scholarly journals A Constraint-based Analysis of Morphological Processes in the Ibibio Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 242
Author(s):  
Louisa Louis Michael ◽  
Ndubuisi Ogbonna Ahamefula ◽  
Olusanmi Olasunkanmi Babarinde
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Enabling Environment ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Cross Language

This paper is on a constraint-based analysis of morphological processes in Ibibio (Lower cross language of Niger Congo: Nigeria). The study seeks to determine the phonological processes that condition and restrict the position of an affix while specifying where an affix may appear in a string of affixes; examine the influence of a morphological form on the phonological conditions that regulates affix placement in the Ibibio language, as well as determine the constraints that account for the appropriate placement of affixes on reduplicative forms. Leaning on the optimality framework, it was revealed that nouns in Ibibio accept only vowel prefixes which provides an enabling environment for vowel processes to occur in compounding and affixation. We observed that certain phonological forms, like the productive suffix –ke which has differing phonological realisations depending on the structure of the verb in Ibibio, are influenced by the morphological structure of a word while others are not. Certain constraints like the intervocalic constraint, the *[CC] constraint and the harmony constraint are some of the constraints that account for full reduplication in Ibibio. Also, partial reduplication in the Ibibio language adheres to the *complexons and the NO CODA constraint.

scholarly journals Ungeneralizable minimality in Ndebele

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-58
Author(s):  
Laura J. Downing
Keyword(s):  
Minimality Condition ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Prosodic Morphology ◽  
Striking Finding ◽  
Maximal Size ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Size Constraints ◽  
Morphological Processes

A body of work in Prosodic Morphology clearly establishes the importance of prosodic constituents like the foot as templates conditioning morpheme size. A striking finding of this research is that morphological footing is independent of metrical footing in many languages, as the footing required for particular morphological processes is often not identical to that required for phonological processes like stress assignment. However, recent OT research on Prosodic Morphology has made the opposite claim. Within this theory, the Generalized Template Hypothesis (GTH) proposes that no morpheme-particular templates defining minimal and maximal size are necessary. Instead, templates are always derivable from general principles of the grammar, like independently motivated metrical footing. This paper presents evidence from Ndebele showing that the GTH is too strong. In Ndebele, several different verb forms are subject to a minimality condition. In some cases, the minimality condition can be derived through independent metrical footing, as the GTH predicts. However, in several cases it cannot, showing that morpheme-particular size constraints are still a necessary part of the grammar.

The phonological and grammatical status of Murui ‘word’

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-146
Author(s):  
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak
Keyword(s):  
Vowel Length ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Phonological Word ◽  
Segmental Phonology ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Nominal Compounds ◽  
Fixed Order ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Key Indicators

Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely phonological principles. Its key indicators include prosody (stress) and segmental phonology (vowel length). A phonological word is further produced by applying relevant phonological processes within it and not across its word boundaries. The further criterion is moraicity which requires that the minimal phonological word contains at least two moras. A grammatical word, determined entirely on grammatical principles, consists of one lexical root to which morphological processes (affixation, cliticization, and reduplication) are applied. The components of a grammatical word are cohesive and occur in a relatively fixed order. Although Murui grammatical and phonological words mostly coincide, the ‘mismatches’ include nominal compounds (that is, one phonological word consisting of two grammatical words), verbal root reduplication (one grammatical but two phonological words), and clitics.

Domain modelling in Optimality Theory: Morphophonological cyclicity vs. stepwise prosodic parsing

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-43
Author(s):  
KAROLINA BROŚ
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Input String ◽  
Domain Specificity ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Structure Building ◽  
Harmonic Serialism ◽  
Chilean Spanish ◽  
Insight Into

This paper examines opaque examples of phrase-level phonology taken from Chilean Spanish under the framework of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT) (Rubach 1997; Bermúdez-Otero 2003, 2019) and Harmonic Serialism (HS) (McCarthy 2008a, b, 2016). The data show an interesting double repair of the coda /s/ taking place at word edges. It is argued that Stratal OT is superior in modelling phonological processes that take place at the interface between morphology and phonology because it embraces cyclicity. Under this model, prosodic structure is built serially, level by level, and in accordance with the morphological structure of the input string. In this way, opacity at constituent edges can be solved. Stratal OT also provides insight into word-internal morphological structure and the domain-specificity of phonological processes. It is demonstrated that a distinction in this model is necessary between the word and the phrase levels, and between the stem and the word levels. As illustrated by the behaviour of Spanish nouns, affixation and the resultant alternations inform us about the domains to which both morphological and phonological processes should be assigned. Against this background, Harmonic Serialism embraces an apparently simpler recursive mechanism in which stepwise prosodic parsing can be incorporated. What is more, it offers insight into the nature of operations in OT, as well as into such problematic issues as structure building and directionality. Nevertheless, despite the model’s ability to solve various cases of opacity, the need to distinguish between two competing repairs makes HS fail when confronted with the Chilean data under examination.

scholarly journals Kannada morpheme segmentation using machine learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2.31) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Sachi Angle ◽  
B Ashwath Rao ◽  
S N. Muralikrishna
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Support Vector Machines ◽  
Supervised Classification ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Morphological Segmentation ◽  
Vector Machines ◽  
Root Word ◽  
Agglutinative Language

This paper addresses and targets morpheme segmentation of Kannada words using supervised classification. We have used manually annotated Kannada treebank corpus, which is recently developed by us. Kannada bears resemblance to other Dravidian languages in morphological structure. It is an agglutinative language, hence its words have complex morphological form with each word comprising of a root and an optional set of suffixes. These suffixes carry additional meaning, apart from the root word in a context. This paper discusses the extraction of morphemes of a word by using Support Vector Machines for Classification. Additional features representing the properties of the Kannada words were extracted and the different letters were classified into labels that result in the morphological segmentation of the word. Various  methods for evaluation were considered and an accuracy of 85.97% was achieved.

scholarly journals Does morphological structure modulate access to embedded word meaning in child readers?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Hasenäcker ◽  
Olga Solaja ◽  
Davide Crepaldi
Keyword(s):  
Word Meaning ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Developing Readers ◽  
Semantic Access ◽  
Morphological Processes

AbstractBeginning readers have been shown to be sensitive to the meaning of embedded neighbors (e.g., CROW in CROWN). Moreover, developing readers are sensitive to the morphological structure of words (TEACH-ER). However, the interaction between orthographic and morphological processes in meaning activation during reading is not well established. What determines semantic access to orthographically embedded words? What is the role of suffixes in this process? And how does this change throughout development? To address these questions, we asked 80 Italian elementary school children (third, fourth, and fifth grade) to make category decisions on words (e.g., is CARROT a type of food?). Critically, some target words for no-answers (e.g., is CORNER a type of food?) contained category-congruent embedded stems (i.e., CORN). To gauge the role of morphology in this process, half of the embedded stems were accompanied by a pseudosuffix (CORN-ER) and half by a non-morphological ending (PEA-CE). Results revealed that words were harder to reject as members of a category when the embedded stem was category-congruent. This effect held both with and without a pseudosuffix, but was larger for pseudosuffixed words in the error rates. These results suggest that orthographic stems are activated and activation is fed forward to the semantic level regardless of morphological structure, followed by a decision-making process that might strategically use suffix-like endings.

Phonological Word and Grammatical Word

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Phonological Word ◽  
Fiji Islands ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Southern Amazonia ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Phonological Unit

‘Word’ is a cornerstone for the understanding of every language. It is a pronounceable phonological unit. It will also have a meaning, and a grammatical characterization-a morphological structure and a syntactic function. And it will be an entry in a dictionary and an orthographic item. ‘Word’ has ‘psychological reality’ for speakers, enabling them to talk about the meaning of a word, its appropriateness for use in a certain social context, and so on. This volume investigates ‘word’ in its phonological and grammatical guises, and how this concept can be applied to languages of distinct typological make-up-from highly synthetic to highly analytic. Criteria for phonological word often include stress, tone, and vowel harmony. Grammatical word is recognized based on its conventionalized coherence and meaning, and consists of a root to which morphological processes will apply. In most instances, ‘grammatical word’ and ‘phonological word’ coincide. In some instances, a phonological word may consist of more than one grammatical word. Or a grammatical word can consist of more than one phonological word, or there may be more complex relationships. The volume starts with a typological introduction summarizing the main issues. It is followed by eight chapters each dealing with ‘word’ in an individual language—Yidiñ from Australia, Fijian from the Fiji Islands, Jarawara from southern Amazonia, Japanese, Chamacoco from Paraguay, Murui from Colombia, Yalaku from New Guinea, Hmong from Laos and a number of diasporic communities, Lao, and Makary Kotoko from Cameroon. The final chapter contains a summary of our findings.

scholarly journals The contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology in Chinese–English biliteracy acquisition

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIN WANG ◽  
CHEN YANG ◽  
CHENXI CHENG
Keyword(s):  
Word Reading ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Compound Structure ◽  
Unique Variance ◽  
Pseudoword Reading ◽  
Bilingual Reading ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Character Reading ◽  
Cross Language

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the concurrent contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology to biliteracy acquisition in 78 Grade 1 Chinese–English bilingual children. Conceptually comparable measures in English and Chinese tapping phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness were administered. Word reading skill in English and Chinese was also tested. We found that cross-language phonological and morphological transfer occurs when acquiring two different writing systems. Chinese tone and onset awareness explained a significant amount of unique variance in English real-word reading after controlling for English-related variables. Chinese onset awareness alone made a significant unique contribution to variance in English pseudoword reading. Furthermore, English compound structure awareness explained unique variance in Chinese character reading. However, we did not see a significant cross-language transfer at the orthographic level. Taken together, these results suggest that there are shared phonological and morphological processes in bilingual reading acquisition, whereas the orthographic process may be language specific.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Analysis of Onitsha Personal Names

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-418
Author(s):  
Chika Obiageli Ezeudo ◽  
Sopuruchi Christian Aboh ◽  
Kalu Mba Idika
Keyword(s):  
Women Religious ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Internal Structures ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Morphosyntactic Analysis

This study examines Onitsha personal names (OPN) from a morphosyntactic perspective. The major objective of this study is to examine the syntactic and morphological structure of some OPN. Specifically, the study seeks to ascertain the morphological processes and the relation in the internal structures of the morpheme that are combined to form the names. A sample of 250 names for both male and female were used for the analysis. The data were obtained from a list of names in schools, men and women religious associations. Oral interviews were conducted with native speakers in order to get clarifications as it concerns the meaning of the names. The roots, stems, and affixes of the names were analysed using the descriptive approach and applying the word formation rules. The findings reveal the following: that most of the morphological processes in the formation of OPN are predominantly clipping, prefixing and suffixing in a hierarchical manner, such that the meaning of the names are predictable from their structural components and most of these names are derived from clauses by desententialisation process; the philosophy behind the names are often lost due to clipping; OPN at sentential level can function as statements, interrogatives, or imperatives, commands; the morphological components in terms of size, length or shape can be monomorphemic, dimorphemic, trimorphemic and polymorphemic. Structurally, they can be single stem, compound or complex.

scholarly journals Learning Strictly Local Subsequential Functions

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 491-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Chandlee ◽  
Rémi Eyraud ◽  
Jeffrey Heinz
Keyword(s):  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Positive Data ◽  
Strict Locality ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Theoretic Characterization ◽  
Future Work

We define two proper subclasses of subsequential functions based on the concept of Strict Locality (McNaughton and Papert, 1971; Rogers and Pullum, 2011; Rogers et al., 2013) for formal languages. They are called Input and Output Strictly Local (ISL and OSL). We provide an automata-theoretic characterization of the ISL class and theorems establishing how the classes are related to each other and to Strictly Local languages. We give evidence that local phonological and morphological processes belong to these classes. Finally we provide a learning algorithm which provably identifies the class of ISL functions in the limit from positive data in polynomial time and data. We demonstrate this learning result on appropriately synthesized artificial corpora. We leave a similar learning result for OSL functions for future work and suggest future directions for addressing non-local phonological processes.

scholarly journals Positional dependency in Murrinhpatha: expanding the typology of non-canonical morphotactics

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Nordlinger ◽  
John Mansfield
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Morphological Diversity ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Positional Dependency ◽  
Canonical Ideal ◽  
Consistent Mapping ◽  
Canonical Pattern ◽  
Morphosyntactic Feature

Abstract Principles of morphotactics are a major source of morphological diversity amongst the world’s languages, and it is well-known that languages exhibit many different types of deviation from a canonical ideal in which there is a unique and consistent mapping between function and form. In this paper we present data from Murrinhpatha (non-Pama-Nyungan, northern Australia) that demonstrates a type of non-canonical morphotactics so far unattested in the literature, one which we call positional dependency. This type is unusual in that the non-canonical pattern is driven by morphological form rather than by morphosyntactic function. In this case the realisation of one morph is dependent on the position in the verbal template of another morph. Thus, it is the linearisation of morphs that conditions the morphological realisation, not the morphosyntactic feature set. Positional dependency in Murrinhpatha thus expands our typology of content-form interactions and non-canonical morphotactics with implications for our understanding of morphological structure cross-linguistically.

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