On a possible convergence area in Northern China

The received view that the differences among Sinitic languages are mostly limited to their phonology and, to a lesser extent, to the lexicon (Chao 1968), has been challenged in recent years, with plenty of studies showing that Chinese ‘dialects’ are, indeed, diverse at all levels, including morphology and (morpho-)syntax (see Chappell 2015a for an overview). Some major differences within the Sinitic branch follow areal patterns, in which contact is often claimed to play a crucial role. In our contribution, we would like to propose that there is an area within Northern China, spread over the Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces, in which we find Sinitic languages possessing some features not seen (or, at least, uncommon) elsewhere. These include: 1. reduced/nonconcatenative morphology (see Arcodia 2013, 2015; Lamarre 2015); 2. object markers based on speech act verbs (see Chappell 2013); and 3. structural particles with an l-initial (see Chen A. 2013, a.o.). Based on our own survey of a sample of 96 dialects, we shall discuss the distribution of these features, as well as their possible origins.

Morphology in Japonic Languages

Due to the agglutinative character, Japanese and Ryukyuan morphology is predominantly concatenative, applying to garden-variety word formation processes such as compounding, prefixation, suffixation, and inflection, though nonconcatenative morphology like clipping, blending, and reduplication is also available and sometimes interacts with concatenative word formation. The formal simplicity of the principal morphological devices is counterbalanced by their complex interaction with syntax and semantics as well as by the intricate interactions of four lexical strata (native, Sino-Japanese, foreign, and mimetic) with particular morphological processes. A wealth of phenomena is adduced that pertain to central issues in theories of morphology, such as the demarcation between words and phrases; the feasibility of the lexical integrity principle; the controversy over lexicalism and syntacticism; the distinction of morpheme-based and word-based morphology; the effects of the stage-level vs. individual-level distinction on the applicability of morphological rules; the interface of morphology, syntax, and semantics, and pragmatics; and the role of conjugation and inflection in predicate agglutination. In particular, the formation of compound and complex verbs/adjectives takes place in both lexical and syntactic structures, and the compound and complex predicates thus formed are further followed in syntax by suffixal predicates representing grammatical categories like causative, passive, negation, and politeness as well as inflections of tense and mood to form a long chain of predicate complexes. In addition, an array of morphological objects—bound root, word, clitic, nonindependent word or fuzoku-go, and (for Japanese) word plus—participate productively in word formation. The close association of morphology and syntax in Japonic languages thus demonstrates that morphological processes are spread over lexical and syntactic structures, whereas words are equipped with the distinct property of morphological integrity, which distinguishes them from syntactic phrases.

Morphology in Sino-Tibetan Languages

Sino-Tibetan is a highly diverse language family, in which a wide range of morphological phenomena and profiles may be found. The family is generally seen as split into two major branches, i.e., Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman, but while Sinitic is a fairly homogeneous group in terms of morphology, the so-called Tibeto-Burman branch of the family includes isolating languages like Karen, languages with transparent and regular agglutinative morphology (Lolo-Burmese, Tibetic, and Boro-Garo), but also paradigmatically complex languages, with elaborate argument indexation and transitivity management systems; while in some languages morphological complexity is mostly a conservative trait (e.g., Rgyalrongic and Kiranti), other languages developed innovative paradigms, with only few vestiges of the archaic system (Kuki-Chin). Some notable morphological phenomena in modern Tibeto-Burman languages are verb stem alternation, peculiar nominalization constructions, and long sequences of prefixes, which in some languages (Chintang) may even be freely permutated without any relevant change in meaning. Also, while Sinitic languages are normally taken to be a prototypical example of the (ideal) isolating morphological type (with virtually no inflection, stable morpheme boundaries, no cumulative exponence, and no allomorphy or suppletion), phenomena of strong reduction of morphemes, blurring of morpheme boundaries and fusion between root and suffix, and nonconcatenative morphology, as well as allomorphy and (proto-)paradigmatic organization of morphology, are attested in some Chinese dialects, mostly concentrated in an area of Northern China (Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces). Moreover, ‘Altaic-type’ agglutinative morphology, including case marking, is found in Sinitic languages of the so-called Qinghai-Gansu Sprachbund; in this case, the development of agglutination, as well as other typological traits (as SOV word order), is clearly the product of intense and prolonged contact between Northwestern Chinese dialects and Tibetic and Mongolic languages of China. On the other hand, Southern Chinese dialects have developed in closer contact with Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai, and Austroasiatic languages, and are thus closer to the typology of Mainland Southeast Asian languages, with a very strong isolating profile.

Inflectional Morphology

Inflection is the systematic relation between words’ morphosyntactic content and their morphological form; as such, the phenomenon of inflection raises fundamental questions about the nature of morphology itself and about its interfaces. Within the domain of morphology proper, it is essential to establish how (or whether) inflection differs from other kinds of morphology and to identify the ways in which morphosyntactic content can be encoded morphologically. A number of different approaches to modeling inflectional morphology have been proposed; these tend to cluster into two main groups, those that are morpheme-based and those that are lexeme-based. Morpheme-based theories tend to treat inflectional morphology as fundamentally concatenative; they tend to represent an inflected word’s morphosyntactic content as a compositional summing of its morphemes’ content; they tend to attribute an inflected word’s internal structure to syntactic principles; and they tend to minimize the theoretical significance of inflectional paradigms. Lexeme-based theories, by contrast, tend to accord concatenative and nonconcatenative morphology essentially equal status as marks of inflection; they tend to represent an inflected word’s morphosyntactic content as a property set intrinsically associated with that word’s paradigm cell; they tend to assume that an inflected word’s internal morphology is neither accessible to nor defined by syntactic principles; and they tend to treat inflection as the morphological realization of a paradigm’s cells. Four important issues for approaches of either sort are the nature of nonconcatenative morphology, the incidence of extended exponence, the underdetermination of a word’s morphosyntactic content by its inflectional form, and the nature of word forms’ internal structure. The structure of a word’s inventory of inflected forms—its paradigm—is the locus of considerable cross-linguistic variation. In particular, the canonical relation of content to form in an inflectional paradigm is subject to a wide array of deviations, including inflection-class distinctions, morphomic properties, defectiveness, deponency, metaconjugation, and syncretism; these deviations pose important challenges for understanding the interfaces of inflectional morphology, and a theory’s resolution of these challenges depends squarely on whether that theory is morpheme-based or lexeme-based.

The Templatic Syllable Patterns of Reduplication and Stem-affixing Inflections in the Classical Arabic Based on Prosodic Morphology Theory

A morpheme, is a set of feature matrices dominated by a single node. Reduplication or gemination is one of the productive morphological processes which have been studied inclusively in different languages and in the frame of different linguistic theories like Generative Grammar, Optimality Theory and Minimalist Program. McCarthy's prosodic theory is justified by an analysis of the formal properties of the system of verbal processes like reduplication are the primary or sole morphological operations. This theory of nonconcatenative morphology recognizing the root as a discontinuous constituent. Under the prosodic model, a morphological category which characteristically reduplicates simply stipulates an output template composed of vowel and consonant. Consonantal roots and vocalic melodies in Arabic, although they contain bundles of the same distinctive features, can nevertheless be represented on separate autosegmental tiers. This ensures that the association conventions for melodies can operate independently on these two tiers. Association of autosegments from different tiers to the same segments will be subject to the natural restriction that no segment receives multiple associations for the same nontonal feature.

Subtractive Morphology

Subtraction consists in a shortening of a morphological base as in the Russian derivation mikrobiologija ‘microbiology’ → mikrobiolog ‘microbiologist.’ Of course, one can doubt the correctness of the direction of this derivation and claim that the shorter form mikrobiolog serves as a base for mikrobiologija and not vice versa. However, from the literature on word-formation it is well known that the most important diagnostic criterion for being a product of a derivation is semantic dependence; i.e., the definition of the derivative depends on the meaning of its base. In our case, the definition of mikrobiolog depends on mikrobiologija (a microbiologist is not a microscopic biologist but a person specialized in the field of microbiology; microbiology is the study of microscopic organisms). As can be seen from the Russian example, subtraction differs from concatenative affixation, i.e., from affixation by addition of a discrete affix (see the Oxford Bibliographies article “Affixation.” Therefore, in the literature, subtraction is seen as an instance of nonconcatenative morphology and is usually analyzed either as process morphology without morphemes or as addition of defective phonological material. Subtraction has been reported in derivation and inflection and in well-studied and lesser-studied languages. Among the most frequently cited examples of subtraction in textbooks and reference resources are the masculine forms of some French adjectives (e.g., masc. bon /bõ/ ‘good’—fem. bonne /bon/) and the formation of perfective verbs from imperfective ones in the Uto-Aztekan language Tohono O’odham (called “Papago” in some sources) (e.g., singular: imperf. him ‘walk’—perf. hi:, plural: imperf. hihim—perf. hihi). However, it has to be mentioned here that numerous studies on theoretical morphology have provided alternative, nonsubtractive analyses of those French and Tohono O’odham data. Additionally, opinions differ on how much form can be deleted in subtraction. Some linguists claim that subtraction deletes a phoneme, others speak of a mora, and still others assume that subtractive morphology deletes segments of different lengths. Some linguists postulate subtraction only if the shortened material does not coincide with an existing morpheme elsewhere in a language, whereas others show that the deleted material can be equal in form with an existing affix. Opinions also differ on what a proper word-formation process is and which morphological derivations involve subtraction. Unlike most morphology textbooks, some theoretical studies see hypocoristics, blends, and clippings as instances of (more or less regular) word-formation and refer to them as either “subtractive truncation” or “subtractive word-formation.” Thus we come to terminology; in the literature, different labels have been used to refer to subtraction(-like) formations: minus feature, minus formation, disfixation, subtractive morph, (subtractive) truncation, backformation, or just shortening.

Word Formation in Japanese

The term “word formation” is used here as a broad term covering a wide array of word formation processes and morphological issues related to syntax and semantics. The reason Japanese is specifically focused on is that this language, though lacking a complicated system of agreement-based inflections and declensions that are common to inflectional and polysynthetic types of languages, is rich in word formation processes that straddle the boundaries of morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology and is therefore considered to have good potential to contribute toward theorizing the place of morphology in the overall architecture of grammatical modules. Japanese has a wealth of concatenative and nonconcatenative word formation processes that produce complex words by compounding, affixation, conversion, inflection, blending, clipping, and other mechanisms, which are often conditioned by differences of lexical strata (native, Sino-Japanese, foreign, and mimetic). This article chiefly treats concatenative morphology, with brief reference to nonconcatenative morphology. Besides, the agglutinative character of Japanese makes it difficult to identify “words” in a unitary manner as in European languages. Defining the notion of “word” is also a key issue in mulling over the word formation phenomena in this language.

Arabic nominals in HPSG: A verbal noun perspective

Semitic languages exhibit rich nonconcatenative morphological operations, which can generate a myriad of derived lexemes. Especially, the feature rich, root-driven morphology in the Arabic language demonstrates the construction of several verb-derived nominals (verbal nouns) such as gerunds, active participles, passive participles, locative participles, etc. Although HPSG is a successful syntactic theory, it lacks the representation of complex nonconcatenative morphology. In this paper, we propose a novel HPSG representation for Arabic nominals and various verb-derived nouns. We also present the lexical type hierarchy and derivational rules for generating these verb-derived nominals using the HPSG framework.