Introduction to Linguistics Sound System and Word Formation Class 6

Dylan Glynn www.dsglynn.univ-paris8.fr

dglynn@univ-paris8.fr

Morphology Revision

morph, from Greek morphe = form

ology, from Green logia =

discourse, doctrine, field of science

çaliştirilmamaliymiş (Turkish, Turkic)

‘apparently, they say he ought not to be made to work’

(English, Indo-European)

çaliştirilmamaliymiş

çaliş - tir – il – ma – maliy – miş work - cause passive negation obligation inference

Revision - Morpheme!

The smallest unit of meaning

Cat is a morpheme

But so it the s, in cats

Free and Bound Morphemes A bound morpheme is a morpheme whose meaning is dependent on other morphemes

e.g.: -s in cats

A free morpheme is one who can stand alone

e.g.: cat in cats

Revision Bound Morphemes Suffix – cat-s (English – Indo-European)

Prefix – pre-voir (French – Indo-European)

Infix – me-het-tem (Hungarian – Finno-Ugric)

Morphs and Allomorphs

bus = > buses /əәz/

ship = > ships /s/

walk => walked /t/

ground => grounded /d/

Revision Grammatical Categories - Number (English, Germanic)

frog vs. frogs

(Romanian, Latin)

cânt cânți cântă cântăm cântați cântă

Arabic (Semitic)

Revision Grammatical Categories – Gender Masculine and Feminine in Latin

casa (Ca.) / casă (Ro.) / casa (Es.) / casa (Pt.) / casa (It.) / chambre (Fr.)

suono (It.) / som (Pt.) / son (Fr.) / so nido (Es.) / sunet (Ro.) / so (Ca.)

Masculine, Feminine and Neuter in Slavic

dom (Pl.) / дом (Rus.) / dům (Cz.) / дім (Uk.) / dom (Hr.) / dom (Sl.)

kawa (Pl.) / кофе (Rus.)/ káva (Cz. ) / кави (Uk.) / kava (Hr.) / káva (Sl.)

mleko (Pl.) / молоко (Rus.) / mléko (Cz.) / молоко (Uk.) / mlijeko (Hr.) / mlieko (Sk.)

Revision - Derivation vs. Inflection !

Revision

Morpheme

Morphs and allomorphs

Derivation and inflection

Grammatical Categories

number

gender

Grammatical Categories cont. We have looked at two grammatical categories associated with nouns

but there are many more!

Today we will look at CASE!

We already spoke of it a few times, we can’t hide from it anymore....

But we will start with something easy

Definiteness In English and French it is easy.

We say it is periphrastic, that is, it is done with lexemes, not with morphemes Definate vs. Indefinite

the cat vs. a cat

But many languages, such as Swedish and Arabic do it morphologically In Arabic it is difficult, because it interacts with CASE, so let’s look at Swedish

Definiteness

It’s easy – A Swedish example

Swedish is easy, it has ½ a case and little gender But look at how it interacts with Number

In Arabic it is the same, except it interacts with Number, Gender and Case

CASE!! It’s mean, it’s nasty, it’s boring and it’s why you should never complain about English grammar ever again....

Grammatical Case The grammatical function of a pronoun, noun or an adjective in a sentence

IndoEuropean had 8 cases

Today – French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish have 0,

English has 1/2, German has 3 or 3.5

but Romanian, Croatian and Russian (indeed, most European languages) have 6

Polish has 7...

Grammatical Case Although 6 cases is pretty typical for European languages, it varies a great deal around the world

Arabic (Semitic) has 3

Turkish (Turkic) has 16

Estonian (Finno-Ugric) has 14

Finnish (Finno-Ugric) has 15

Hungarian (Finno-Ugric) has 18

Tesz (Caucasian) has 64!

I expect, most languages have cases....

Revision - Grammatical Case English (Indo-European) lost it’s cases a long time ago, but we still have a little in the pronouns

Nominative - subject: We went to the store.

Accusative - direct object: The clerk remembered us.

Dative - indirect object: The clerk gave a discount to us.

Ablative - movement from something or cause:

The victim went from us to see the doctor / He was unhappy because of depression.

Genitive - possessive: John's book was on the table / The pages of the book.

Vocative - addressee: John, are you all right? Hello, John!

Locative - location: We live in China.

Instrumental - instrument: We wiped the floor with a mop / Written by hand.

Grammatical Case - Turkish case is alive and kicking! Nominative araba "car (Subject)" Accusative arabayı "car (Object)” Dative arabaya "to car" Locative arabada "on car" Ablative arabadan "from car" Genitive arabanın "car's" Essive arabaca "as a car" Instrumental arabayla "with/by car" Inclusive arabalı "with/having a car" Qualitative arabasal "of a car" Possessive arabam "my car" etc... etc... etc...

Grammatical Case High German (Indo-European)

1. Nominative: der Seemann

"[the] sailor" [as a subject] (e.g. Der Seemann steht da - the sailor is standing there)

2. Accusative: den Seemann

"[the] sailor" [as a direct object] (e.g. Ich sah den Seemann" - I saw the sailor)

3. Dative: dem Seemann

"to/for [the] sailor" [as an indirect object] (e.g. Ich gab dem Seemann ein Geschenk - I gave a present to the sailor)

4. Genitive: des Seemannes

"the sailor's / of [the] sailor" (e.g. Der Name des Seemann ist Otto - the sailor's name is Otto)

Polish (Indo-Euopean) ‘cat’ (singular) Sing. Pl. Nominative Kot the cat (subject) Koty the cats (subject) Accusative Kota the cat (object) Kotom the cats (object) Dative Kotu to the cat Koty to the cats Instrumental Kotem with the cat Kotami with the cats Genitive Kota of the cat Kotów of the cats Locative Kocie on the cat Kotach on the cat Vocative Kocie Oh, Cat! Koty Oh, Cats!

Finnish (Finno-Ugric)

Swahili as kipilefti, and is used to denote a roundabout. The first syllable ki

has been interpreted as a class prefix (class IV), and hence the plural formof this word is vipilefti. A similar case is the Arabic loan word kitabi “book”with the plural form vitabi.

The other important inflectional category for nouns is case. Like numberproperties, case properties of nouns are transferred to words of otherclasses through agreement. The Icelandic paradigm in Table 6.1 is quitecharacteristic of Indo-European case systems with respect to the number ofcases. Languages may di!er considerably in the number of cases they have,if any. Finnish and Hungarian are well known for their large number ofcases. There are four cases with a clearly grammatical function: nominative,accusative, genitive, and partitive. The partitive case is used to mark patientobjects that are partially a!ected by the action, as the following sentencefrom Hungarian illustrates (Blake 1994: 153):

(11) Olvasott a könyv-bölread.3"# the book-$%&'

“He read some of the book”

This language and its relatives are well known for its large set of local cases.The Finnish nouns in (12) all have a particular local case. These local caseshave similar functions as locative prepositions in languages with less elab-orated case systems such as Latin. In addition to the local cases, thereare also cases such as the abessive with the meaning “without”, and thecomitative, with the meaning “accompanied by”.

The elative and the partitive case are both used in quantifying expres-sions. Consider the following examples from Finnish (Sulkala and Kar-jalainen 1992: 234):

(13) kaksi poji-sta kaksi poika-atwo boy.$(-)(%'*+) two boy-$%&'*'*+)

“two of the boys” “two boys”

(12) Case label Meaning Example

allative to(wards) (the exterior) of pöydä-lle “onto the table”illative into laitokse-en “to the institute”ablative from (the exterior of) kadu-lta “out of the street”elative from (the inside of) kaupa-sta “out of the shop”inessive in(side) talo-ssa “in the house”adessive at roof-ade “on the roof”

132 *,-().'*/,

Lezgian (East Caucasian)

(a) sew ‘the bear’ (absolutive)

(b) sew-re ‘the bear’ (ergative)

(c) sew-re-n ‘of the bear’ (genitive)

(d) sew-re-z ‘to the bear’ (dative)

(e) sew-re-w ‘at the bear’

(f) sew-re-w-aj ‘from the bear’

(g) sew-re-w-di ‘toward the bear’

(h) sew-re-qh ‘behind the bear’

(i) sew-re-qh-aj ‘from behind the bear’

(j) sew-re-qh-di ‘to behind the bear’

(k) sew-re-k ‘under the bear’

(l) sew-re-k-aj ‘from under the bear’

(m) sew-re-k-di ‘to under the bear’

(n) sew-re-l ‘on the bear’

(o) sew-re-l-aj ‘off the bear’

(p) sew-re-ldi ‘onto the bear’

(q) sew-re ‘in the bear’

(r) sew-raj ‘out of the bear’

Morphology –Some Final Revision Case

1EARLY ROME

Nouns: subjects and objects

agricola taurum fugatthe farmer chases/is chasing the bull

agricolam taurus fugatthe bull chases/is chasing the farmer

The Latin word for chases, fugat, appears at the end of the sentence. The farmer, agricola, comes first, andthe bull, taurum, is second.

The farmer is the active one, the person doing the chasing, and so is the subject. The bull is the object,because he is on the receiving end, i.e. he is being chased.

Now the bull is the subject, while the farmer has become the object. To make this clear, the English wordshave been moved. The Latin words, however, have not changed their position, but their endings.

The Latin for farmer as subject is agricolaand as object aqricolamThe Latin for bull as subject is taurusand as object taurum

English also has a few words which change according to whether they are subject or object: she/her, he/him, I/me, we/us, they/them, who/whom. These words are all pronouns, words which are used in the place ofnouns.

Vocabulary

Words like agricola: Words like taurus:nauta sailor servus slavepuella girl dominus masterdea goddess deus godf� mina woman equus horsepo� ta poet

Practice A

With the help of the pictures, complete the words and translate:

1 puell........equ........fugat.

2 ESSENTIAL LATIN

Nominative et Accusative

The cases

The technical name for these different endings of a noun is ‘case’. Each case has a particular function: itmay be to show that the noun is the subject or object. The subject ending is called the nominative case, andthe object ending is called the accusative case. There are other cases too:

The genitive case

The English preposition of is used to translate the genitive case:

e.g. taurus agricolae the bull of the farmer

We might leave out of and use an apostrophe instead: ‘the farmer’s bull’. Centuries ago, before the NormanConquest, English had a genitive ending too. The ‘e’ of the genitive ending ‘-es’ has since given way to theapostrophe.

taurus agricolae

2 serv........domin........fugat.

3 naut........femin........fugat.

1 EARLY ROME 3

The farmer is the active one, the person doing the chasing, and so is the subject. The bull is the object,because he is on the receiving end, i.e. he is being chased.

Now the bull is the subject, while the farmer has become the object. To make this clear, the English wordshave been moved. The Latin words, however, have not changed their position, but their endings.

The Latin for farmer as subject is agricolaand as object aqricolamThe Latin for bull as subject is taurusand as object taurum

English also has a few words which change according to whether they are subject or object: she/her, he/him, I/me, we/us, they/them, who/whom. These words are all pronouns, words which are used in the place ofnouns.

Vocabulary

Words like agricola: Words like taurus:nauta sailor servus slavepuella girl dominus masterdea goddess deus godf� mina woman equus horsepo� ta poet

Practice A

With the help of the pictures, complete the words and translate:

1 puell........equ........fugat.

2 ESSENTIAL LATIN

dominus – master

servus – slave

nauta – sailor

puella – girl

femina – woman

equus - horse

Genitive and Dative

The cases

The technical name for these different endings of a noun is ‘case’. Each case has a particular function: itmay be to show that the noun is the subject or object. The subject ending is called the nominative case, andthe object ending is called the accusative case. There are other cases too:

The genitive case

The English preposition of is used to translate the genitive case:

e.g. taurus agricolae the bull of the farmer

We might leave out of and use an apostrophe instead: ‘the farmer’s bull’. Centuries ago, before the NormanConquest, English had a genitive ending too. The ‘e’ of the genitive ending ‘-es’ has since given way to theapostrophe.

taurus agricolae

2 serv........domin........fugat.

3 naut........femin........fugat.

1 EARLY ROME 3

the bull of the farmer (the farmer’s bull)oculus taurithe eye of the bull (the bull’s eye)equus puellaethe horse of the girl (the girl’s horse)

The dative case

The dative case is used for the indirect object. The English preposition to is commonly used (and sometimesfor):

agricola tauro faenum datthe farmer gives/is giving hay to the bullfemina equum puellae ostentatthe woman shows/is showing the horse to the girl

Note that in each of the above two examples there are two objects, one direct (accusative), the other indirect(dative).

The ablative case

The most common use of the ablative is instrumental (by, with) or with a preposition (e.g. in). Englishprepositions used to translate this case are: by, with, from, in, on.

agricola cum equo ambulatthe farmer walks/is walking with the horseagricola a tauro videturthe farmer is seen by the bull

4 de.........poet.........fugat.

4 ESSENTIAL LATIN

The Ablative

agricola in equo estthe farmer is on the horsefemina equum faeno pascitthe woman feeds/is feeding the horse with hayservus e villa ambulatthe slave walks/is walking from (out of) the villa

Practice B

With the help of the pictures, complete the words and translate:

Summary

Latin nouns change endings according to their function in the sentence. These endings are defined as cases:

1 agricol.....cum taur..... ambulat.

2 equus in vill.....est.

1 EARLY ROME 5

the bull of the farmer (the farmer’s bull)oculus taurithe eye of the bull (the bull’s eye)equus puellaethe horse of the girl (the girl’s horse)

The dative case

The dative case is used for the indirect object. The English preposition to is commonly used (and sometimesfor):

agricola tauro faenum datthe farmer gives/is giving hay to the bullfemina equum puellae ostentatthe woman shows/is showing the horse to the girl

Note that in each of the above two examples there are two objects, one direct (accusative), the other indirect(dative).

The ablative case

The most common use of the ablative is instrumental (by, with) or with a preposition (e.g. in). Englishprepositions used to translate this case are: by, with, from, in, on.

agricola cum equo ambulatthe farmer walks/is walking with the horseagricola a tauro videturthe farmer is seen by the bull

4 de.........poet.........fugat.

4 ESSENTIAL LATIN

Grammatical categories

We have been focusing on nouns....

there is lot more to noun inflections than this, but it’s a good start

What about verbs?

Verb carry just as much information, if not more!!!

Tense Tense is easy...

there are three tenses...

Germanic!

Does English have a future tense?

Periphrastic Tense Eng. I will drink I shall drink I am going to drink Dutch. Ik zull drinken Norwegian Jeg vil drikke I shall drink I will drink Ik ga drinken Jeg skal drikke I go drink I shall drink German Ich werde trinken Swedish Jag skall dricka I become drink I shall drink

How is the future expressed in other langauges?

Mood Indicative, Imperative, Conditional, Subjunctive etc. etc. etc. Again pretty easy, because French does have some grammar here.... French (Indo-European) Indicative Je bois / Il buvait / nous aurons bu / vous eûtes bu / vous aviez bu Imperative Buvez!!! Conditional Je boirais / tu eusses bu Subjuntive nous eussions bu / j'aie bu / je busse

Aspect Progressive and simple English (Indo-European) Simple: I eat Progressive: I am eating Dutch (Indo-European) Simple: ik eet I eat Progressive: Ik ben aan het eten I am to the eat

Aspect What is the difference in meaning between

close and close up, write and write out, eat and eating?

She closed the shop vs. she closed up the shop

She wrote the book vs. she wrote up the book....

She eats a cake vs. she is eating a cake Elle mange le gâteau vs. elle mangea le gâteau

Aspect Perfective and Imperfective

These grammatical categories are crucial in many of the world languages

how, it is difficult to this to an English speaker and even more difficult for a French speaker

Czech (Indo-European)

prohlédnout si – perfective browse Chcete si prohlédnout ten časopis? – Would you like to take a look at the magazine? (one-time, finished action)

prohlížet si – imperfective browse Chcete si prohlížet časopisy? – Would you like to be looking at magazines (e.g. while you wait)? (unspecified duration)

koupit – perfective buy Eva si koupila šaty. – Eva bought herself a dress. (she went out and came back with a dress)

nakupovat – imperfective buy Eva šla nakupovat. - Eva went shopping. (not sure for how long, she is still out)

Causative English (Indo-European) Get dressed Have your hair done etc... Amharic (Semitic) prefix gǝbba agǝbba 'enter' 'insert' Kashimir (Indo-European) vowel change mar ma:r 'die' 'kill' K'iche' (Mayan) suffix -kam- -kam-isa- 'die' 'kill'

Voice In English (Indo-European)

I close the door - active

The door closed - middle

The door was closed by me - passive

but in Kimaragang Dusun (Austronesian)

root passive meaning

patay pinatay was killed by

nakaw ninakaw was stolen by

garas ginaras was butchered by

Where is the passive morpheme???

Latin (Indo-European)

Voice, Aspect, Tense of the 3rd Person singular laudare – ‘praise’

filling paradigm cells is the following. Latin has a number of so-calleddeponent verbs, verbs with a passive form but an active meaning. Forinstance, the verb loquor “to speak” is such a deponent verb. The crucialobservation is that a word-sequence such as locutus est receives an activeinterpretation as well, and means “he has spoken”. This parallelism ininterpretation as active forms is to be expected if these analytic formsbelong to the inflectional paradigm of verbs.

The notion ‘suppletion’ also presupposes the idea of a paradigm. Wespeak about the grammatical words am, are, is, was, and were as forms ofthe English lexeme !" although they are quite di#erent in phonologicalshape, and show (almost) no phonological relatedness. These words fillspecific cells in the paradigm of to be. The same applies to worse, thesuppletive comparative form of !$%.

A fourth criterion for distinguishing inflection and derivation is that der-ivation may feed inflection, but not vice versa. Derivation applies to thestem-forms of words, without their inflectional endings, and creates new,more complex stems to which inflectional rules can be applied. This isthe main reason for keeping the two kinds of morphology distinct. It is across-linguistic generalization that inflection is peripheral with respect toderivation, formulated by Greenberg as follows:

(25) ‘Universal 28. If both the derivation and inflection follow the root, or theyboth precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and theinflection’ (Greenberg 1963: 93)

Greenberg’s universal excludes the morpheme order patterns *Derivation–Inflection–Root and *Root–Inflection–Derivation. It might also be

Table 5.2. Imperfective and perfective 3&' forms of laudare

()*"+,"-.(/" $-.(/" *$&&(/"

*+"&"0. laudat laudatur*$&. laudabat laudabatur,1.1+" laudabit laudabitur

*"+,"-.(/" $-.(/" *$&&(/"

*+"&"0. laudavit laudatus/a/um est*$&. laudaverat laudatus/a/um erat,1.1+" laudaverit laudatus/a/um erat

114 (0,2"-.(30

Exercise - Tagalog (Austronesian)

you should be able to take this plural form taltalon (“fields”) and work out what the

singular (“field”) would be. If you follow the observed pattern, you should get talon.

Tagalog

Here are some other intriguing examples fromTagalog, another language spoken in the

Philippines.

basa (“read”) tawag (“call”) sulat (“write”)

bumasa (“Read!”) tumawag (“Call!”) sumulat (“Write!”)

babasa (“will read”) tatawag (“will call”) susulat (“will write”)

If we assume that the first form in each column can be treated as a stem, then it appears

that, in the second item in each column, an element -um- has been inserted after the

first consonant, or more precisely, after the syllable onset. It is an example of an infix

(described in Chapter 5). In the third example in each column, note that the change in

form involves, in each case, a repetition of the first syllable. So, the marking of future

reference in Tagalog appears to be accomplished via reduplication. Using this infor-

mation, you should be able to complete these examples:

lakad (“walk”) _________ (“Walk!”) _________ (“will walk”)

lapit (“come here”) _________ (“Come here!”) _________ (“will come here”)

In the second column, with an infix, you’ll have lumakad and lumapit, while in the

third column, with reduplication, you’ll have lalakad and lalapit.

As we have been exploring all these different morphological processes, we have

moved from the basic structure of words to a consideration of some topics traditionally

associatedwith grammar.Wewill focusmore fully on issues relating to grammar in the

next chapter.

74 The Study of Language

you should be able to take this plural form taltalon (“fields”) and work out what the

singular (“field”) would be. If you follow the observed pattern, you should get talon.

Tagalog

Here are some other intriguing examples fromTagalog, another language spoken in the

Philippines.

basa (“read”) tawag (“call”) sulat (“write”)

bumasa (“Read!”) tumawag (“Call!”) sumulat (“Write!”)

babasa (“will read”) tatawag (“will call”) susulat (“will write”)

If we assume that the first form in each column can be treated as a stem, then it appears

that, in the second item in each column, an element -um- has been inserted after the

first consonant, or more precisely, after the syllable onset. It is an example of an infix

(described in Chapter 5). In the third example in each column, note that the change in

form involves, in each case, a repetition of the first syllable. So, the marking of future

reference in Tagalog appears to be accomplished via reduplication. Using this infor-

mation, you should be able to complete these examples:

lakad (“walk”) _________ (“Walk!”) _________ (“will walk”)

lapit (“come here”) _________ (“Come here!”) _________ (“will come here”)

In the second column, with an infix, you’ll have lumakad and lumapit, while in the

third column, with reduplication, you’ll have lalakad and lalapit.

As we have been exploring all these different morphological processes, we have

moved from the basic structure of words to a consideration of some topics traditionally

associatedwith grammar.Wewill focusmore fully on issues relating to grammar in the

next chapter.

74 The Study of Language

Exercise - Hungarian (Finno-Ugric)

(1) stitch – stitches

(2) exclaim – exclamation

(3) child – children

(4) conclude – conclusion

(5) cliff – cliffs

(6) tooth – teeth

C What are enclitics and proclitics? Does English have both? What are some typical

English examples? Why aren’t they just called affixes?

D Look over the following examples from Hungarian (based on Frommer and

Finegan, 2012: 3) and try to answer the questions that follow.

(i) Did you complete the example in (10)?

(ii) What are the five free (adjective) morphemes in the data?

(iii) What are the four pronouns? Are these lexical or functional morphemes?

(iv) What are the three verb suffixes? Are these derivational or inflectional suffixes?

(v) What are the two adjective suffixes? What do you think is the basis for

choosing one or the other?

E Using what you learned about Swahili and information provided in the set of

examples below, create appropriate forms as translations of the English expressions

(1–6) that follow.

(1) (“She loved you”)

(2) (“I will cook them”)

(3) (“You will pass by”)

(4) (“We paid him”)

(5) (“She will beat me”)

(6) (“They left”)

F These examples are from Samoan, as reported in Yu (2007: 24), and based on Mosel

and Hovdhaugen (1992). (The consonant represented by ʔ is a glottal stop, as

described in Chapter 3.)

(1) te szep vagy “you’re beautiful” (singular)

(2) en beteg vagyok “I’m ill”

(3) te magas vagy “you’re tall” (singular)

(4) mi lankadtak vagyunk “we’re tired”

(5) ti kedvesek vagytok “you’re nice” (plural)

(6) ti betegek vagytok “you’re ill” (plural)

(7) mi magasak vagyunk “we’re tall”

(8) te kedves vagy “you’re nice” (singular)

(9) en lankadt vagyok “I’m tired”

(10) __ ______ _____ “you’re beautiful” (plural)

nitakupenda (“I will love you”) alipita (“She passed by”)

watanilipa (“They will pay me”) uliwapika (“You cooked them”)

tutaondoka (“We will leave”) walimpiga (“They beat him”)

74 The Study of Language

Exercise Turkish (Turkic)

II In Turkish, there is some variation in the plural inflection.

(i) Can you provide the missing forms?

(ii) What are the two plural morphs exemplified here?

(iii) Treat the written forms of a and o as representing back vowels and e and i as

representing front vowels. Using this information, can you state the

conditions under which each of the plural morphs is used?

(iv) On the basis of the following phrases, how would you describe the Turkish

translation equivalents of your and the conditions for their use?

(v) While English usually marks location with prepositions (in a house or at a

place), Turkish has postpositions (house-in or place-at). After looking at the

following examples, try to identify the three versions of the “location” suffix

and the conditions for their use.

dishin (“your tooth”) topun (“your gun”)

okun (“your arrow”) dersin (“your lesson”)

kushun (“your bird”) kibritlerin (“your matches”)

(“book”) kitap – kitapta (“in a book”)

(“chair”) koltuk – koltukta (“in a chair”)

(“room”) oda – odada (“in a room”)

(“restaurant”) lokanta – lokantada (“in a restaurant”)

(“house”) ev – evde (“in a house”)

(“place”) yer – yerlerde (“in places”)

(“hand”) el – ellerimde (“in my hands”)

(“road”) yol – yollarda (“in roads)

Singular Plural

(“man”) adam – adamlar (“men”)

(“gun”) ________ – toplar (“guns”)

(“lesson”) ders – ________ (“lessons”)

(“place”) yer – yerler (“places”)

(“road”) _______ – yollar (“roads”)

(“lock”) _______ – kilitler (“locks”)

(“arrow”) ok – ________ (“arrows”)

(“hand”) el – ________ (“hands”)

(“arm”) kol – ________ (“arms”)

(“bell”) ________ – ziller (“bells”)

(“friend”) ________ – dostlar (“friends”)

(“apple”) elma – ________ (“apples”)

Morphology 77

Exercise Turkish (Turkic)

II In Turkish, there is some variation in the plural inflection.

(i) Can you provide the missing forms?

(ii) What are the two plural morphs exemplified here?

(iii) Treat the written forms of a and o as representing back vowels and e and i as

representing front vowels. Using this information, can you state the

conditions under which each of the plural morphs is used?

(iv) On the basis of the following phrases, how would you describe the Turkish

translation equivalents of your and the conditions for their use?

(v) While English usually marks location with prepositions (in a house or at a

place), Turkish has postpositions (house-in or place-at). After looking at the

following examples, try to identify the three versions of the “location” suffix

and the conditions for their use.

dishin (“your tooth”) topun (“your gun”)

okun (“your arrow”) dersin (“your lesson”)

kushun (“your bird”) kibritlerin (“your matches”)

(“book”) kitap – kitapta (“in a book”)

(“chair”) koltuk – koltukta (“in a chair”)

(“room”) oda – odada (“in a room”)

(“restaurant”) lokanta – lokantada (“in a restaurant”)

(“house”) ev – evde (“in a house”)

(“place”) yer – yerlerde (“in places”)

(“hand”) el – ellerimde (“in my hands”)

(“road”) yol – yollarda (“in roads)

Singular Plural

(“man”) adam – adamlar (“men”)

(“gun”) ________ – toplar (“guns”)

(“lesson”) ders – ________ (“lessons”)

(“place”) yer – yerler (“places”)

(“road”) _______ – yollar (“roads”)

(“lock”) _______ – kilitler (“locks”)

(“arrow”) ok – ________ (“arrows”)

(“hand”) el – ________ (“hands”)

(“arm”) kol – ________ (“arms”)

(“bell”) ________ – ziller (“bells”)

(“friend”) ________ – dostlar (“friends”)

(“apple”) elma – ________ (“apples”)

Morphology 77

(vi) When Turkish speakers borrowed (from French) the word randevu,

meaning “an appointment,” how do you think they expressed “in an

appointment”?

(For more examples, see Gleason, 1955. For more on Turkish, see Lewis, 2000.)

FURTHER READING

Basic treatments

Aronoff, M. and K. Fudeman (2005) What is Morphology? Blackwell

Payne, T. (2006) Exploring Language Structure (chapters 1–3) Cambridge University Press

More detailed treatments

Bauer, L. (2003) Introducing Linguistic Morphology (2nd edition) Edinburgh University Press

Booij, G. (2012) The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Morphology (3rd edition) Oxford

University Press

Specifically on English morphology

Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2002) An Introduction to English Morphology Edinburgh University

Press

Reduplication

Inkelas, S. and C. Zoll (2009) Reduplication: Doubling in Morphology Cambridge University

Press

Morphology exercises

Language Files (2011) (11th edition) Ohio State University Press

Lieber, R. (2010) Introducing Morphology Cambridge University Press

Other references

Frommer, P. and E. Finegan (2012) Looking at Languages (5th edition) Wadsworth

Gleason, H. (1955) Workbook in Descriptive Linguistics Holt

Lewis, G. (2000) Turkish Grammar (2nd edition) Oxford University Press

Mosel, U. and E. Hovdhaugen (1992) Samoan Reference Grammar Scandinavian University

Press

Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules HarperCollins

Sudlow, D. (2001) The Tamasheq of North-East Burkina Faso. R. Koppe Verlag

Yu, A. (2007) A Natural History of Infixation Oxford University Press

78 The Study of Language