Strength and Weakness of the Old English Adjective

As regards Old English, the inflectional strength and weakness are characterised by a kind of inconsistency. In the case of Old English adjectives these two inflectional properties appear to be different from those associated with nouns and verbs. In the case of the latter the two properties seem to be lexically determined while in the case of adjectives they appear to be determined by syntactic conditions. The traditional accounts of the Old English grammar attribute two paradigms to one adjectival lexical item. The analysis presented in this article postulates that one can actually speak about one adjectival inflection and what is traditionally presented as strong and weak adjectival inflections is actually the result of two different syntactic derivations.

Morphology in Altaic Languages

The Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic) are spread across Eurasia, from Central Asia to the Middle East and the Balkans. The genetic affinity between these subgroups has not been definitively established but the commonality among features and patterns points to some linguistic connections. The main morphological operations in Altaic languages are suffixation and compounding. Generally regarded as morphologically regular with easily identifiable suffixes in which there are clear form-meaning correspondences, the languages, nevertheless, show irregularities in many domains of the phonological exponents of morphosyntactic features, such as base modification, cumulative exponence, and syncretism. Nouns are inflected for number, person, and case. Case markers can express structural relations between noun phrases and other constituents, or they can act as adpositions. Only very few of the Altaic languages have adjectival inflection. Verbs are inflected for voice, negation, tense, aspect, modality, and, in most of the languages subject agreement, varying between one and five person-number paradigms. Subject agreement is expressed through first, second, and third persons singular and plural. In the expression of tense, aspect, and modality, Altaic languages employ predominantly suffixing and compound verb formations, which involve auxiliary verbs. Inflected finite verbs can stand on their own and form propositions, and as a result, information structure can be expressed within a polymorphic word through prosodic means. Affix order is mostly fixed and mismatches occur between morpholotactic constraints and syntactico-semantic requirements. Ellipsis can occur between coordinated words. Derivational morphology is productive and occurs between and within the major word classes of nominals and verbs. Semantic categories can block other semantic categories.

Inflectional Variation in the Old English Participle. A Corpus-based Analysis

This article deals with the coexistence of verbal and adjectival inflection in the Old English past participle. Its aim is to assess the degree of variation in the inflection of the participle so as to determine whether or not the change starts in the Old English period. The analysis is based on two corpora, the “York Corpus of Old English” and the “Dictionary of Old English Corpus”. With these corpora the following variants of the inflection of the participle are analysed: genre (prose and verse), tense (present and past), morphological class (weak vs. strong) and case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and instrumental). The main conclusion of the article is that the quantitative evidence from the corpora indicates that the degree of variation presented by the participle in Old English shows that diachronic change is underway. Overall, the past participle and poetic texts clearly reflect the loss of inflection, while the adjectival inflection of the participle co-occurs with its adjectival function.

Mechanisms of prediction updating - preprint

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the presence of predictions in language comprehension comes from event-related potential (ERP) studies which show that encountering an adjective whose gender marking is inconsistent with that of a highly expectable noun leads to an effect at the adjective. Until now the mechanism underlying this effect has been unknown. The present study tests a novel hypothesis whereby the effect at adjectives reflects prediction updating, which in turn impacts the N400 generated by the upcoming noun. In two experiments, native speakers of Polish read short stories that made several nouns likely at the position of a direct object in the story’s final sentence. The noun was preceded by a gender-marked adjective which was shown in either of the two grammatical forms: a) informative about the following noun (adjectival gender marking constrained which nouns can follow), or b) less informative (the grammatical marking did not disambiguate the gender of the following noun). Importantly, the same stories and critical words were used in both conditions, which was possible thanks to exploiting syncretisms in Polish adjectival inflection. The results provide support for one or more mechanisms of prediction updating at the adjective that impact the amplitude of the N400 elicited by the following noun. Together, these results show that when only morphosyntactic cues are available, they are instantly used to update predictions about upcoming words.

On the grammaticalization of Japanese verbal negative marker

In Japanese, the verbal negative marker nai appears in both negated verbs (as a sentential negator) and compound negative adjectives (as an affix). Negative nai used as a sentential negator is a syntactically independent word devoid of adjectival properties despite its adjectival inflection, whereas negative nai appearing in negative adjectives is a derivational affix. On the basis of idiomatic expressions, the present article argues that the lexical word nai ‘null, empty’ has developed into the affix nai while retaining its lexical properties via morphologization. On the other hand, the functional negator nai is argued to have emerged from the same lexical word nai via decategorialization, which induces a shift from a lexical to a functional category. The analysis taking the two uses of nai to trace back to the common source of the lexical negative adjective word nai provides a natural account for why nai has these two totally different uses.

Hindi nominal suffixes are bimorphemic: A Distributed Morphology analysis

This paper provides a Distributed Morphology (DM) analysis for Hindi nominal (noun and adjectival) inflection. Contra Singh & Sarma (2010), I argue that nominal suffixes contain two morphemes – a basic morpheme, and a restrictedly distributed additional morpheme. The presence of two different morphemes is especially evident when one compares noun and adjectival inflectional suffixes, which Singh & Sarma (2010) do not, since they only look at noun inflection. I also show that the so-called adjectival inflectional suffixes are not limited to adjectives, and may occur on nouns, provided the noun is not at the right edge of the noun phrase. On the other hand, the regular noun inflection is only limited to nouns at the right edge of the noun phrase. This is demonstrated using a type of coordinative compound found in Hindi. Then, I take the fact that nouns can take either the regular noun inflection or the so-called “adjectival” inflection as motivation for a unified analysis for both sets of suffixes. I demonstrate that after undoing certain phonological rules, the difference between the “adjectival” and regular noun inflectional suffixes can be summarized by saying that the additional morpheme only surfaces in the regular noun inflectional suffixes. Finally, I provide vocabulary entries and morphological operations that can capture the facts about the distribution of the various basic and additional morphemes.

Postsyntactic inflection of the degree phrase in German

Recent treatments of concord contend that adjectival inflection occurs postsyntactically through the insertion of Agr nodes onto individual, concord-bearing heads after Spell-Out (i.a. Norris 2012, 2014). I examine these claims through the lens of degree modification in German, which demonstrates that current formulations of this approach are untenable. I argue however that a postsyntactic treatment of (adjectival) concord can in fact be maintained if Agr node insertion occurs phrasally at DegP, and not at adjectival heads. This account explains i) an observed difference between the inflection of analytic vs. synthetic degree expressions in both simple and complex modifiers, and ii) a puzzle involving across-the-board inflection of coordinated adjectives, which I argue to involve pointwise attachment of Agr.