English 506: Principles of Linguistics

Study Sheet for Test #1 -- Language Contact and Morphology

File 1: 6 basic levels of linguistic analysis

Files 10 and 12: Language Contact and Variation
language change happens in 2 ways: through internal change and through contact.
geographical, socioeconomic, gender, age, and ethnic variation are usually considered language internal variation
register vs. dialect
prestige dialect (also overt vs. covert prestige)
descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar
bilingualism vs. second language acquisition
superstratum, adstratum, substratum languages
pidgin, creole languages
diglossia, heritage language


File 4: Morphology
lexical category (part of speech)
content words / function (or grammatical) words
morpheme/allomorph
lexicon
bound/free morpheme
affix: suffix, prefix, infix, circumfix
derivational/inflectional affix
productive/unproductive morpheme
Morphological processes (LF 157 ff):
    affixation, compounding, reduplication, alternation, suppletion (also regular vs. irregular forms)
periphrastic constructions (using syntax rather than morphology to indicate a function, such as the heart of the man as opposed to the man's heart).
How new words come into a language (File 13.4.3 and .3):
    affixes
    reduplication
    coinage (as in 'to coin a word;' common now with advertising new products)
    clipping (shortening)
    acronym, initialism (initialism is when the initials do not really spell a word, like FBI or CIA)
    blend (also 'portmanteau word')
    back-formation
    conversion (functional shift)
    borrowing (11.2)
    compounding

FUDGE scale: (0-2) for each of Frequency, Unobtrusiveness, Diversity, Generation, Endurance
    can you evaluate a word for its FUDGE factor? On season 5, show 2 of The Wire, I heard a word that was new to me, "sked", in "Last thing on my sched" and "Were you on my schedule? Do we do it quick or resched?" In context this is apparently a clipping of <schedule>. I've never heard it before or since, so I'll give it a 0 on F. I noticed it right away, but still it seems fairly unobtrusive, so maybe a 1 for U. It would seem to be limited to people who work a lot with their schedules, not a very diverse bunch, but still fairly widespread over the urban terrain, so maybe a 1 for D. Already the show itself illustrated the word's morphological promise, so maybe a 2 for G. And the concept would seem only to be increasing in ubiquity, so a 2 for E. The total is 6, giving it a "somewhat likely" chance of survival. What do you think?

morpheme hierarchies -- know that you can't add morphemes in any order you wish, explain how a word can be morphologically ambiguous (LF 171, unlockable).

Morphological Typology (4.3): Analytic (Isolating), Synthetic: Agglutinating, Fusional (Inflectional), Polysynthetic (Incorporating)

Be able to identify the lexical category of a word and make a sentence with it.
Be able to break down a complex word and classify the types of morphemes used as Free/Bound and Derivational/Inflectional (see exercises 2-4 on LF 178)

Morpheme classification

1.    Free
    a.   root - base for derivational affix (Pinker "The most basic morpheme in a word or family of related words, consisting of an irreducible, arbitrary pairing between a sound and a meaning"
        i.    (roots are not always free = ELECTR-)
    b.   stem - base for inflectional affix (Pinker "The main portion of a word, the one that prefixes and suffixes are stuck on to: WALKs, BREAKable, enSLAVE")
        i.    (stems are not always free = go 'GO + pres. pl.')
       
2.    Bound
    a.    derivation
        i.    changes meaning
        ii.    more or less productive
        iii.    less predictable
        iv.    not paradigmatic
    b.    inflection
        i.    doesn't change meaning
        ii.    cannot be more or less productive because it always applies in the right context (all verbs in English have a present tense third-person form)
        iii.    more predictable (but not always--see German pluralization)
        iv.    paradigmatic
            (1)    number
            (2)    noun class (gender)
            (3)    case
            (4)    person
            (5)    tense (aspect, modality)
            (6)    [some others]
Question: is the English prefix "de-" derivational or inflectional?

Morphology Problem:

1. Cree animate and inanimate nouns (colons indicate long vowels):
Animate nouns:

na:pe:w 'man' na:pe:wak 'men'
iskwe:sis 'girl' iskwe:sisak 'girls'
si:si:p 'duck' si:si:pak 'ducks'
aspwa:kan 'pipe' aspwa:kanak 'pipes'

Inanimate nouns:

mo:hkoma:n 'knife' mo:hkoma:na 'knives'
astotin 'cap' astotina 'caps'
mi:nis 'berry' mi:nisa 'berries'

How do animate and inanimate nouns form their plurals?

2. (From O'Grady et al 2001)
Agta (spoken in the Phillipines):

dakal 'big'
dumakal 'grow big, grow up'
darag 'red'
dumarag 'redden'
furaw 'white'
fumuraw 'become white'

a. What is the affix in Agta meaning 'become X'?

b. What type of affix is it?

c. Describe its placement.

3.  Morphophonology -- the interaction of phonology and morphology. Some morphemes exhibit phonological variation (allomorphs) that can be described using phonological rules. Examine the following data from Haitian Creole, a language in which the definite article follows the noun (The words are written in standard Haitian Creole orthography--ch stands for the IPA esh, pronounced like our "sh", é stands for the IPA epsilon, pronounced like the "e" in our "bet", the umlaut above a vowel means the vowel is nasalized [ä, ë, ï, ö] ):

cham nä   "the room"
banan nä   "the banana"
bik la    "the pen"
papie a    "the paper"
folio a    "the newspaper"
machin nä    "the car"
liv la    "the book"
chwal la    "the horse"
béf la    "the cow"
pul la    "the chicken"
chat la    "the cat"
chë ä    "the dog"
kay la    "the house"
tru a    "the hole"
fäm nä    "the woman"
pë ä    "the bread"
më ä    "the hand"
däs la    "the dance"

a.  The definite article "the" occurs in four different allomorphs in Haitian.  What are they?

b.  Are the alternations phonologically conditioned? If so, what are the environments that condition the appearance of each variant?

c.  What do you think is the basic form of the article?  Why?

d.  Can you write a rule (it might have three parts) that describes the distribution of the forms?