Phonological evidence for morpho-syntactic structure in Athapaskan

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Goad ◽  
Lisa deMena Travis
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Iterative Root ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Direct Mapping ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Mirror Principle ◽  
Affix Ordering

Abstract Athapaskan verbal morphology appears to violate the Mirror Principle in multiple ways and, thus, the ordering of affixes in these languages has resisted a straightforward analysis. We adopt a new morphological tool of Iterative Root Prefixation, which allows for a more direct mapping from syntax to morphology in languages of this profile. Apparent violations of affix ordering that remain, namely the puzzling placement of the transitive and causative morphemes, are argued to be explained by overriding phonological constraints.

An Analysis of Verbal Extensions in Malawian Tonga: Towards Mirror Principle and Templatic Morphology

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Mexon Manda ◽  
Wellman Kondowe ◽  
Flemmings Fishani Ngwira ◽  
Lydia Kishindo
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Templatic Morphology ◽  
Mirror Principle ◽  
Affix Ordering

The question on affix ordering is among the central concerns in morphological analyses of Bantu languages, with most studies drawing insights from Mirror Principle and Templatic Morphology theoretical underpinnings. However, it remains debatable to a larger extent on whether conclusions drawn from such studies can be extended to all languages with agglutinative morphological structures. This study was carried out to examine the structure of suffix ordering in Malawian Tonga by examining the two theories. On morpheme co-occurrence, the study reveals that causatives and applicatives, as argument-structure increasing suffixes, should always precede other extensions which are argument-structure reducing suffixes in order to be consistent with the tenets of the two theories. However, there are some observable cases where prescriptions of these theories breed ungrammatical structures in Tonga.

scholarly journals Adaptation of Turkish Loanwords Originating from Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Wafi Fhaid Alshammari ◽  
Ahmad Radi Alshammari
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Morphological Adaptation ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Linguistic Constraints ◽  
Adaptation Processes ◽  
The Way

This study investigates the phonological and morphological adaptation of Turkish loanwords of Arabic origin to reveal aspects of native speakers’ knowledge that are not necessarily obvious. It accounts for numerous modification processes that these loanwords undergo when borrowed into Turkish. To achieve this, a corpus of 250 Turkish loanwords was collected and analyzed whereby these loanwords were compared to their Arabic counterparts to reveal phonological processes that Turkish followed to adapt them. Also, it tackles the treatment of morphological markings and compound forms in Turkish loanwords. The results show that adaptation processes are mostly phonological, albeit informed by phonetics and other linguistic factors. It is shown that the adaptation processes are geared towards unmarkedness in that faithfulness to the source input—Arabic—is violated, taking the burden to satisfy Turkish phonological constraints. Turkish loanwords of Arabic origin undergo a number of phonological processes, e.g., substitution, deletion, degemination, vowel harmony, and epenthesis for the purpose of repairing the ill-formedness. The Arabic feminine singular and plural morphemes are treated as part of the root, with fossilized functions of such markers. Also, compound forms are fused and word class is changed to fit the syntactic structure of Turkish. Such loanwords help pave the way to invoke latent native Turkish linguistic constraints.

Explaining phonological conditions on affixation: Evidence from suppletive allomorphy and affix ordering

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Paster
Keyword(s):  
Single Component ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Cyclic Type ◽  
Phonological Unit ◽  
Suppletive Allomorphy ◽  
Affix Ordering

This paper examines two domains in which phonology may exert an influence on morphology: suppletive allomorph selection and affix ordering. Cross-linguistic facts about both phenomena are examined and ultimately argued to provide evidence for a phonology-morphology interface in which morphology precedes phonology at each level of the grammar in a cyclic-type approach, and phonological conditions on affixation occur when an affix subcategorizes for a particular phonological unit. This is contrasted with an Optimality Theoretic (OT) approach to the phonology-morphology interface in which phonological effects in morphology are modeled by ranking phonological constraints over morphological ones (i.e. ‘P ≫ M’) within a single component of the grammar. It is argued that the former approach makes better predictions for the two phenomena in question as well as for other areas previously discussed in the literature (e.g. infix placement) and that phonological and morphological constraints should not be interranked in an OT grammar.

scholarly journals Lone other-language items in later medieval texts

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Ingham ◽  
Louise Sylvester ◽  
Imogen Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Foreign Origin ◽  
Lexical Items

AbstractThis paper addresses the use in medieval texts of ‘lone other-language items’ (Poplack and Dion 2012), considering their status as loans or code-switches (Durkin 2014; Schendl and Wright 2011). French-origin and English-origin lexemes in Middle English, respectively, were taken from the Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England, a source of loan words chosen for its sociolinguistic representativeness and studied via Middle English Dictionary citations and textbase occurrences. Four criteria were applied for whether they should be treated as code-switches or as loans: the textual context in which the item appears, the adoption of target language verbal morphology, the length of attestation within the target language of individual lexical items (Matras 2009), and the integration of items into the syntactic structure of nominal phrases in conflict sites for code-switching (Poplack et al. 2015). Results provide little support for code-switching as the channel for the integration of lone other-language items, suggesting rather that individual items of foreign origin were immediately borrowed, consistently with Poplack and Dion’s (2012) treatment of contemporary contact phenomena.

Phonological Constraints on the Sentence Productions of Language-Disordered Children

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Panagos ◽  
Patricia A. Prelock
Keyword(s):  
School Children ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Phonological Disorders ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Phonological Complexity

Effects of phonologica] and syntactic structure on the sentence productions of language-disordered school children (mean age = 6:2 years) were investigated. The syllabic complexity of target sentences as well as clause embedding significantly contributed to sentence inaccuracy (omission. substitution, addition, and transposition errors). Phonological complexity in lexical items disrupted syntactic performance in a quantitative fashion. Whereas the syntactic constructions determined the patterns of errors, added phonological cmnplexity simply increased the errors within the patterns. The causal interrelationships between children's syntactic and phonological disorders are discussed in terms of a theory of general organizational deficit.

Towards the Use of a Tree Branching Logic in the Environment of a Hospital Information System

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 187-194
Author(s):  
J.-Ph. Berney ◽  
R. Baud ◽  
J.-R. Scherrer
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Selection System ◽  
Frame Selection ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Medical Language ◽  
Selection Systems ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Man Machine Dialogue ◽  
Oriented System

It is well known that Frame Selection Systems (FFS) have proved both popular and effective in physician-machine and patient-machine dialogue. A formal algorithm for definition of a Frame Selection System for handling man-machine dialogue is presented here. Besides, it is shown how the natural medical language can be handled using the approach of a tree branching logic. This logic appears to be based upon ordered series of selections which enclose a syntactic structure. The external specifications are discussed with regard to convenience and efficiency. Knowing that all communication between the user and the application programmes is handled only by FSS software, FSS contributes to achieving modularity and, therefore, also maintainability in a transaction-oriented system with a large data base and concurrent accesses.

Introduction: Affixes and bases

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
Stela Manova
Keyword(s):  
Special Issue ◽  
Affix Order ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Affix Ordering

This special issue includes a selection of papers presented at the 2nd Vienna Workshop on Affix Order held in Vienna, Austria on June 4–5, 2009. The workshop was in honor of Wolfgang U. Dressler on the occasion of his 70th birthday. However, this special issue differs from the classical Festschrift dedicated to a renowned scholar and is ‘more special’ in two respects at least: 1) not all authors are Dressler's friends and colleagues, some of them are only indirectly related to him, through his students; and 2) since the papers were presented at a topic-oriented workshop, they are thematically uniform. In other words, this special issue is a kind of scientific genealogy in terms of affix ordering. Thus, the title Affixes and bases should be understood in two ways: literally – affixes and bases as linguistic notions, and metaphorically – affixes and bases as linguists related directly and indirectly to a prominent base: Wolfgang U. Dressler.

Similarities in the Syntactic Structure of the German and Croatian Language

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
German Language ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Subordinate Clauses

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.

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