LING 2005

Linguistic Analysis I
Week 2
Basic nominal and verbal morphology
Timothy Di Leo Browne
20 January 2023
Carleton University
Contents
• Definitions

• Review from last week

• Discussion of new datasets

• Questions?

• Conclusions

• There are a lot of slides. I will post these tonight, broken into segments, for you to
study from. I can’t post all of the analyses shown in class, but I can post some of
them.
Some definitions
• Inflection: The way a language handles grammatical relations and relational categories
such as number, person, tense, gender, etc. Typically these relational categories are
represented through affixes – e.g., prefixes, infixes, and suffixes.

• Stem: A stem is a part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants.

• Root: A root is an atomic (unanalyzable) lexical morpheme (that is, a morpheme that
has core semantic content – cat, dog, jump, etc., not -s, -ed, -ing, etc.). Often (but
definitely not always) the root is the same as the stem in datasets we are considering.

• Marked: A word is marked to convey a particular meaning, nuance, or grammatical

category or relation. For example, cat-s is marked for plural. Marking can be complex
and subtle – “unmarked” and “uninflected” are not the same thing.
• Further to the problematic notion of “unmarked”: Marking may not be obvious, but
still present. For example, the word go in “It’s important that she go” has no affix
overtly marking mood, but it is marked as subjunctive mood.
 Inflection versus derivation

• Inflection, as mentioned on the previous slide, refers to alterations of a word

(typically through affixes) that change grammatical categories such as person,
number, tense, case, and so on: walk-s, walk-ed …

• But there are other types of affixes, called derivational morphemes, that change,
for example, a noun to a verb (digit/digit-ize), a verb to a noun (walk/walk-er), an
adjective to an adverb (bad/bad-ly), etc. Some derivational morphemes may add a
special meaning to a word: apply/mis-apply, mystify/de-mystify, etc.
Review from last week

• How to organize your analyses.

• Revisiting datasets 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6

**Format to follow in your assignments**

Roots:
kahe “eye”
biti “bead”
kĩ “cassava tuber”

Affixes:
-a sg
ø pl

Observation: Eyes, beads, and cassava tubers typically appear in plural

forms. We might want to ascertain if all Barasano nouns follow this
inflectional pattern, or if it is specific to a particular noun class.
More on analysis style in your homework
• The following slides cover datasets we have discussed in class so far and two more. They
illustrate how you should approach these datasets and organize your analyses going forward.
I encourage you to mark and notate your Laboratory Manuals in pencil as well.

• It will help you to split the dataset words into their constituent morphemes with hyphens,
e.g. re-do-ing. But note that separating the dataset words might be messy where there are
morphophonemic changes (not a problem yet).
• Identify the roots (the piece of the word that contains the content meaning, such as go in go-
ing). The definition (gloss) should be placed in double or single quotes after the root, like so --
chien: “dog”
• Identify the affixes (or other morphological processes). You may want to colour code by type,
as these get more complex.
• State any rules (particularly morphophonemic rules, again as these datasets get more
complex).
• State the order of morphemes. (Will explain this with relevant datasets.)
• Optionally, offer any observations about the dataset that you think may be relevant for
further study (this is open-ended and optional, but it’s good to get you thinking).
More on analysis style
For prefixes, the hyphen should appear after.
For suffixes, the hyphen should appear before.
Let’s consider the word, revisits.

re-visit-s

Roots:

visit “go to see someone or someplace” (gloss in quotes)

Affixes:

re- repetition of action (hyphen placed after prefix) – re- might also be called an iterative aspect
marker. We’ll get to that in a future lecture.

-s 3rd person singular present (hyphen placed before suffix)

Dataset 1: Hyderabadi Telugu
Dataset 1. Hyderabadi Telugu
Data divided into morphemes:
pilla pilla-lu (etc.)

Roots:
pilla “child” godugu “elephant”
puwu “flower” tʃiire “sari”
tʃiima “ant” annagaaru “elder brother”
doma “mosquito”

Affixes:
ø sg
-lu pl

Observation: All singular nouns in this dataset end in a vowel.

Dataset 2: Kewa
Dataset 2: Kewa
Data divided into morphemes:
ada ada-nu (etc.)

Roots:
ada “house”
pora “path”
yana “dog”
nu “net bag”

Affixes:
-nu collective

Uninflected nouns in this dataset can be sg or pl.

Observation: -nu is a collective derivational suffix. It is possible that the noun nu, “netbag”, and the suffix -nu are related.
Dataset 3: Southern Barasano
Dataset 3: Southern Barasano
Data divided into morphemes:
kahe-a kahe (etc.)

Roots:
kahe “eye”
biti “bead”
kĩ “cassava tuber”

Affixes:
-a sg
ø pl

Observation: Eyes, beads, and cassava tubers typically appear in plural forms. We might want
to ascertain if all Southern Barasano nouns follow this inflectional pattern, or if it is specific to
a particular noun class – that is, a group of nouns that behave similarly in their inflections.
Why a singular gloss for these Barasano roots?

A root is an underlying form that conveys content meaning. It is not presumed to be

singular, plural, or anything else. It has no grammatical context.

The root denoting “eye” in Southern Barasano is kahe. When we think of kahe as a
root, it is neither singular or plural. It is just the concept, “eye”.

However, it so happens that the plural form is identical to the root, while the singular
form adds the suffix –a.

You see?

Dataset 5. Palantla Chinantec
Data divided into morphemes:
dsøi2 (etc.) (there are no apparent separable morphemes in this dataset)

Roots:
dsøi2 “dog”
lo12 “pheasant”
nié12 “pig”
tan12 “bird”

Uninflected nouns in this dataset can be sg or pl.

Observation: All of these nouns are animals. Perhaps this is a noun class.

[Note: The superscript numerals (e.g., lo 12) refer to tones. Palantla Chinantec is a tonal language. Pay attention to
tones.]
We’ll see more of the Chinantecan tone system

Dataset 6. Huixtec Tzotzil
Data divided into mprphemes:
ná “house(s)” ná-etik “houses”
ʔánts “woman, women” ʔánts-etik “women”
vínik “man, men” vínik-etik “men”
ʔatséb “girl(s)” ʔatséb-etik “girls”

Roots:
ná “house” ʔánts “woman”
vínik “man” ʔatséb “girl”

Affixes:
ø singular or plural -etik plural

(Uninflected nouns in this dataset can be sg or pl.

But the suffix -etik marks a noun as specifically plural.)

Observation: The suffix -etik does not vary in this sample, whether it is preceded by a consonant or a
vowel. (This is an observation about the phonological environment in which the suffix occurs.)
Poll for attendance and info gathering

• Go to pollev.com/pollcat

• Sign in with your cmail address

• Click on the map!

• :-)
New datasets …

• We will look at 4, 7, 10, 11, 8, 9

Dataset 4: Swahili
• About 100 million first- and second-
language speakers.

• Member of the Bantu language family, part

of the larger Benue-Congo language family,
in turn a member of the very large (and still
hypothetical) Niger-Congo language family.

• These languages typically have complex

noun classes

• Swahili has many loan words, especially

from Arabic
Dataset 4. Swahili
Dataset 4. Swahili
(Complete dataset with separations):
m-toto “child” wa-toto “children”
m-tu “person” wa-tu “people”
m-piʃi “cook” wa-piʃi “cooks”
m-geni “stranger” wa-geni “strangers”

Roots:
toto “child” tu “person”
piʃi “cook” geni “stranger”

Affixes:
m- singular wa- plural

In this dataset, singulars and plurals are formed by adding prefixes to the noun stem.

Optional Observation: These nouns all denote people and may represent a noun class. (As it
happens, this is indeed relevant in Swahili.)
Sidebar I: Hakuna matata
Swahili is a prefixing language.

Roots:
Nouns Verbs
tata “trouble, problem” kuna “there is/are” (idiomatic gloss)

Affixes:
Nominal Verbal
ma-plural ha- negation

(Note – Roots often are not words in their own right: for example, tata must have
accompanying grammatical morphology.)
Sidebar II: Kiswahili

• Why is the language often called Kiswahili?

• ki- is a sg prefix for Class 7 nouns that denote human-made implements. Languages
fall into this noun class.
Dataset 7. Tepehua (Mexico)
• Tepehuan is a member of the large
Uto-Aztecan language family.
• Speakers refer to the language as
O’otham. It is closely related to the
O’odham (Papago-Pima) language
of Arizona.
• Has between 50,000 and 60,000
speakers.
• Close to 2 million people speak a
Uto-Aztecan language, including the
descendants of the Aztecs (whose
language is Nahuatl).
Dataset 7. Tepehua (Mexico)

kinʧʌqʌʔ “my house” kintʌpaqaʔut “my name”

minʧʌqʌʔ “your house” mintʌpaqaʔut “your name”
iʃʧʌqʌʔ “his house” iʃtʌpaqaʔut “his name”
kintʌnʦʔ “my stool” kinʦʔʌpu “my berries”
mintʌnʦʔ “your stool” minʦʔʌpu “your berries”
iʃtʌnʦʔ “his stool” iʃʦʔʌpu “his berries”

[Note: ʧ is ONE PHONEME, the first sound in “cheese”. Similarly, ʦʔ is ONE PHONEME.
Therefore, do not interpret the [t] in these sound combinations as a separate sound.
This is an important point for correctly dividing these words into morphemes.]
Dataset 7. Tepehua (Mexico)
(Complete dataset with separations):
kin-ʧʌqʌʔ “my house” kin-tʌpaqaʔut “my name”
min-ʧʌqʌʔ “your house” min-tʌpaqaʔut “your name”
iʃ-ʧʌqʌʔ “his house” iʃ-tʌpaqaʔut “his name”
kin-tʌnʦʔ “my stool” kin-ʦʔʌpu “my berries”
min-tʌnʦʔ “your stool” min-ʦʔʌpu “your berries”
iʃ-tʌnʦʔ “his stool” iʃ-ʦʔʌpu “his berries”

Roots:
ʧʌqʌʔ “house” tʌnʦʔ “stool”
tʌpaqaʔut “name” ʦʔʌpu “berries”

Affixes:
kin- 1st sg possessive (“my” -- I’ve provided English glosses for these possessives only for clarification)
min- 2nd possessive (“your” – may be just sg, but “your” is ambiguous in English!)
iʃ- 3rd sg masculine possessive (“his”)

[Note again: ʧ is ONE PHONEME, the first sound in “cheese”. Similarly, ʦʔ is ONE PHONEME. Therefore, do not
interpret the [t] in these combinations as a separate sound.]
Some food for thought:
Plurals in mystery language
(These are the plural forms I had you consider in our first week’s lectures. What
could we say about plurals in this language?)

• bɪznɪsəz
• mæsəz
• ɔfɪsəz (or ɑfɪsəz)
• stɻɛsəz
• (hɔbɪtsəz)

Remember that we needed more information to form a firm hypothesis about

plural formations of nouns of this type. Without the singular forms of these nouns,
we can’t know.

But we note that all of these plurals end in - səz.

Suppose we did have the sg forms?
bɪznɪs bɪznɪs-əz
mæs mæs-əz
ɔfɪs ɔfɪs-əz
stɻɛs stɻɛs-əz

Now we have enough information to say something.

Possible roots:
bɪznɪs ɔfɪs
mæs stɻɛs

Affixes:
ø or -s ? singular (could be -s – still not enough data to determine!)
-əz plural

Observation: All of these roots end in -s. We still need more data to determine if the
plural of all nouns is formed by adding the suffix -əz.
 Some comments
• We might add the following observation about the formation of the plural in the
mystery language:

All singular samples in this data set end in -s. More data would reveal if this is typical
of all nouns in the language, if the -s ending on these singulars represents a class of
nouns, or if the -s ending is just a coincidence of this sample [which actually is the
case – not all English sg nouns end in -s].

• Regarding Hobbitses (hɔbɪtsəz)—this noun is doubly marked for plural, since the
singular is hɔbɪt. However, if one believed that the singular was hɔbɪts, the
phonologically “correct” plural would, in fact, be hɔbɪts-əz. And so, Gollum has
unconsciously mastered a rule of English pluralization.
• These “mystery plurals” are meant to defamiliarize English.
Break
Continuing on …
• Questions?

• For those of you who have books -- it’s perfectly fine to mark them. Pencil is best!
• Colour coding is useful to keep affixes organized. Affixes serving a similar function
can be coded in the same colour – for example, red for tense, blue for person,
green for aspect, and so on.

• Review of person and number

• Review of inflection versus derivation
• Tense and aspect
English categories of “person”

1st person sg: I (not marked for gender)

2nd person sg: you (earlier English had “thou”; not marked for gender)
3rd person sg: he (masculine), she (feminine), it (neuter), they (not marked for
gender)

1st person pl: we (not marked for gender)

2nd person pl: you (Southern American English has “y’all”, not marked for gender)
3rd person pl: they (not marked for gender)

Many languages have other persons. For example, Cree distinguishes between a 3rd
person proximate and a 3rd person obviative, and the morphology is different.
 Inflection versus derivation revisited

• Inflection, as mentioned on the previous slide, refers to changes in a word

(typically through affixes) that change grammatical categories such as person,
number, tense, case, and so on: walk-s, walk-ed …

• But there are other types of affixes, called derivational morphemes, that change,
for example, a noun to a verb (digit/digit-ize), a verb to a noun (walk/walk-er), an
adjective to an adverb (bad/bad-ly), etc. Some derivational morphemes may add a
special meaning to a word: apply/mis-apply, mystify/de-mystify, etc.
Dataset 10. Guaymí (Panama)
• Guaymí (Ngäbere) is a
member of the
Chibcha family.
• Has between 150,000
and 200,000
speakers, in Costa
Rica and Panama.
• Guaymí verbs do not
have subject or
object agreement.
They are inflected
only for tense.

Dataset 10. Guaymí (Panama)
Dataset 10. Guaymí (Panama)
Roots
kug ‘burn’
blit ‘speak’
kit ‘throw’
met ‘hit’

Affixes
-e present (dataset is glossed with -s, 3rd sg)
-aba past

Because the singular forms are glossed with -s in English, we can assume that
these are all 3rd-person sg forms in Guamí. But there is no way to tell if there
is person marking on the plural forms.
Verbs
• Tense – The time of a situation with reference to the speaker
• Typical system has past, present, and future
• Some systems have simply past and non-past
• Others, future and non-future
• Others, many levels of past, present and future

• Aspect – Temporal status internal to the event. There are many types of
aspect in world languages. Common ones:
• Perfective: completed act
• Imperfective: act in progress
• Progressive or Continuous: ongoing act (“be V-ing”)
• Habitual: typical, characteristic act (“used to V”, “usually V-s”)
• Inceptive: commencement of an act (“begin to V”). Also called inchoative.
• Iterative: repetition of an act (“do V again [and again]”)
Further notes on “aspect”
Aspect gives further nuance to a verbal tense – is the action going on continuously? If it was in
the past, was it completed?

English verbs are frequently marked for progressive (or continuous) aspect with auxiliary verb
be and the present participle. This is the usual way of expressing action for most present-tense
verbs in English. By contrast, in French, present-tense verbs more typically occur in simple
present constructions.

I eat (simple present) IPA: aɪ iːt

I am eating (present progressive) IPA: aɪ æm iːtɪŋ

(c.f. je mange, “I eat” – this is the usual form in French) IPA: ʒə mɑ̃ʒ

You walked (simple past)

You were walking (past progressive)

IMPORTANT: English marks progressive aspect with auxiliary verbs, but many languages mark
aspect with affixes or other morphological processes.
Examples of aspect and tense in English

Progressive Perfect Perfect progressive

PresI am doing I have done I have been doing

PastI was doing I had done I had been doing

Future I will be doing I will have done I will have been doing

Note: “I have done” is technically a present perfect form. Perfect, which is different from
perfective, suggests that something happened in the past but has ongoing consequences.
Dataset 11. Tetelcingo Nahuatl

 Dataset 11. Tetelcingo Nahuatl (Mexico)

Roots
kwika “sing”
koni “drink”
ʧuka “cry”

Affixes

Tense/Aspect Person/Number
ø present ni- 1 sg subject
-k past ti- 2 sg subject
-tika present progressive
-taya past progressive
-s future
Points from sets 10 and 11
• Recognize simple tense marking

• Distinguish tense from aspect

• Be able to identify subject marking on a verb. Verbs often are marked for the
grammatical person that is engaging in the action. For example:

She see-s
It run-s

The -s marks the verb as having a 3rd person, SINGULAR subject in English.
So -s here marks person, number, and tense (present).
Further on aspect inflections

• Note how these two suffixes are glossed:

-tika present progressive

-taya past progressive

• Remember that although English uses the auxiliary verb “be” to indicate aspect,
Nahuatl does not do so. In ni-koni-tika “I am drinking”, there is not an exact
correspondence to “am” or “be”. You need to think of the entire unit “am drinking” as
expressing the 1st person sg present progressive form of drink. Don’t gloss progressive
forms with “be V-ing”.

• In Nahuatl, ni- indicates 1st person sg, and -tika indicates present progressive.
• In the following examples, person (in this instance
possessor) and number are both marked on the noun.
Dataset 8. Michoacán Nahuatl (Mexico)

• nokali “my house” mopelomes “your dogs”

• nokalimes “my houses” ipelo “his dog”
• mokali “your house” pelo “dog”
• ikali “his house” nokwahmili “my cornfield”
• kali “house” mokwahmili “your cornfield”
• kalimes “houses” ikwahmili “his cornfield”
• nopelo “my dog” ikwahmilimes “his cornfields”
• mopelo “your dog” kwahmili “cornfield”
Let’s look at the “house” forms

• nokali “my house”

• nokalimes “my houses”
• mokali “your house”
• ikali “his house”
• kali “house”
• kalimes “houses”

• They all have kali in common, suggesting that kali means house.
Look for commonalities in forms.
“house” forms with separations

• no-kali “my house”

• no-kali-mes “my houses”
• mo-kali “your house”
• i-kali “his house”
• kali “house”
• kali-mes “houses”
Dataset 8. Michoacán Nahuatl (Mexico)
• no-kali “my house” mo-pelo-mes “your dogs”

• no-kali-mes “my houses” i-pelo “his dog”

• mo-kali “your house” pelo “dog”

• i-kali “his house” no-kwahmili “my cornfield”

• kali “house” mo-kwahmili “your cornfield”

• kali-mes “houses” i-kwahmili “his cornfield”

• no-pelo “my dog” i-kwahmili-mes “his cornfields”

• mo-pelo “your dog” kwahmili “cornfield”

Dataset 8. Michoacán Nahuatl (Mexico), continued

Roots
kali “house”
pelo “dog”
kwahmili “cornfield”

Affixes
no- 1st sg possessive (“my”)
mo- 2nd sg possessive (“your”)
i- 3rd sg m possessive (“his”)

ø sg
-mes pl

[Reminder: the symbol ø indicates that there is no inflection on the word]

Algonquin dataset

• chiimaan “boat”

• nichiimaan “my boat”

• kichiimaan “your [sg] boat”

• ochiimaan “[third person]’s boat”

• How does Algonquin indicate pronominal possession?

• This is characteristic of all Algonquian languages.
Dataset 9. Isthmus Zapotec (Mexico)
Part of dataset with colour-coded separations
diaga “ear” ʒike “shoulder”
ka-diaga-tu “your (pl) ears” ʒike-be “his shoulder”
ka-diaga-du “our ears” ka-ʒike-luʔ “yr shoulders”

Roots
ɲee “foot”
ʒigi “chin”
ʒike “shoulder”
diaga “ear”
biʃoze “father”

Affixes
-luʔ 2 sg poss ø singular
-be 3 sg poss ka- plural

-tu 2 pl poss
-du 1 pl poss
Points from sets 8 and 9

• Many languages have both prefixing and suffixing inflection.

• The order of these affixes varies widely from language. Consider the two previous
examples :

In Nahuatl, possessor is indicated by a prefix and number by a suffix.

In Zapotec, possessor is indicated by a suffix and number by a prefix.

To prepare for next week
• Datasets: 14, 19, 43 (I will make slides with hints for these); 16, 17, 18.
• Problem Set 1 is due one week from today. This set should be submitted in
Brightspace by 11:59 p.m. on Friday Jan 27. Start by separating all dataset words
into morphemes with hyphens (this is to help you). Then:
• (1) identity and define (“gloss”) the roots,
• (2) identify affixes and other morphological processes, separating them by category
(person, number, etc.),
• (3) identify sound rules (this is for future datasets), and
• (4) optionally, make observations about the data that one could follow up on for further
study.
• Note: in Dataset 18, assume the forms on left are all present tense.

You will be working on these datasets in your tutorials.