Adjuncts as a diagnostic of polysynthetic word formation in Inuit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Compton
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Diagnostic Device ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Variable Ordering ◽  
Mirror Principle

This chapter examines polysynthetic word formation in Inuit (Eskimo-Aleut), using the presence and variable ordering of a closed class of adverbs within verbal complexes as a diagnostic device to evaluate the adequacy of different accounts of word formation. It is argued that a head movement account of Mirror Principle orders within Inuit words undergenerates with respect to the observed variation in adverb ordering, particularly if a fixed hierarchy of adverbial functional projections is assumed, as in Cinque (1999). Instead, it is shown that an analysis that employs a right-headed structure, XP-sized phasal words, and Ernst’s (2002) semantically based framework of adverb licensing better captures the observed variation.

scholarly journals Generalized head movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlos Arregi ◽  
Asia Pietraszko
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Covert Movement ◽  
Long Head ◽  
Mirror Principle

We argue for a unified account of head movement and lowering in which lowering is in essence the covert movement counterpart of head movement. This proposal is supported by the existence of successive cyclic lowering (evidenced by relative prefix formation in Ndebele), in which complex heads built by lowering have the Mirror-Principle-obeying structure expected under a head movement derivation. It also predicts that lowering can feed head movement, giving the appearance of long head movement, which we argue is the case in Mainland Scandinavian V2.

scholarly journals The Ups and Downs of Head Displacement

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Karlos Arregi ◽  
Asia Pietraszko
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Head Displacement ◽  
Downward Displacement ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Mirror Principle ◽  
Crosslinguistic Variation

We propose a theory of head displacement that replaces traditional Head Movement and Lowering with a single syntactic operation of Generalized Head Movement. We argue that upward and downward head displacement have the same syntactic properties: cyclicity, Mirror Principle effects, feeding upward head displacement, and being blocked in the same syntactic configurations. We also study the interaction of head displacement and other syntactic operations, arguing that claimed differences between upward and downward displacement are either spurious or follow directly from our account. Finally, we show that our theory correctly predicts the attested crosslinguistic variation in verb and inflection doubling in predicate clefts.

scholarly journals West Circassian polysynthesis at the morphology-syntax interface

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Ksenia Ershova
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Head Movement ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
Distinct Word

This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I argue that while verbs and nouns superficially share a similar morphological profile, they are in fact constructed through two distinct word formation strategies: while verbal morphology is concatenated via syntactic head movement, the noun phrase is pronounced as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping. Such a division of labor provides an account for why only nouns, and not verbs, exhibit productive noun incorporation in the language: West Circassian noun incorporation is prosodic, rather than syntactic. The evidence for this two-fold approach to word formation comes from morpheme ordering in nominalizations.

Word-Formation in the World's Languages

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavol Stekauer ◽  
Salvador Valera ◽  
Livia Kortvelyessy
Keyword(s):  
Word Formation

Role of pinnae and head movements in localizing pure tones 1The authors would like to thank Mr. Remi Humbert for implementing the experiment in Turbo Pascal and for his further assistance.

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 170-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Muller ◽  
Pierre Bovet
Keyword(s):  
Sound Source ◽  
Head Movement ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Localization Accuracy ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Posterior Quadrant ◽  
Localization Performance ◽  
Pure Tones

Twelve blindfolded subjects localized two different pure tones, randomly played by eight sound sources in the horizontal plane. Either subjects could get information supplied by their pinnae (external ear) and their head movements or not. We found that pinnae, as well as head movements, had a marked influence on auditory localization performance with this type of sound. Effects of pinnae and head movements seemed to be additive; the absence of one or the other factor provoked the same loss of localization accuracy and even much the same error pattern. Head movement analysis showed that subjects turn their face towards the emitting sound source, except for sources exactly in the front or exactly in the rear, which are identified by turning the head to both sides. The head movement amplitude increased smoothly as the sound source moved from the anterior to the posterior quadrant.

His Lordship's -ship and the King of Golfdom. Against a purely functional analysis of suffixhood

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Baeskow
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Functional Elements ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Independent Model

For many decades there has been a consensus among linguists of various schools that derivational suffixes function not only to determine the word-class of the complex expressions they form, but also convey semantic information. The aspect of suffix-inherent meaning is ignored by representatives of a relatively new theoretical direction – Neo-Construction Grammar – who consider derivational suffixes to be either purely functional elements of the grammar or meaningless phonological realizations of abstract grammatical morphemes. The latter view is maintained by adherents of Distributed Morphology, who at the same time emphasize the importance of conceptual knowledge for derivational processes without attempting to define this aspect. The purpose of this study is first of all to provide support for the long-standing assumption that suffixes are inherently meaningful. The focus of interest is on the suffixes -ship, -dom and -hood. Data from Old English and Modern English (including neologisms) will show that these suffixes have developed rich arrays of meaning which cannot be structurally derived. Moreover, since conceptual knowledge is indeed an important factor for word-formation processes, a concrete, theory-independent model for the representation of the synchronically observable meaning components associated with -ship, -dom and -hood will be proposed.

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