LECTURE 8Lexeme 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 .