LECTURE 8

Lexeme Formation: Further afield

INTRODUCTION
 Consider the following data.

 1) a. Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes 1972:356)

 ganda ‘beauty’ gumanda ‘become beautiful’
 hirap ‘difficulty’ humirap ‘become difficult’

 b. Manchu (Haenisch 1961:34)

 haha ‘man’ hehe ‘woman’
 ama ‘father’ eme ‘mother’
 amila ‘cock’ emile ‘hen’

 c. Samoan (Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992:227)

 a’a ‘kick’ a’aa’a ‘kick repeatedly’
 ‘etu ‘limp’ ‘etu‘etu ‘limp repeatedly’
 fo’i ‘return’ ‘fo’lifoi ‘keep going back’
 There are types of morphology that do not figure in
English at all, or figure only in the most minor ways.
 In this chapter, we will survey a number of
morphological processes that we have not encountered
yet such as different kinds of affixes, internal stem
changes, reduplication and templatic morphology.
 Our aim is to characterize a sort of universal rules which
languages may make use of in word formation.
 INFIXES
 Infixes are affixes that are inserted right into a root or
base as we saw in example (1a) repeated here.
 2) g-um-anda become beautiful
 h-um-irap become difficult

 3) Karok (Garrett 2001:269)

 base verb Intensive
 la:y- ‘to pass’ l-eg-a:y
 ko?moy ‘to hear’ k-eg-o?moy
 Trahk- ‘to fetch water’ tr-eg-ahk
 MORE EXAMPLES
 Both given examples of affixes have had the infix right
after the first consonant or consonant cluster of the base,
but sometimes infixes can come near the end of the base
as illustrated in (4).
 4) Hua (Haiman 1980:195)

 zgavo ‘embrace’ zga-‘a-vo ‘not embrace’

 harupo ‘slip’ haru-‘a-po ‘not slip’
 rvato- ‘be nigh’ rva-‘a-to’ ‘not be nigh’
 CIRCUMFIXES
 Circumfix consists of two parts: 1) a prefix and 2) a
suffix that together create a new lexeme from a base.
 We do not consider the prefix and suffix to be separate
because neither by itself creates that type of lexeme.
 PARASYNTHESIS
 When we use circumfix for making a new lexeme the
process called parasynthesis.
 Parasynthesis is a phenomenon in which a particular
morphological category is signaled by the simultaneous
presence of two morphemes.
 EXAMPLE
 Consider the following data from Dutch.

5) berg ‘mountain’ ge-berg-te ‘mountain chain’

vogel ‘bird’ ge-vogel-te ‘flock of birds’

Neither geberg and bergte alone forms a word-it’s

only the presence of both parts that signals the
collective meaning.
 MORE EXAMPLES
 6) Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes 1972:101)

 Intsik ‘Chinese person’ ka-intsik-an ‘the Chinese’

 pulo ‘island’ ka-pulu-an ‘archipelago’
 Tagalog ‘Tagalog person’ ka-tagalog-an ‘the Tagalog’

 ka N an ‘group of N’
 OTHER KINDS OF AFFIX
 We may find reference to several other types of affix in
the literature on morphology. We use different terms for
these particular morphological processes.
 Interfixes: We have called linking elements.

 Simulfixes: We have called them internal stem

changes.
 Transfixes: We have called templatic morphology.
 INTERNAL STEM CHANGE
 Some languages have means of lexeme formation that
involve changing the quality of an internal vowel or
consonant of a base, root, or stem.
 Sometimes this internal change occurs alone, and
sometimes in conjunction with affixation of some sort.
Such processes are called internal stem change or
apophony.
 VOWEL CHANGES
 Consider the following data.
 7) a. Manchu (Haenisch 1961:34)

 haha ‘man’ hehe ‘woman’

 ama ‘father’ eme ‘mother’
 amila ‘cock’ emile ‘hen’’

b. Muskogee (Haas 1940:143)

nis ‘to buy it’ stem class I
ní:s ‘to buy it’ stem class II
ni:s ‘to buy it’ stem class IV
 ABLAUT

 Morphological processes that affect the quality, quantity,

or tonal patterns of vowels are often referred to as
ablaut.
ANOTHER FORM OF VOWEL CHANGE
 Consider the following German data from Lederer
1969:25.

 Bruder ‘brother’ Brüderlein ‘brother-dimin’

 Frau ‘woman’ Fräulein ‘woman-dimin’

 Adding diminutive suffix ‘-lein’ makes the stem vowel

become a front vowel.
 UMLAUT

Umlaut is a phonological process that occurred when a

following suffix itself contained a front vowel and makes
the vowel of the stem becomes front.
 Consider the following data.

 8) a. Seereer-Siin (Mclaughlin 2000:335)

 odon ‘mouth’ ondon ‘mouth-dimin’
 okawul ‘griot’ oŋgawul ‘griot-dimin’
 opad ‘slave’ ombad ‘slave-dimin’
 CONSONANT MUTATION
 In some languages morphological processes are signaled
by changes in consonants rather than vowels in the base,
root, or stem. Such processes are called consonant
mutations.
 Consonant mutations may occur alone or in conjunction
with prefixes or suffixes.
 Consider the following data.
 9) Samoan (Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992:229)

 ‘apa ‘beat, lash’ ‘apa‘apa ‘wing, fin’

 au ‘flow on, roll on’ auau ‘current’
 Solo ‘wipe, dry’ solosolo ‘handkerchief’

10) Samoan (Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992:223)

lafo ‘plot of land’ lalafo ‘clear land’
lago ‘pillow, bolster’ lalago ‘rest, keep steady’
pine ‘pin, peg’ pipine ‘secure with pegs’
 REDUPLICATION

 Reduplication is a morphological process in which all

or part of the base is repeated.

 Full reduplication is a process by which an entire base

is repeated as illustrated in (9).
 Partial reduplication is a process in which only part of
the base is repeated as shown in (10).
 TEMPLATIC MORPHOLOGY
 Consider the following data.
 11) Arabic (McCarthy 1979:244; 1981:374)

 katab ‘wrote’
 kattab ‘causes to write’

 kaatab ‘corresponded’

 ktatab ‘wrote, copied’

 kutib was written (perfective passive)
 All above data share the consonants ktb

 All the active verb forms have the vowel a

 What we find in Arabic is called templatic or root and

pattern morphology.
 In Arabic, the root of a word typically consists of three
consonants, the triliteral root, which supply the core
meaning.
 These three consonants may be interspersed with vowels
in a number of different ways to modify the meaning of
the root.
 TEMPLATE AND BINYAN

 Template is the precise pattern of consonants and

vowels which can be associated with specific meanings.
 Each of these template patterns is called a binyan.
 TRANSFIXES
 Roots in Arabic are occasionally called transfixes
because some morphologists look at them as affixes that
occur discontinuously across the word.
 TEMPLATIC LANGUAGES
 Root and pattern morphology is very characteristic of the
Semitic languages which includes Arabic and Hebrew,
but it is also found in other languages like Uto-Aztecan
language Cupeno. Cupeno verbs can have a form called
the habilitative which means something like ‘can V’.
 12) Cupeno (McCarthy 1984:309)

 a. čál ‘husk’ čá?a?al ‘can husk’

 téw ‘see’ té?e?ew ‘can see’
 b. páčik ‘leach acorns’ páč?ik ‘can leach acorns’
 čáspǝl ‘mend’ čáspǝ?ǝl ‘can mend
 TEMPLATE FOR CUPENO
HABILITATIVES
 a. (CV)CV?V?VC when only or the second
vowel has stress
 b. CVC (C)V?VC the first vowel of two is the
stressed vowel
 SUMMARY
 In this chapter, we have surveyed different types of rules
in new lexeme formation.
 We have seen new types of affixes such as infixes,
circumfixes.
 We have discussed the new processes like internal stem
change (ablaut, umlaut and consonant mutation),
reduplication (full and partial), and templatic
morphology .