 4.3.1 Subjective Version and Reflexivity . 137 4.4 Active Verbs|Locative Version . 140 4.5 Version as Participant Affectedness, Non-Active Verbs . 144 4.6 Causativization . 149 4.7 Version Markers as Experiencer Agreement . 151 iv 4.7.1 i/u- . 151 4.7.2 s/h- . 152 4.8 Discussion . 154 5 Pre-radical Vowels and the Family of Constructions 159 5.1 Introduction . 159 5.2 Pre-Radical Vowels as Stem and Screeve Formants . 160 5.2.1 Conjugation 3 (Unergative) Verbs . 160 5.2.2 Conjugation 2 (Unaccusative) Verbs . 162 5.3 Inversion . 163 5.3.1 Inversion in Active Verbs . 163 5.3.2 Inversion in Conjugation 4 (Indirect) Verbs . 166 5.4 `Neutral' version a- . 167 5.5 The family of constructions . 169 5.6 Summary of functional classes of version . 169 5.7 Concluding Discussion . 174 5.7.1 Version and Middle Voice . 174 5.7.2 Distributional similarity does not imply functional similarity . 176 5.7.3 Regarding Compositionality . 177 6 Computational Modeling 179 6.1 Introduction . 179 6.2 Approaches to Computational Morphology . 181 6.2.1 Standard Assumptions and Difficulties Presented by Georgian . 184 6.2.2 Xerox Finite-State Morphology Tools . 186 6.3 Prototype Model of the Georgian Verb . 188 6.3.1 General Idea . 188 6.3.2 Level 1: the lexicon . 189 6.3.3 Level 2: semi-regular patterns . 191 6.3.4 Level 3: Regular Patterns . 191 6.3.5 Treatment of Lexical Classes . 194 6.3.6 Case Frames . 195 6.3.7 Previous Approaches . 196 6.3.8 Summary . 196 6.4 Practical Application: An Online Reference . 197 6.4.1 Purpose . 197 6.4.2 Website design . 197 6.5 Conclusions and Further Work . 199 7 Extensions and Implications 200 7.1 Constructional Morphology: Summary of Arguments . 200 7.2 Constructional Morphology Outside of Georgian . 202 7.2.1 Slavic Reflexives . 203 7.2.2 Middle Voice . ..