LING 202

W4/5

Inflectional Morphology
Nominal Domain
Grammaticalization
•  Content words à Function words
•  Function words àý Content words

•  will ‘want, desire’ à will (aux) Future tense

•  to go à going to Future tense
•  Negation in French
Ne X pas pas ‘step’
Over time function words turned into affixes.
Numeral ‘one’ à indefinite article
•  In many European languages, an indefinite article has
developed out of the numeral 'one':
•  English a/an
•  German ein
•  French un/une
•  Spanish un/una
•  Modern Greek ena
•  While these are all Indo-European languages, in each
case, this development occurred after these languages
had differentiated from one another and speakers were no
longer in contact.
•  Examples of demonstratives becoming definite articles
are also common:
•  Latin ille, ilia 'that' became French definite articles le, la
and Spanish el, la
Inflectional Morphology
(nominal)
Person
•  1st
•  2nd
•  3rd
Number
•  Singular / Plural / Dual/ Paucal
Gender / Noun classes
•  Feminine
•  Masculine
•  Neuter
Case
Inflectional values
These are items that give the stem a meaning that allows it
to be used in a sentence.
These are grammatical elements, by which is meant, they
are necessary grammatically.
For noun (phrase)s and pronouns
Features Values

Number sing, plural, dual, paucal

Person 1st 2nd 3rd
Gender fem, masc, neuter, 1,2,3
Case nominative, acc, dat, etc.

If a language has these categories, nouns use these in

order to be expressed in sentences
Number
Singular, plural, dual, paucal (few)

Inuktitut 3-way distinction

iglu ‘a house’
igluk ‘two houses’ -k is a dual marker
iglut ‘three or more houses’

Kurmanji (Kurdish)
Sevan ‘apples’ sev-in-an ‘some apples’
Gender
Gender is a way of categorizing the nouns of a language
into classes.
Gender is also referred to as noun classes.
Some languages have
i. No gender distinction:
Turkish, Yoruba (Niger-Kongo), Basque
ii. 2-way distinction
iii. 3-way distinction
2-way class distinction of nouns
•  French:

le mur ‘wall’ la table

le bras ‘arm’ la raison ‘reason’
le livre ‘book’ la fenêtre ‘window’
le garçon ‘boy’ la fille ‘girl’

Masculine Feminine
3-way class distinction of nouns
•  German:

der Mond ‘moon’ die Sonne ‘sun’ das Fenster ‘window’

der Grund ‘reason’ die Tafel ‘table’ das Buch ‘book’
der Hut ‘hat’ die Wand ‘wall’ das Kind ‘child’

Masculine Feminine Neuter

Why is ‘moon’ feminine in French (la lune)
but masculine in German (der Mond)?

•  Sun die Sonne (F) le soleil (M)

•  Moon der Mond (M) la lune (F)

•  Reason der Grund (M) la raison (F)

•  Book das Buch (N) le livre (M)

•  Table die Tafel (F) la table (F)

Study Problem: French
Gender on the Adj
French
•  Consonant loss in the masculine form but not in the
feminine

•  Loss of final consonants played a major role in the

evolution of Modern French and in the distinction between
masculine and feminine forms.
Gender on the N and Adj
•  Un étudiant
•  Une étudiante

•  Un étudiant anglais
•  Une étudiante anglaise

•  Des étudiants espagnols

•  Des étudiantes espagnoles
Gender on the N and Adj
•  Un étudiant (M)
•  Une étudiante (F)

•  Un étudiant anglais an English student (M)

•  Une étudiante anglaise an English student (F)

•  Des étudiants espagnols Spanish students (M)

•  Des étudiantes espagnoles Spanish students (F)
French derivational morphemes & Gender
•  le réalisme le socialisme
•  -isme (masculine)
•  le gouvernement le monument
•  -ment (masculine)

•  la situation la solution
•  la bicyclette la cigarette
•  la différence la présence

•  -tion, -ette, -ence (feminine)

Study Problem: Latin

•  vir bonus ‘good man’

•  femina bona ‘good woman’
•  animal bonum ‘good animal’

•  -us masculine
•  -a feminine
•  -um neuter
African classifier (noun class) systems

•  Zulu
•  umfazi abafazi ‘woman/-men’
•  umfula imifula ‘river(s)’
•  itafula amatafula ‘table(s)’
•  isicathulo izicathulo ‘shoe(s)’

•  um- vs. aba-

•  um- vs. imi-
•  i- vs. ama-
•  isi- vs. izi-
•  SING vs. PL for 4 distinct noun classes in Zulu!
Swati ( a Bantu language)
•  Noun classes
•  Um-fana boy
•  li-dvolo knee
•  i-tija plate
•  In-dza dog
•  Bu-bi evil
•  Pha-ndle outside
Swati (a Bantu language)
•  Noun classes Description of class
•  um-fana boy persons
•  li-dvolo knee body-parts & fruits
•  i-tija plate instruments
•  in-dza dog animals
•  bu-bi evil abstract properties
•  pha-ndle outside locations
Many gender distinctions
In Bantu languages since there are many noun classes (=
gender distinctions) they are given numbers, class 1, class
2 etc.

There are 19 classes in Kujamaat Joola (spoken in

Senegal)).

(Aronoff p.59.)
Kujamaat Joola
a-sef ‘chief’
a-ku ‘thief’
a-jola ‘Joola person’

k-o:l ‘bone’
ka-nag ‘fin (of fish)’
ka-jata ‘frog’
Class 1 à classifies humans. The prefix is:
a-

Class 7 à classifies bony objects and the prefix is

ka-

Class 7: bony objects

Prefix ka:
k-o:l ‘bone’
ka-nag ‘fin (of fish)’
ka-jata ‘frog’
Class 10 Class 11
Small objects sing. Small objects pl.

ji-ko ‘small head’ mu-ko ‘small heads’

ji-nil ‘small child’ mu-nil ‘small childs’
ji-be:r ‘small tree’ mu-be:r ‘small trees’
ji-kit ‘small antelope’ mu-kit ‘small antelopes’

Class 10 -- small animate objects: prefix ji-

Class 11 – small animate objects. prefix mu-
Study Problem: Malay
Classifiers -- Malay /Indonesian

dua orang laki-laki ‘two men’

tiga orang guru ‘three teachers’
enam orang pemain sepakbola ‘six soccer players’
tiga orang perempuan ‘three women’
seorang tukang besi ‘one blacksmith’
empat orang Tionghua ‘four Chinese
people’

Classifier: _______________________
Used with:
___________________________________________________
___
Malay
lima ekor burung ‘five birds’
tujuh ekor gajah ‘seven elephants’
delapan ekor laba-laba ‘eight spiders’
seekor buaya ‘one crocodile’
sepuluh ekor anjing ‘ten dogs’
lima puluh ekor kerbau ‘fifty water buffaloes’

•  Classifier: _______________________
•  Used with:
______________________________________________
Inflectional Morphology
(nominal)

Person
1st/ 2nd/ 3rd

Person markers and reference!

Why do human languages have
•  1st
•  2nd
•  3rd
•  Person
•  but not
•  4th
•  5th
•  Person etc.
The first instance of reference is index finger
Study problem: Somali number
Inflectional Morphology
(nominal)
Case
Case – Language variation (WALS)
Case – language variation
Case & variation
•  The sizes of case systems vary dramatically from the
minimal two case stems (Dir/ Obl) to the large inventories
exemplified by Daghestanian languages.
•  Languages differ in this respect from no case morpheme
(Vietnamese, Igbo) to more than 10 (Hungarian, Ingush).
Case in Turkish: Paradigm
Ø NOMinative ‘X’
•  -(y)I ACCusative ‘the X’
•  -(y)A DATive ‘to the X’
•  -DA LOCative ‘in/on the X’
•  -DAn ABLative ‘from the X’
•  -sI POSSessive ‘the X’
•  -nIn GENitive ‘of the X’
•  (y)lA INSTrumental/COMitative ‘w/ the X
What is the possessive marker in Turkish?
•  Possessive

Ø Possessive has two allomorphs:

C-ending nouns:
Bal-ı
(çam balı ‘pine honey’)

V-ending nouns:
Çorba-sı
(mercimek çorbası ‘lentil soup’)

Possessive is in general referred to as –sI

Old Turkish –sIn
Possessive marker in Turkish
•  örümcek ağ-ı ‘spider web’

*örümcek ağ-sı

Ø Possessive has two allomorphs:

C-ending nouns: -ı
V-ending nouns: -sı

(Nakipoğlu & Üntak, 2016)

 39

Overregularization errors with the possessive suffix

Öürmcek ağ-sı for örümcek ağ-ı

100
90
90

80

70 65

60
50
50

40

30

20

10
0
0

4;01 6;02 7:00 Adults

Finnish
A.
Tyttö luki kirja-n
woman read.3S book-ACC
‘The woman read a book.’
B.
Tyttö luki kirja-a
book- PARTITIVE
‘The woman was reading a book.’
Case in Old English
Gothic Old English
Nominative
Sg. hund-s hund-Ø
Pl. hund-ōs hund-as
Genitive
Sg. hund-is hund-es
Pl. hund-ē hund-a
Dative
sg. hund-a hund-e
Pl. hund-am hund-um
Accusative
Sg. hund-Ø hund-Ø
Pl. hund-ans hund-as
Case in Old English vs. Modern English
Old English Modern English J
Nominative
Sg. hund-Ø
Pl. hund-as dog-s
Genitive
Sg. hund-es dog-s
Pl. hund-a dog-s’
Dative
sg. hund-e
Pl. hund-um
Accusative
Sg. hund-Ø
Pl. hund-as
Loss of case suffixes through sound change for
‘hound’
Old English gender & case
Inflectional morphemes in English
•  Plural à book-s
•  Possessive à Jack-s
•  Present tense à walk-s
•  Progressive aspect à -ing
•  Past à -ed
•  Perfect à has walked
•  Comparative à -er
•  Superlative à -est
Homophony and morphology:
The acoustics of word-final S in English
Plag et al. (2017)
•  Homophonous lexemes show systematic phonetic
differences
•  Does the morpheme /s/ in laps acoustically differ from the
non-morphemic /s/ in lapse?
•  It does!
Cumulative expressions
(Serbian ov(a)c ‘sheep’)
singular plural
nominative ovc-a ovc-e
accusative ovc-u ovc-e
genitive ovc-e ovc-a
dative ovc-i ovc-ama
instrumental ovc-om ovc-ama
vocative ovc-o ovc-a
Cumulative expressions
Serbian ov(a)c ‘sheep’
singular plural
nominative ovc-a ovc-e
accusative ovc-u ovc-e
genitive ovc-e ovc-a
dative ovc-i ovc-ama
instrumental ovc-om ovc-ama
vocative ovc-o ovc-a
When an affix expresses more than one meaning
(cumulative expression)
Cumulative expression

•  In Serbian, number and case is expressed together, i.e.

cumulatively.

•  Such affixes which show cumulative expression of

functions (one form many functions) are also called
portmanteau (synthetic, fusional) forms.
Syncretism (syncretic forms):

singular plural
nominative ovc-a ovc-e
accusative ovc-u ovc-e
genitive ovc-e ovc-a
dative ovc-i ovc-ama
instrumental ovc-om ovc-ama
vocative ovc-o ovc-a
Types of affix in terms of form-function
parallelism
one-to-many mapping
•  one form is associated with more than one function
•  –s: (English)
•  3rd person sg
•  Possessive
•  Present

•  syncretic morphemes: (usually relates to stems) one form

of a lexeme or affix fulfils more than one function
Cumulative expression in Latin?
Different case patterns
Languages are divided into two types of case pattern:
i.  Nominative-accusative languages
ii.  Absolutive-ergative languages
Nominative-accusative languages

A Emre yüzdü.
B. Emre ayva-yı yedi.

Intransitive
A. Subject-NOM Intr. Verb
Transitive
B. Subject-NOM Obj.NP-ACC Tr. Verb
Absolutive-ergative languages

Absolutive-ergative languages (Basque, Dyirbal, Laz,

Zazaki, Kurmanji)

Subject-ABS Intr. Verb

Subj.(agent)-ERG Tr. Verb Object (patient)-ABS
Generative Grammar and Case
•  Under the Generative Account (Chomsky 1981)
languages are claimed to dissociate between
•  Structural Case
determined by the positions of the arguments and
assigned by syntax
•  SUBJECT à Nominative case
•  OBJECT à Accusative case
•  Lexical Case
determined by the lexical properties of the verbs
•  OBLIQUE OBJECT à Dative, Ablative, Instrumental,
Locative
Lexical case
•  Some verbs are listed in the lexicon with a specific case
marker (Turkish) /postposition (Eng):
-den bunalmak – to be bored with
-de karar kılmak - to decide on
-yle ilgilenmek – to be interested in

(i.e. you have to memorize each of these verbs with a

particular case marker)
How do Turkish children learn case?
•  What can potentially be challenging in the acquisition of
case?
 Deney II: -A yerine –DAn Örneği [Tahmin Oyunu]

Soru: Benim elimde bir sürü kart var. Sana verdiğim kartları bana
göstermeden üzerindeki resimleri anlat. Ben de hangi kartlar
olduğunu tahmin edeyim.
Hedef yanıt: Adam fil-E / fil köpeğ-E / kedi maymun-A gülüyor.
Deney II: -(y)A yerine –(y)I örneği

Soru: Bu çocuk ne yapıyor?

Hedef yanıt: Köpeğ-E sarılıyor.

Soru: Peki burada bu köpek ne yapıyor?

Hedef yanıt: Bebeğ-E sarılıyor.