Li6 Phonology and Li6 Phonology and MorphologyMorphology

Morphological features

Today’s topicsToday’s topics

compositional vs holistic morphology evidence for morphemes being

composed of (semantic and grammatical) features

some uses of morphological features

Holistic or compositional?Holistic or compositional?

Semantics Holistic (Bock and Levelt 1994) Componential (Dell 1986)

Morphology Whole-word representations (Butterworth ‘92, Bybee ‘95)

• Why?• Reductionist/null hypothesis

Morphological composition (Taft & Forster 1975, Levelt 1989)

• Why?• general tenet that the brain avoids redundant information storage

• Account for productivity

Semantic featuresSemantic features

Fuzzy categorieswe tend to think of concepts expressed by words

and phrases as clear-cut, but…• what does ‘rich’ mean? ‘tall’? ‘blue’?…• core/periphery

Operatorssome, every, and, or, etc.some = SOME, where for any sets X, Y:

SOME (X) (Y) iff X Y Ø

= ‘is a proper subset of’; = ‘the intersection of’

Problems

/kæt/

Discrete CategoryRepresentations

Gradient CategoryRepresentations

ostriches

hummingbirds

pigeons

robins

magpies

hawks

storks

penguins

Semantic featuresSemantic featuresProblems: core vs periphery

it’s actually easy to model this sort of structure using features

Evidence for semantic Evidence for semantic featuresfeatures

Capture generalizations about natural classes (humans, etc.), subsets What do the following have in common? girl woman witch governess

dominatrix Classifiers

Thai uses khon to count [+human] items• khru lâ j khon ‘teacher three person’ = ‘three teachers’• ma sí tua ‘dog four body’ = ‘four dogs’

Overt marking needed for morphosyntactic agreement (gender, number...)

Subcategorization: admire : ?my cat admires me; *my plants admire me requires [+human] or [+animate] subject assassinate: requires [+human, +important, (?)+political] object

Inversion effectsInversion effects (exact) opposites

good:bad… errors (TBD)

Morphological inversion rules Afro-Asiatic gender polarity (Meinhof 1912)

• Arabic 3-10 take opposite gender of their noun• θala:θatu bani:na ‘3 (f) sons (m)’

• θala:θu bana:tu ‘3 (m) daughters (f)’

• Somali (non-internal) plurals (Zwicky and Pullum ’83, Lecarme 2002)• def art: masc /-ka/; fem /-ta/• agr: Soomáali-ga ‘the Somali’ (m) : Soomaalí-da ‘the Somalis’

Spanish theme vowel polarity (Fitzpatrick, Nevins, and Vaux 2004)• The theme vowel in the present subjunctive is the “opposite” of that found in

the present indicative

Evidence for Evidence for morphological featuresmorphological features

speech errors

Speech errorsSpeech errors morphological errors

have to went for had to go have teachen for have taught

semantic substitution errors insertion or blending of related or opposite words

• bridge of the neck (nose); a tennis athler

• he has to pay her rent (alimony); I really like to – hate to get up in the morning

tend to preserve grammatical category• a laboratory in our own computer

tend to preserve grammatical gender if the target utterance requires the production of a gender-marked element (Vigliocco, Vinson, Indefrey, Levelt, & Hellwig 2004)

• seems to support gender as a feature, especially if forms of different phonological form but identical gender pattern together

Verb errors and featuresVerb errors and features

Ashenfelter and Eberhard 200x Observation

• words sharing semantic features compete for insertion when encoded in the same local context (Breedin, Saffran, and Schwartz 1998)

Hypothesis• In perseverative and anticipatory speech errors, replacement of

simpler form (e.g. GO) by more complex form (JOG) should be more common

Results• Hypothesis supported

Evidence for Evidence for morphological featuresmorphological features

lexical access effects

Lexical access and featuresLexical access and features

“When one wants to name the picture of an object, the structural description of the picture is used to activate a conceptual representation (typically, a bundle of semantic features).” (Bachoud-Lévi and Dupoux 2003:163)

Model from Bachoud-Lévi and Dupoux 2003:181, based on Levelt et al 1999

The Internal LexiconThe Internal Lexicon

Word-form Level

Grammatical Level

Conceptual Level

Partial access in TOT Partial access in TOT states and aphasiastates and aphasia

Certain types of grammatical information are retrievable independent of lexeme; suggests that these items are stored as independent features in the lexical entry Burke et al 1991

• Alternate words retrieved in TOTs are of the same grammatical class, number, and verb tense as the target word

Caramazza and Miozzo 1997• gender retrievable without access of lexeme in TOTs• Similar effect for gender found with some aphasics (Caramazza)• Cf. grammatical gender of distractor affecting production of German

phrases composes of article + picture name—longer latency with gender mismatch (Schriefers and Teruel 2000)

Bachoud-Lévi and Dupoux 2003• Numerals, days, and months spared vs matched controls• Cf also category-specific deficits (animals, vegetables, tools)

N vs V in aphasiaN vs V in aphasia

Rapp and Caramazza 2002double dissociation of grammatical category vs modality in single aphasic

• greater difficulty speaking nouns vs verbs• greater difficulty writing verbs vs nouns

supports the representation of grammatical category distinctions at post-semantic levels of representation and processing

Evidence for Evidence for morphological featuresmorphological features

priming effects

Semantic primingSemantic priming

Meyer & Schvaneveldt 1971Meyer & Schvaneveldt 1971

FirstWord

bread bread bread bread castle castle

SecondWord

butter cheese mouse castle gate path

ReactionTime

855msec

867 970 1030 871 950

Reaction-time pattern suggested semantic organization of mental lexicon

Historical changesHistorical changes

semantic change

morphologisation

syncretism

Morphologisation in ASLMorphologisation in ASL

Frishberg, Nancy. 1975. Arbitrariness and iconicity: historical change in American Sign Language. Language 51.3:696-719.

Modeling semantic changeModeling semantic change

Loss/addition of semantic feature(s) Parallel to regularization in morphology Murder, swarthy

murder : ‘kill’ > ‘murder’ Features added to the lexical entry for murder :

[+human victim] [+unlawful] [+intentional] [+violent]

Analogical levelingAnalogical leveling

Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde III.1009-1012My goode, myn, not I for-why ne howThat Jalousye, allas! that wikked wivere,Thus causeless is cropen in-to yow;The harm of which I wolde fayn delivere![ne ‘not’, wivere ‘wyvern, viper’]

Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose 247-251Envye.And by that image, nygh y-nough,Was peynt Envye, that never lough,Nor never wel in herte ferdeBut-if she outher saugh or herdeSom greet mischaunce, or greet disese.[peynt ‘painted’, herte ‘heart’, ferde ‘seemed’]

Analogical levelingAnalogical leveling

plural: eyen eyeskine cows

past: clomb climbedcrope creptlough laughedyold yieldedholpen helped

What is analogy?What is analogy?

Traditional view:dog : dogs :: eye : X

Our view of this type of analogya. [plural] /-n/ / class 1

/-rən/ / class 2/-Ø/ / class 3/-z/ / elsewhere

b. stage I {eye, noun, class 1}stage II {eye, noun}

Here analogy = loss of exceptional marking.

SyncretismSyncretism

The Latin declensionsThe Latin declensions

1 (f) 2 (m, n) 3 (mfn) 4 (m, n) 5 (f)

Nom -a -u-s/m -s, -Ø -u-s -e-s

Acc -a-m -u-m -e-m -u-m -e-m

Gen -a-e -i -i-s -u-s -e-i

Dat -a-e -o -i -u-i -e-i

Abl -a -o -e -u -e

Nom -a-e -i/-a m. –es m. -u-s -e-s

Acc -a-s -o-s n. -a n. -u-a

Gen -a-r-um -o-r-um -um -u-um -e-rum

Dat/Abl -i-s -i-s -i-bu-s -i-bu-s -e-bu-s

Nom Acc Gen Dat Loc Instr Abl Erg

oblique - - + + + + + -

structural + + + + - - - +

superior + - - + - + + +

free + - + + - - + -

from Halle and Vaux 1998

The Latin declensionsThe Latin declensionsNom Acc Gen Dat Loc Instr Abl Erg

oblique - - + + + + + -

structural + + + + - - - +

superior + - - + - + + +

free + - + + - - + -

Some uses of Some uses of morphological featuresmorphological features

Gender agr with mixed plsGender agr with mixed pls

hierarchy of gender agreement with mixed plurals in Sanskrit (e.g. {Rama and Sita} went to the store):m + n masculinem + f masculinen + f neuter

Underspecification and Underspecification and competition in DMcompetition in DM(McGinnis 1996)(McGinnis 1996)

ImpoverishmentImpoverishment Sauerland 1995 on Norwegian

adjectival endings differ in strong vs weak syntactic positions (see (10))

in the strong set, -e appears to be the default by hypothesis, it’s not accidental that -e is default in the strong context,

and also appears everywhere in the weak context DM analysis:

• /t/ [ _ , -pl, +neut] / Adj + _

• /^/ [ _ , -pl, -neut] / Adj + _ [“^” = Ø?]

• /e/ elsewhere / Adj + _

• Impoverishment rule: [±neuter] Ø / weak context

• This rule blocks –t and -^ from being inserted, since each has a gender specification

• Therefore the default is inserted in all such cases

strong [-neuter] [+neuter]

[-plural] ^ -t

[+plural]

-eweak

[-plural]

[+plural]

Harley and Ritter 2002Harley and Ritter 2002 McGinnis 2005

“languages without a dual category conflate the dual with the plural. Likewise…languages without an inclusive category conflate the inclusive with first person.”

H&R 2002 (from McG 2005) “the morphosyntactic features of a given language are subject to MINIMAL

CONSTRASTIVE UNDERSPECIFICATION: only contrastive features appear in the underlying representation, while non-contrastive features are filled in by default rules (H&R 498; see also Rice and Avery 1995, Brown 1997). H&R propose that a language lacking a dual category has only [Grp] in the underlying representation, while [Min] is filled in by a default rule when [Grp] is absent (H&R:489). Thus the underlying representation of the system in (6a) is as in (8): the singular category has no number features, while the dual/plural category has only the feature [Grp].”

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