Token frequency as a determinant of morphological change

This paper demonstrates that morphological change tends to involve the replacement of low frequency forms in inflectional paradigms by innovative forms based on high frequency forms, using Greek data involving the diachronic reorganisation of verbal inflection classes. A computational procedure is outlined for generating a possibility space of morphological changes which can be represented as analogical proportions, on the basis of synchronic paradigms in ancient Greek. I then show how supplementing analogical proportions with token frequency information can help to predict whether a hypothetical change actually took place in the language’s subsequent development. Because of the crucial role of inflected surface forms serving as analogical bases in this model, I argue that the results support theories in which inflected forms can be stored whole in the lexicon.

The passive voice in ancient Indo-European languages: inflection, derivation, periphrastic verb forms

The IE languages developed different strategies for the encoding of the passive function. In some language branches, the middle voice extended to the passive function to varying extents. In addition, dedicated derivational formations arose in a number of languages, such as the Greek -ē-/-thē- aorist and the Indo-Aryan -ya-presents. Periphrastic formations involving a verbal adjective or a participle are also widely attested, and played an important role in the building of the passive paradigm in e.g. Romance and Germanic languages. As the periphrastic passive is also attested in Hittite alongside passive use of the middle, both strategies seem to be equally ancient. Some minor strategies include lexical passives and the extensive lability of verbs. A survey of possible strategies provides evidence for the rise of a disparate number of morphemes and constructions, and for their ongoing incorporation into the inflectional paradigms (paradigmaticization) of given languages, thus adding to our knowledge about cross-linguistic sources of passive morphology and grammaticalization processes involved.

The fine implicative structure of European Portuguese conjugation

Recent literature has highlighted the extent to which inflectional paradigms are organisedinto systems of implications allowing speakers to make full use of the inflection systemon the basis of exposure to only a few forms of each word. The present paper contributesto this line of research by investigating in detail the implicative structure of EuropeanPortuguese verbal paradigms. After outlining the computational methods we use to thateffect, we deploy these methods on a lexicon of about 5000 verbs, and show how the morphological and phonological properties of European Portuguese verbs lead to the observed patterns of predictability.

Paradigmatic consequences of the suffixing preference

As one of the most robust typological findings, the suffixing preference captures the empirical observation that grammatical categories are more likely to be coded by suffixes than by prefixes. The goal of this contribution is to explore the effects that this asymmetry may have on the inflectional paradigms of the languages of the world. Three empirical issues are addressed: do languages with either possessive prefixes or suffixes and languages with both possessive prefixes and suffixes differ in their suffix-to-prefix ratio? Do prefixes and suffixes differ in the number of cases that they code? Do prefixes and suffixes differ in their probability of explicit singular in addition to plural marking? The answer to all three questions is in the affirmative. These effects are understood in terms of a response to an inherent disadvantage of prefixes. Morphological systems reduce the processing difficulty incurred by prefixes by assigning them fewer tasks (i.e. number of cases), by limiting their occurrence in highly competitive contexts (i.e. inconsistent possessive-affix coding) and by creating prefix paradigms, which are conceived of as protective structures in which the individual members strengthen one another. The general claim these three effects lead up to is that morphological systems develop “repair strategies” which reduce the processing cost involved in using inherently disadvantaged units. These repair strategies shape morphological structure.

Variability in inflectional forms of attributive-appositive composite lexical units in Polish

This paper examines inflectional markers (signalling number, case and gender) of selected types of NN complexes in Polish, which can be regarded as attributive-appositive (ATAP) lexical units in the cross-linguistic classification of compounds proposed by Scalise & Bisetto (2009) . Polish compounds proper show externalization of inflection and take inflectional markers on their right-hand constituents only. In contrast, Polish juxtapositions are expected to display double inflectional marking (on both their components). However, data from the National Corpus of Polish demonstrate that ATAP juxtapositions containing the lexeme widmo ‘ghost, phantom’ as their right-hand component exhibit variability in their inflectional paradigms. The right-hand (i.e. the modifier) constituent of such juxtapositions either shows number and case agreement with the head noun, or it appears in the default (nom.sg) form. Potential reasons for the instability of inflectional paradigms of such NN juxtapositions are considered.

Lithuanian Slang Adverbs of Slavic Origin

The article morphologically analyzes Lithuanian slang adverbs (215) of Slavic origin (mostly from Russian, sometimes from Polish and Belarusian), selected from Dictionary of Lithuanian Slang and Nonnormative Lexicon. There are four types of adverbs selected for analysis: hybrid derivatives of the suffix -ai from suffixal and nonsuffixal adjectives, adverbs without formants, and adverbialized word combinations. The aim of the analysis is to identify systematic morphological patterns and adaptive features. The analysis has shown that in Lithuanian slang Slavic adverbs are adapted phonetically and orthographically according to the principle of substitution of foreign phonemes as close as possible to their own. The Slavic slang lexicon tends to copy derivative models and integrate them into and inflectional paradigms of Lithuanian: morphological features are inherited from Slavic languages and specifically transformed in the Lithuanian language system; variability in borrowed slang appears due to spontaneous adaptation to language recipient features.

Episodic versus generic eventualities and nominals

This paper proposes an analysis of the DP structure of Chinese in comparison with German and other West Germanic languages, particularly English. The analysis is linked to sentence structure, particularly event structure of the respective languages and the relation between nominal classifiers and sentential tense. Chinese is a language without nominal declension; German is not as other Indo-European languages. Among the inflectional paradigms, German has retained from earlier periods, and developed further, the coding of topicality in terms of familiarity and anaphoricity. While Chinese shares with German clause syntactic topicality, it does so purely in terms of clause-early and clause-late word order. German, by contrast, involves specific positions in the serial middle field to code referential familiarity, anaphoricity, and, above all, weak versus strong referential weight to distinguish, among other functions, specific versus unspecific reference. The categories involved in coding such properties in German are determiners and the declensional morphology of attributes (‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ inflection providing specific reference). This paper investigates the regularities of weak and strong reference in Chinese. The discussion yields insight into the structural coding that Chinese provides instead of what is encoded in German in morphological terms on adjectival attributes and in terms determiners ((in)definite articles and bare nouns). In the course, the discussion around mass versus count nouns and the role of classifiers is brought up and newly evaluated on the basis of the new referential distinctions.

Overabundance resulting from language contact

The reduction of morphological complexity, particularly in inflectional paradigms, is not uncommon in language contact. One area of morphological complexity which has received less attention is variation within the cells of a paradigm, e.g. ‘dived’ and ‘dove’ as different past tense word forms of {DIVE} in English. This type of morphological complexity, where multiple forms are realized in the same cell in a paradigm is termed ‘overabundance’. This chapter examines the development of overabundance in the subject-marking system of Gurindji Kriol, and claims that increasing complexity in this dimension is the result of language contact. We analyse new data from Gurindji children using generalized linear mixed models to determine whether the complexity in the case paradigm has stabilized or whether complexification is on-going. We show that overabundance in Gurindji Kriol is an example of a contact-induced change which involves the complexification of an inflectional paradigm rather than its simplification.

Morphology in Indo-European Languages

Indo-European languages of the most archaic type, such as Old Indic and Ancient Greek, have rich fusional morphologies with predominant use of suffixation and ablaut as formal devices. The presence of cumulative inflectional morphs in final position is also a general IE feature. A noteworthy property of the archaic IE morphological system is its root-based organization. This is well observable in Old Indo-Aryan, where the mental lexicon is largely made up of roots unspecified for word-class membership. In the historical development of the different IE branches, recurrent phenomena are observed that lead to an increase in configurationality and a decrease in the degree of synthesis (use of adpositions at the expense of case forms, rise of auxiliaries and increasing employment of periphrastic morphology, creation of determiners). However, not all the documented developments can be subsumed under the rubric ‘morphological decay’: new synthetic verbal forms, which often coexist with the inherited ones, are often created via resynthesization of periphrases; new nominal case forms are sometimes created through univerbation of adpositional phrases; instances of prefixation recurrently arise from former compound structures consisting of adverb (‘preverb’) + verb. The formation of inflectional paradigms with several mutually unpredictable subsections and of relatively complex systems of inflectional classes is also observed in various IE languages. The same holds for the rising of new patterns of morphophonological alternations, which often allow the preservation of several morphological oppositions even after the loss of inflectional endings. As a consequence, modern IE languages may exhibit higher degrees of fusionality, at least in specific morphological subsystems, than their diachronic foregoers. In the various branches, the system of inflectional morphology could undergo several reshapings at the level of both the structure of grammatical categories and the formal organization of paradigms, sometimes with noteworthy typological changes. English poor morphology, Ossetic and New Armenian agglutinative nominal inflections, lack of verbal inflection of number, and presence of numeral classifiers in Eastern New Indo-Aryan varieties are among the examples of extreme departure from the ancient IE morphological type. A common development concerning word formation is the decline of the root-based organization of morphology.

Zero morphemes in paradigms

This paper sheds a new light on the notion of zero morphemes in inflectional paradigms: on their formal definition (§ 1), on the way of counting them (§ 2–3) and on the way of conceptualizing them at a deeper, mathematical level (§ 4). We define (zero) morphemes in the language of cartesian set products and propose a method of counting them that applies the lexical relations of homophony, polysemy, allomorphy and synonymy to inflectional paradigms (§ 2). In this line, two homophonic or synonymous morphemes are different morphemes, while two polysemous and allomorphic morphemes count as one morpheme (§ 3). In analogy to the number zero in mathematics, zero morphemes can be thought of either as minimal elements in a totally ordered set or as neutral element in a set of opposites (§ 4). Implications for language acquisition are discussed in the conclusion (§ 5).