Morphological typology

Introduction See «the big picture» How does word formation work overall in specific languages? How can the morphological systems of particular languages vary from one another? (the subject of linguistic typology)

We will begin by describing the morphological systems of five very different languages, looking at the kinds of lexeme formation and inflection that they display. Then we will discuss both traditional ways of classifying the morphology of languages and more contemporary ways of doing so. Finally, we will look at how both the family a language belongs to and the geographic area in which it is spoken can influence its typological classification.

Universals and particulars: a bit of linguistic history Do we know anything about morphological universals? There is a range of word formation strategies that appear in the languages of the world. What are possible forms of reduplication or infixing and what is impossible?

The genius of languages: what’s in your toolkit? There are unique ways inwhich the morphology of languages can package different concepts in different forms. We will look at five very different languages-Turkish, Mandarin Chinese, Samoan, Latin, and Nishnaabemwin -- to try to see something of this unique combination of morphological processes that constitutes at least one part of the genius of each language. All of these languages use morphology in one way or another, but each makes different choices from the universal toolbag of rule types.

Nishnaabemwin Turkish Latin mandarin Samoan

Turkish Turkish has a phonological rule called ‘vowel harmony’ Although the predominant way of forming words in Turkish is through suffixation, it also has a process of compounding Turkish uses suffixation for both derivation and inflection. Turkish verbs are inflected for person and number, and can appear in a number of different tenses, including present, past, future, and conditional. All of these inflections are suffixes; verb forms can be quite long and complex. no processes of prefixation on word-formation It marks case (Ev, evi, evin, eve, evde, evden)

Turkish Turkish is a language that delights in suffixation

Turkish has a process of compounding, it also marks case

Mandarin chinese (Sino-Tibetan) no processes of prefixation tiny handful of suffixes Mandarin has not only compound nouns and compound adjectives, also all sorts of compound verbs Mandarin does have a system of noun classifiers that are used when counting or otherwise quantifying nouns

Mandarin chinese (Sino-Tibetan) N-xue>N Personal N-jia>N N-hua>V

Mandarin is poor in affixation and reduplication but rich in compounding

Mandarin have a system of noun classifiers that are used when counting or otherwise quantifying nouns

Samoan (Austronesian) prefixation, suffixation, and circumfixation, both partial and full reduplication, and also to some extent compounding. relations like case, tense, aspect, and mood are expressed by independent particles, rather than by prefixes, suffixes, or reduplication, in this language

Samoan (Austronesian)

suffixation

reduplication

compounding

Latin (Indo-European) Heavily inflected language, almost entirely suffixal often several meanings are combined into a single inflectional morpheme in Latin Latin nouns are inflected for case, number, and gender, and adjectives are inflected to agree with them Verbs have a number of different stems which form the basis of inflectional paradigms that show aspect (imperfect vs. perfect) and voice (active vs. passive), as well as person and number different person and number affixes are used in the past than in other tenses Latin has both derivational suffixes and prefixes

Nishnaabemwin (Algonquian) heavy use of affixation, especially suffixation, and has an extremely rich system of inflection there are prefixes and suffixes that indicate possession of a noun Verb inflection is even more complex than noun inflection various bound morphemes are joined together to form words. Eg. Intransitive verbs frequently consist of two or three pieces. The pieces are ‘initial’, expresses something that modifies the verbal concept (such as adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions), ‘medial’ expresses nominal concept, ‘final’ expresses various inflectional elements. Nouns can be made up of several bound morphemes as well

Nishnaabemwin (Algonquian)

summary Each language has a different combination of word formation processes that gives the language its unique character We should always be on the lookout for the commonalities or universals that mark all these languages as human languages.